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## **Methods and Madness**

Five years after the Stonehearth-Shadovar war, the Netherese had regrouped and refocused more inland. It was widely guessed that Stonehearth was keeping the Shadovar under surveillance, but the effort was very secret.

What wasn't secret was that Stonehearth's barony in Cormyr was the likely base of operations against the Shadovar. Cormyr knew it too, and the nobles of the area were now as afraid of a Stonehearth coup as they were a Shadovar invasion.

The simpatico between Cormyrean nobility and Baldurian patriars was bringing them closer together, if only over Stonehearth. House Allies bemoaned the resistance to joining the Commonwealth, while Stonehearth rivals commiserated on their common "complication." The allies saw the method to the madness, while the rivals focused on the madness they felt was tantamount to inciting Shadovar aggression.

### **Cormyrean Strategy**

Stonehearth had a complex armistice with the Shadovar Netherese, an agreement that had a dozen criteria for what constituted aggression – and where. The neutrality of Stonehearth was sorely tested, but they maintained their non-interventionist stance.

That was largely backed up by Cormyrean nobility, who were as paranoid about Stonehearth upsetting the oligarchic status quo as the Baldurian patriars.

If there was one critical difference, the parliamentary system of Cormyr meant Stonehearth had more authority to act than they did in the south. The downside was that they were also more recent to the area, and didn't have the mandate that they did at the Gate.

One of the problems here was that Stonehearth rivals were actually reaching out to Cormyr to form anti-Stonehearth alliances. These people weren't actual trolls, or liches, Zhentarim or Thay – just people that didn't care for House Stonehearth. It was bareknuckled politics that was building momentum.

### **Baldurian Strategy**

Down in the Gate, there was an effort to reverse the authorization to crennelate – and talk of seizing the newly developed Hilcross Borough and Keep. While that was unrealistic in a very direct military sense, the agitators didn't mind actively inciting civil war. *Again*.

While so much of this was bloviation, the Gate was now so polarized that violence broke out. Most that was anti-Stonehearth activists seeking to "preserve patriar's rights."

Stonehearth took a different route in response, loosening the purse strings to make purchases – *of Patriar Houses*. Stonehearth started quietly flipping local nobles, starting at the smaller opponents and working their way to the larger and more vocal.

A variety of technique were utilized, though there was a preferred route: wait until an opponent was elbows deep in a criminal enterprise – then present the hard, physical evidence to the Baldurian Parliament. This came from carefully-executed intelligence and law enforcement operations enhanced by scrying and truth spells.

Stonehearth didn’t need entrapment schemes, the guilty didn’t need any help in a city as lawless as Baldur’s Gate. Once caught, though, Stonehearth was the shadow authority behind the Fist and the Guard alike. All it took was a corrective geas through the lens of Ilmater’s justice, sending the guilty through the same journey they’d sent their victims.

*Recidivism was negligible.* The change in world view after the *Journey of Justice* didn’t always ensure an ally, but it did dial back the obstructionism to more symbolic levels. Meanwhile, larger factions such as the Order of the Gauntlet were drawing closer to Stonehearth, while the Harpers considered if the Stonehearth torch was burning *too* brightly...