The Chronicle

of the month of Jasmarill in the year 156

The sudden Rubbish Riots in Northshore took everyone by surprise this month. Colonel Aldridge has deployed City Guard throughout the area in order to protect the official scavengers at dawn tipping and to keep the peace among the irate and rapidly growing population there. The dumping of city waste is continuing normally after a brief and unpleasant disruption to services last week. Disputes over the siting of the actual tips are at their most violent between neighbouring residents of this shanty town (households being too strong a term for these constructions). The subsidence of the spring floods left much noisome wreckage but also a surprising number of claimants to the infilled land spreading out into the marshes. Locals now express strong opinions that they have either had enough of the city's smelly waste or that they need a lot more of it to secure their plots of land. Either way, almost all the local residents agree that the official scavengers are wrong and corrupt in almost every aspect of their dumping duties. However this labyrinthine dispute resolves, it seems certain that tax-paying citizens within the city proper will not tolerate any more delays in overnight waste being removed from their doorstops and shop fronts.

The port has re-opened and is trading briskly this month. While not perhaps seeing the same quantity of merchant ships as other years, the quality of long distance goods has, if anything, improved. Of greatest impact locally is the absence of many Navy vessels on blockade duty down in Salvoyn. The Narwhal and Isebrevind have docked from the Western Isles, and unexpectedly a handful of battered cogs have bought ale and furs down from Nyskilde. There is no news of any recent "political developments”. The crews appear to be genuinely puzzled by their reception in Linrodeth, especially with the appearance of several Aldermen attempting to speak cryptically with them.

This is clearly bizarre budget proposal week. Having spent many years running an austere budget regime, the councillors appear to have gone mad this month proposing that we create an envoyship to Nyskilde (where there is almost no-one to talk to), and that we create an envoyship to Adaqua (but without a budget), and that we fund a massive infrastructure on the Northshore (where few tax payers live). However the most unbelievable and hence most heavily supported proposal is to spend £50 doing up the Berwick Memorial. This at a time when many of our most necessary facilities are falling into disrepair. Perhaps Lady Davy, with her new found powers of decree, will save us from this lunacy.

Senior elements within the Witanmoot are expressing grave concern over the new "gypsy look" which has become high fashion this spring. The flouncy fashion was previously only seen within certain elements of allegedly Reshite faction members and sympathisers. This year the "ethnic couture” has been enthusiastically taken up and promoted by the House of Cyarçon to the Citadel. Mutterings about a ban on certain occult accessories have perforce been muted in light of the powerful patronage of ladies of the court.

The Witanmoot Investigation Agency issue simply won't go quiet. Like a dog with a bone, councillors keep worrying at it. Alderman Trueman view that, "It is clear that the Witanmoot Investigation Agency reports solely to the Lord and Sheriffs so we transfer their budget to the Sheriffs Office who are a more suitable place for investigations gained much support until he added that prevented concentrating control in a single person's hands and pro Davy groups immediately weighed in to defend her from this sideways attack.

Jim Bottler's expedition to the south is growing momentum. The theoretically secret plan to move most of the cities construction capability south in order to build an attack causeway to Salvoyn has occupied most of his time this month. Some concern is being raised over the likelihood that some guild members may be pressed into service and also over the risk that the city will not itself retain enough skill to deal with its own construction needs.