After the High Windtrap Broke

The Broken Windtrap Settlement records how three Selza’a families dealt with the failure of a shared water supply. Their agreement kept households supplied while they disputed the cause, then divided responsibility for repairs. It also cleared an accused keeper of liability. The keeper’s lost contracts were never restored.

Water first

The families occupied three territories but relied on one high windtrap to collect water and feed a lower cistern. Small faults had already interrupted its operation when a corroded anchor gave way. The failure injured workers, broke the catchment surfaces, and fouled water stored in the cistern.

An adopted keeper of mixed heritage had been present during the recent incidents. Two families took that repeated presence as evidence of hostile Luck: they accused the keeper of carrying it, or the host family of sheltering it. A visiting prophet detected a persistent bias around the failing system but refused their demand to identify anyone as its bearer.

The families’ shared agreement, or compact, provided for emergency water before anyone settled the question of fault. Its stores opened, and households continued to receive their baseline supply. While the wreckage remained in place, armed crossings and public accusations naming a culprit were suspended. An independent windtrap worker was allowed across the disputed boundaries to examine the failure.

Beneath the covering

The corrosion was hidden under a covering that none of the families had removed. All three had put off portions of the shared maintenance schedule. Their records were more thorough about their neighbours’ missed work than their own.

The body hearing the dispute, the case table, found that the shared system had failed and that every family had breached its maintenance obligations. It divided repair costs among all three on that evidence.

A shared risk pool funded immediate care, replacement water, and reconstruction. Later contributions were adjusted according to use and missed maintenance. That provision did not make the waiting equally costly: families with private cisterns remained comfortable, while poor households used emergency rations and lost work interrupted by the failure.

The corrected record

Once the rebuilt windtrap passed inspection, the restrictions the families had placed on one another ended. Later compacts required every user to record maintenance they had completed. They also added support for people who lost work during a shared failure.

The keeper’s record was corrected, and the keeper was assigned no liability before changing family affiliation. None of the old contracts were restored.

Territorial councils still cite the settlement when they need to stop an armed crossing. Victims cite the keeper’s lost contracts when someone offers a repaired structure as sufficient reason to close a dispute. Later copies preserve these consequences, but every name, the place, and the date have been lost.

Return to Peoples and Polities, Magic and Miracles, or Kalsa.