The Greater Mole is one of several working wharves serving the port of Harborside in Tatharia Capitolina. It caters predominantly to middle-to-high-end clientele: merchant vessels of standing, Imperial dispatch craft, factor vessels of recognized houses, and the occasional sealed booking that pays in gold and asks no further questions. It is privately owned by the House of Tor, with the ownership of record currently held by Enheduana Tor.
The wharf takes its name in contrast to the lesser of two original Harborside moles, since renamed: the Lesser Mole, sold by its Brüd-family owner approximately ten years before the Reignition of the Stars of Power and subsequently redeveloped as the Garden, a combined tavern and marina.
Layout
The wharf is organized as a working slipway with numbered berths along its principal mole and a screened privacy slip, the Deep Berth, set apart at the north mole. A slipmaster’s counting-house stands at the head of the mole, and a small well-appointed boathouse is maintained adjacent to the Deep Berth for the use of vessels making sealed bookings.
The Deep Berth
The Deep Berth is the wharf’s screened slip, used for arrivals that require privacy. It is approached past a privacy screen rather than directly from the open mole, and its boathouse is administered separately from the wharf’s general facilities. Use of the Deep Berth requires the slipmaster’s discretion and a substantial fee paid in gold in advance.
The most recent prior occupant of record was the Bull of Naram-Sin, brought in for refitting two seasons past under Lord Harrick Tor's writ.
Bookings at the Deep Berth are, by the nature of the facility, poorly attested. The day-book records that a slip was taken and what was paid, and on occasion nothing else: a vessel’s name and origin may both be left blank where the booking party preferred it so and the fee was sufficient to make the preference stick.
S. Aurion, slipmaster
The wharf’s slipmaster is S. Aurion, who keeps the day-book, conducts the booking of slips, and writes marginalia in his own hand when an entry requires context the columns will not accommodate. He has held the post long enough to remember which berths were last used for what, and by whose writ. He is uneasy when bookings arrive that bargain with neither him nor the harbormaster, an arrangement the Deep Berth attracts more often than the rest of the wharf combined.
Provenance
The Greater Mole was acquired by Daren Tor in a tavern wager won from Azernathy Brüd in a card game played publicly and without incident. The wager was not, in itself, a notable encounter between the two; both were composed throughout, Azernathy in particular maintaining the unbothered public composure for which he is known. The wharf passed from Daren to Enheduana through the family-enrichment legal mechanism Daren established with a trusted magistrate prior to his disappearance into Hell. Enheduana has held the title since.