Draazstone hospitality & the calling-gift

In Draazstone a person does not call on a house uninvited without bringing something. The gift is not a courtesy paid at the threshold and forgotten. It is the other half of the visit, and it changes hands on the way out.

The three Draazstone hobgoblins who came to Mikhail’s inherited house in Loshev hung their traveling cloaks, their boots and their weapons in the cubbies inside the door before they turned to greet him, without a word passing between them and in an order none of them had to think about. What they left behind when they went was a smelted ingot of Draz Steel, merchant-ready, stamped with the mark of the clan that had moved it.

To accept the gift is to be welcome at the giver’s own home, and the welcome is sincere. A guest in Draazstone is treated as a guest, which Hinta was careful to say is not the same thing as being treated as a guest anywhere else. She was just as careful about the rest of it. An invitation is a welcome mat, and a welcome mat is a trap: an outsider who goes to Draazstone and steps out of line, in any of the ways an outsider reliably does, is inside a prison quickly and serving three to seven years. None of that makes the parcel a plot — Hinta said as much herself, and said not to confuse her for saying it was one. If they had wanted the company dealt with they would not have needed a custom to do it.