The Assembly of Stools
The first Assembly met outside the locked grain hall and declared Athelarden a free state.
What happened
Delegates brought seats from ferries, kitchens and workshops, giving the meeting its lasting visual language. The new state abolished hereditary grain rights but retained many experienced gatekeepers. That compromise kept the fields watered and left technical authority concentrated in a few families, including the Terns.
Where to look
The event is anchored at Elmyard. Related witnesses and institutions appear in the connections rather than being treated as a detached chronology.
Oldren carried grain barons for pay and hunger strikers without it.
Hessa organized the mill shifts that kept the strike kitchens supplied.
Independent listeners heard a child asking to go home inside the fortress cedar.
Surveyors found warm water beneath old ice and collected the jar now examined in Garnetrun.
The tidekeeper ordered a precautionary evacuation before the next unscheduled opening upstream.
A failed chamber exposed a child’s shoe fused into the oldest furnace slag.