The Compact's system of feudal extortion: every village pays quarterly tithes of food, labor, and material in exchange for hearth-fires that keep the dead away. Fall behind on payment, and the fires are allowed to dim.
The Economy of Warmth
The Compact's genius — and tyranny — is the Hearth Tithe. Every village within the Compact's nominal territory owes a quarterly payment of food, labor, or raw materials, delivered to the nearest walled estate. In exchange, the estate maintains a perimeter hearth — a line of ever-burning fires around the village's boundary that keeps the dead at bay.
If the tithe is paid, the fires burn. If it is not, the fires are allowed to dim. The Compact calls this "resource allocation." The peasantry calls it the Slow Extinguishing.
The Tithe Cycle
- White Dark tithe: The heaviest — food stores, preserved meat, dried grain. Collected when peasants can least afford to lose it.
- Iron Frost tithe: Labor — able bodies sent to work estate fields, mines, or walls.
- Grey Thaw tithe: Raw materials — timber, peat, fiber, anything harvested during the brief thaw.
- Long Black tithe: The lightest in goods but heaviest in dread — the Compact takes children. Ostensibly as "hearth-wardens in training." In practice, many are never seen again.
Resistance
The Long March Caravan smuggles fuel and food to tithe-defaulting villages under the Compact's nose — at ruinous prices. The Ashbound Covenant offers an alternative: wards and grave-binding rituals that can protect a village without hearth-fire, in exchange for "spiritual service." Neither option is free, and both are illegal under Compact law.