The Setts of Aethelrock

A sett is the pattern a tartan repeats: the order and width of the coloured threads, the same in the warp as in the weft, so that the stripes cross into squares. On Aethelrock the cold-weather cloth is tartan-woven, and each of the five landholding clans weaves its own sett. They are in daily use, not kept for ceremony: the scarf at a clan head's throat on a quayside at first light is the same cloth a herder wears walking the grazing marches.

Wearing one is a choice and a custom, never a uniform. Nothing obliges a member of a clan to wear its sett, nobody is turned away for wearing another's, and a coat in plain weatherproof cloth with the sett only at the collar or the scarf is the commonest way to see it. The cloth carries the clan; the technology under it stays visible, as everything on Aethelrock does.

The five setts

• Dubhghlas, holders of the world's most arable ground: moss green and brown.
• Aonghas, of the eastern granite highlands and the mining claims: dark red and grey.
• Bryneth, of the northern high country: dark blue and black.
• Ó Ceallaigh: sea green and grey.
• Ceridwen, holders of the fold-relay station: teal and ochre.

The record gives the colours and does not say what, if anything, they mean to the clans who wear them. Clan Avalon, the cross-clan bardic fellowship that holds no valley and no Ridgemoot seat, has no sett on record; its members come from all five clans.

Off the world, and in the Corps

Aethelrock's setts are the only patterned clan cloth the record holds on any world. An Aethelrock Ranger does not wear a sett on duty, because the charter's neutrality clause keeps every mark of origin off the uniform (Rank, Insignia, and the Ranger Uniform). Off duty, the scarf goes back on.

See also: Aethelrock, The Celtic Union of Planets.