Holding IV, Enclave.
Kept Year 1 to Year 401.
The founding
We were founded by the first groups of Remnari to find each other again in the Astral Sea after the Separation. They were not the refugees themselves. They were the children and grandchildren of refugees, from twelve separate lines of flight, and they came together for a reason they stated on the first day.
The founding assembly sat nineteen days. Its full proceedings are in this holding. Three of its resolutions get quoted all over the Archive, so they are here in the assembly’s own words.
The Charge. We are the ones who arrived. We will not be the only ones who arrived.
On the count. That the years of this Enclave be numbered from this assembly, which is the first, and that the count be kept against the fortress’s systems and entered on every record without exception.
On dissent. That no decision of this body shall stand in the record without whatever was said against it, in the words of the one who said it, for as long as the decision stands. This body is four, and four may err together, and a record of decisions alone does not show what was weighed against them.
They found the asteroid already adrift, origin unknown. They did not build her, they cut her, over the first four generations, and the same assembly named her the Stone of Endurance.
Four centuries in short
| Years | People | What was happening |
|---|---|---|
| 1 to 61 | 60 rising to 210 | Cutting, building, arrivals. Block One opened Year 7. Terminals finished Year 39. |
| 61 to 181 | 210 rising to 417 | The best of it. We peaked at 417 in Year 112. |
| 181 to 281 | 417 falling to 290 | Consolidation. The middle-period programmes closed. We flew less each decade. |
| 281 to 401 | 290 falling to 168 | Upkeep. |
The best years
At our height we supported more culture than four hundred people should be able to. Our holographic tapestry work, our sculpture, and the astral music written here all mostly date from then, and so does the Archive in the shape you are reading it. Reorganising it into seven holdings, in Year 127, is the largest single undertaking in the governance record.
Among the peoples of the Astral we were known as small, capable, unusually well informed, fair in trade, good for our agreements, and unwilling to take sides in anyone else’s quarrel. We kept that reputation on purpose and it cost us. The arguments about keeping it run right through the governance record and are collected in Holding VI.
Through all of it the search went on. Charts worked, arrivals questioned, nothing found. Sael Anthek Coldchart put the hard question to the assembly in Year 125 and was never answered; his objection is in the register.
Later
The record since shows a community safe in its home, less ambitious, and mostly busy with upkeep. Two of the three residential blocks were never opened and their doors came off the maintenance schedule in Year 247. The Toren Program, the biggest thing we attempted, closed in Year 242.
We have flown eleven times since Year 281, and four of those were only repositioning inside the sphere.
The allocation dispute of Year 395
Set out here because it is cited elsewhere in the Archive.
It ran four sessions, which is three more than any allocation matter had taken in two centuries. The question was whether a room in Block One could be held standing for someone who is not resident, has no family aboard, and comes back at intervals of a year or more.
The case against was procedural and it was correct. We allocate to households. The register has no category for such a person. An allocation outside the rule sets the rule aside.
It carried on the fourth session. Room 41, Block One, is held empty on standing order and is not to be reassigned. It is entered as occupied in the census. The housing keeper’s instruction against the entry is that the allocation is not to be mentioned to the person it is held for.
The person is the young Remnari who arrives from the Ground of Rolara, recorded in Holding V.
The census
Year 400 returns one hundred and sixty-eight.
Open business
Three items stand open before the Exemplars.
The Long Gallery doors are down for inspection and resealing, the work split across two seasons because the Block One door cannot be taken out of service while the block is occupied. Entered Year 401.
The answer owed to the council of Keiter since Year 390, deferred twice, still owed, carried to the next seating.
The motion to hold a Rite of Echoing for the young Remnari from the Ground of Rolara, deferred a second time, set down for the next occasion of consequence.