Halfling moneylenders of the roads, who keep their debts in knots.
Founded: c. year 500 (late in the Second Age), by Atlas, with the Halflings
Story
Atlas saw the Centaur Roads crowded and the sky closed by the Skybreak, and filled the gap with a people who belong nowhere and everywhere: the Halflings, small nomad traders of the roads, neutral. Among them, the Knotted Purse, an order of moneylenders.
The cords
A nomad keeps no ledger. Every debt owed to the Knotted Purse is tied as a knot on a cord the lender wears — the kind and colour of the knot tell the sum, the terms and the debtor. A lender’s cords are his whole fortune and his whole memory, and he never takes them off. When a debt is paid, the knot is untied in front of the debtor; among halflings, untying the knot means settling any account, and a man whose knot is still tied is a man not to be trusted.
Because the cords are the only record, a lost or stolen cord is a catastrophe: every debt on it becomes a debt no one can prove — and whoever holds the cord holds the debtors.
Now
The Knotted Purse lends money at the Bazaar, the one safe crossroads left, drowning in refugees.
Connections
- Halflings — their people
- Bazaar — where they lend
- Centaur Roads — the halflings’ roads, where the cords travel
Open: [?] their terms, and who owes them; [?] how the knots are read, and whether outsiders can learn it.