The Latitude Method

The letter waited for Elenna Evenshade atop the tally-boards, between a jar of wax pencils and a folded map of the Chionthar quarries.  It did not bear a seal, only a charcoal circle divided by three faint radii, as if someone had pressed a protractor into ash and then into paper.

She broke the fold.  Inside: a single sheet of clean vellum, ruled like a ledger but titled like a sermon.

THE LATITUDE OF FORMS

An assay of measured qualities for the proper harmonizing of outcomes

To be solved by any who would choose well for others.

Beneath, three columns: HEAT, HONOR, RISK, with blank rows below them.  A short paragraph followed.

Rule of Scales. Qualities once airy—like warmth, duty, and hazard—may be held to measure.  Here, Heat means bodily safety and comfort; Honor means the keeping of bonds with neighbors; Risk means the sum of perils borne by all. Each action changes these measures for different people.  Your task is not to maximize a single column but to write openly how you trade one column against the others.  Record the trade in the margin.  The ledger is the lock; your margin is the key.

The last line, in a smaller, steadier hand, read: If you leave the margins empty, you fail. —M.

Elenna looked up.  The Temple-Library of Oghma hummed with low noises: parchment, sand, whispered correction.  Winter sunlight came in at an angle, touching dust motes and the brass name-plates of the village’s donors.  Down the central aisle, a pair of Watch of the Scroll apprentices hauled a crate of river-stained books from a barge that had made fast an hour ago. Outside, the bell at the Commerce Building sounded two notes: the quarry deputation had arrived.

She tucked the letter into her coat and went to meet them.

The Delegations

The quarries lay east of town, bites taken from a barrow the miners called the Elk’s Back.  For months they had chiseled a new seam of copper and blue lapis.  Two days ago, a timbered stope had settled and creaked without breaking.  Now the foreman wanted to press deeper; the village miller, whose grain came by that same road, whispered of collapse.  The Watch had asked Elenna to listen and bring a recommendation to the council.  She had expected witness statements, not a puzzle-infused letter.

They gathered in the council chamber—stone floor scrubbed smooth and warm from the hypocaust channels beneath; the long table of oiled oak wood scored by the knife of some bored ancestor.  Elenna kept the letter on her lap under the table as a charm against haste.

“Lady Elenna.” The foreman, Harun Dol, bowed.  His beard was rough and matted from quarry dust.  “We can hold the stope if we double the props and bring in a second team to cut a relieving chamber.  The vein is richest where the roof frowns.”

Mara the miller, long fingers stained flour-white, shook her head.  “My wagons already tilt on that road.  Each cart that jounces spills grain.  The edges of the river have started freezing at night.  If we delay repairs and the road breaks, the winter stores will go light.  With respect, my lady—the village starves before the miners complete their work.”

Two apprentices from the Watch stood behind, hands clasped, eyes coursing between speakers.  They were here to keep the peace.  They were also here, Elenna supposed, to see how arguments are settled.

Elenna laid the letter on the table. “I received this this morning.”

They read.  Harun frowned at the columns.  Mara read the title twice.

“Is this a jest?” Harun said.

“It’s a way to keep us honest,” Elenna answered.  “We may weigh our choices differently.  But we will do so out loud.”

She drew three lines across the ledger with the wax pencil and named the rows aloud as she wrote them. “Proposal A: Reinforce the stope, press deeper for one month.  Proposal B: Suspend the deep cut, repair the road and supports, then re-evaluate.  Proposal C: Shut the stope, open a new face to the south.”

She slid the sheet between them, aligning the columns with the table’s grain.  “We will assign scores on a scale from 0 to 10 for each quality.  The scores are judgments, not revealed truths; the purpose is to show our reasons.  After we score, I will write in the margin how we trade one quality for another.  If you disagree, we write your trade beside it.”

Harun’s eyes went distant.  Mara’s mouth pressed thin, but she nodded.  One of the Watch apprentices leaned in. “May we watch?”

“You must,” Elenna said.  “The Watch’s work is mostly choice.”

The Measures

They began with Proposal A.

“Heat,” Elenna said. “Bodily safety and comfort, in sum over days.”

Harun tapped the page. “Double props, relieving chamber, seasoned timbers.  The roof complains but does not tattle.  Say 6 for Heat if we reinforce.”

Mara snorted. “That’s a 3. You’re borrowing Heat from the future.  One shiver every morning for a village becomes many shivers.”

Elenna set Heat = 4 for A and wrote, in a tiny hand: uncertain roof; added shifts; winter carts still jolt; total chills rising.

“Honor,” she said.  “Keeping bonds with neighbors.”

Mara spoke first this time.  “We promised the bakers flour unmuddied and the widows full measures. Honor is 3 if we drill while the road breaks.”

Harun bristled.  “And we promised the smith ore, the Watch coin for repairs, and the temple tithe.  If we halt in the ore-rich face, we might as well fling coin into the river.  Honor for A is 6.”

Elenna wrote Honor = 5 and added: kept with some, strained with others; present need vs. future promise.

“Risk,” she said.  “Sum of perils borne by all.”

“Two teams underground,” Harun said. “But the roof will be braced. Risk 5.”

“Wagons on a breaking road, nightly,” Mara said flatly.  “Children carrying tinder past the quarry bend. Risk 7.”

Elenna wrote Risk = 6. Then they went to Proposal B.

“Heat,” Mara said, almost pleading. “If we fix the road and buttress the old work, the wagons stop bleeding grain, the old folk sleep warmer. Heat 8.”

Harun stared at the table. “In the month delayed, we lose daylight and coin.  The miners burn more wood at home. The village exports less fuel, using more of it here.  Heat 6.”

Elenna set Heat = 7 and wrote: many small warms vs. fewer deep warms; cold may shift within classes.

“Honor for B?” Elenna asked.

Harun surprised them both. “8.”

Mara blinked.

He shrugged. “We mend the road and the props. We keep townsfolk fed and wagons right.  We break our promises to our buyers but keep it to the people.”

Mara lowered her eyes. “Honor 8,” she echoed, and Elenna wrote it down.

“Risk,” Elenna said. “Road repaired, supports added, no deep cut until thaw.”

“Risk 3,” Mara said.

Harun scratched his cheek. “For the village, aye. For the miners, 4. For the plan we promised the traders upriver… call it 5.”

Elenna wrote Risk = 4 and added: risk shifts from many to few; miners bear more, briefly.

Proposal C was easier to agree on, harder to like.  “Shutting the stope and opening a new face seems safest to me,” Mara said. “Heat 7, Honor 6, Risk 3.”

Harun ran his thumb along the oak wood.  “It is also months of new cribbing and a face likely poorer.  Heat 5, Honor 4—unless you count promises to wealthy ore merchants deeply—Risk 3.”

Elenna set C as Heat 6, Honor 5, Risk 3, and wrote: slow safety, long hunger, even shares of mild harm.

The page looked like a game board now: numbers in small boxes, margin notes like root threads.

“Now we choose,” she said quietly. “Not by totals, but by trades.”

The Margin

Elenna drew a long bracket along the right side and began to write, narrating as the temple taught.

We prefer Proposal B, knowing it lowers Risk broadly at a modest cost to Heat among miners and households that rely on the forge.  We accept the near-term cold of a few to reduce the constant shiver of many.  We accept a delay in ore as an offering to Honor among neighbors.  We obligate the village to repay the miners’ colder month with fuel gifts and a share of the spring tithe.  We obligate the council to account openly for the lost coin, by schedule posted in the market.  We obligate the Watch to patrol the quarry bend each dusk until the road is mended.

She set the pencil down.  The room felt larger.

Harun glanced from numbers to words, then to her face. “You put our names in it.”

“I did,” Elenna said. “Not as victims. As keepers of a bargain.”

Mara exhaled. “And if the stope groans open in the thaw?”

“Then we measure again, and write again,” Elenna said. “We do not pretend that this ledger solved our problems in perpetuity.”

The apprentices had been whispering.  Now one stepped forward, awkward with reverence.  “My lady, may we ask—if someone scored differently, could they still choose B?”

“They must,” Elenna said, “if their margin admits the same obligations.  The numbers persuade; the logic binds.  Remember, we choose not by totals, but by weighing the trade-offs.  This particular exercise we engaged is called the 'Latitude Method' in the universities."

She signed the bottom with her name and the family motto: The truth speaks quietly.  When she lifted the page, a thin chime sounded from the wall where the council kept a cabinet of archived decisions.  A seam she had never noticed winked in the paneling.  The apprentices flinched.  Harun’s eyebrows rose.  Mara’s hand went to her throat.

Elenna crossed the room and pressed the panel.  It swung inward on silent pins.  Inside stood a shallow shelf with six slots, each cut to the measure of a folded folio.  Five were filled.  On the spine of each, penned in the same steady hand as the letter’s postscripts, were other titles: On Bridges, On Bread, On Winter Fire, On Disputes of Crossing, On the Lending of Hands.

Only the bottom slot was empty.  On its brass lip a single word had been engraved: Forms.

She slid the ledger-page into a fresh folder and placed it in the slot.  The shelf swallowed the folio with a patient breath.  The panel closed.  The thin chime returned, softer now, and the hum of the Council House resumed its ordinary pitch.

When Elenna turned, Harun Dol was staring—not at her, but at the table where the oak grain met the pencil’s drag. He looked suddenly younger.

“My lady,” he said, voice lowered. “Who is M.?”

Elenna folded the letter again, aligning the ash-traced circle to its own halves.  “A friend of the temple,” she said. “A teacher of ways.”

She did not add: A scholar of Candlekeep, once, when scholars measured heat without thermometers and promise without contracts; when puzzles taught how to choose. Nor did she add: A guest who sometimes writes in our margins when we forget that choosing is an art.

“Go mend the road,” she said to Harun. “Choose your best bracing, because much of the mine will have to wait through the winter.  Although, send me the names of the miners who take the coldest shifts; the temple will send wood and blankets.  Mara, draft the schedule of flour allotments with the Watch and post it by dusk.”

They bowed.  The apprentices bowed, too, each with the small awkwardness of youth who do not yet know what their bow represents.

When the chamber had emptied, Elenna returned to the Temple-Library to put the letter back atop the tally-boards, right where she’d found it, between the wax pencils and the folded map.  She took up a new sheet, ruled it in columns, and wrote a fresh title for the next one who would need it.

THE LATITUDE OF FORMS

To be solved by any who would choose well for others.

Historical Real-World Context

The Evenshade “Latitude Method” blends three historical threads to create a civic puzzle:

• the latitude of forms (quantifying “soft” qualities) suggests that a property can exist in degrees rather than as a simple on/off state.
• The idea originated in ancient philosophy and was developed further by medieval (European) scholars.
• obligationes (disciplined dialogue rules), a genre of medieval logical disputation where participants were "obliged" to follow strict rules to maintain logical consistency, rather than discussing ethics.
• number-play medieval traditions like rithmomachia (harmony/balance as a win condition)

Interestingly, medieval scholars taught logical reasoning using techniques such as these in "puzzle books"!