Concent

The concent is the complex of buildings, courtyards, and grounds that make up a mathic community’s interior precincts, surrounding and adjoining its central structures. Within a Math, it is the everyday setting where residents move between halls, towers, gardens, and workspaces.

First Appearance and Context

The term is used while describing the great central tower (the Mynster) and the watch kept from its heights. From windows set beneath the rooftop walkway, it is said that few places in the concent cannot be observed, underscoring how closely the interior precincts are overseen.

Description and Features

Viewed from the Mynster, the concent spreads around the tower and its associated works: outlying towers, belfries beneath the clock dials, plunging stone buttresses, and lacework arches and spans of tracery that web the central complex together. High above, the starhenge crowns the tower’s roof, mechanically linked to the same works that drive the clock below. The concent encompasses the spaces among and around these structures—paths, courts, and buildings that make up the inhabited interior of the community.

Oversight and Watch

Two complementary offices are associated with watching over the community from the Mynster’s summit. The Warden Fendant maintains an outward-facing patrol along the rooftop aerie’s perimeter walkway, while the Warden Regulant oversees the inward watch. The Regulant’s close-set windows are tucked beneath the sentinels’ walk; from these, most parts of the concent can be surveyed.

Current Status

Active and inhabited; the concent serves as the lived-in precincts within the walls, routinely visible from the Mynster’s watchposts and windows.