AOP:Background 3

## DEEP BACKGROUND

Stonehearth Mercantile is familiar with people fighting over their product. Once it's out of their chain of custody, and in the hands of a certified merchant, they're hands-off.

The Grynwydde Merchant Company has a great deal of experience defending their caravans. The GMC was a reliable contractor and was consistent enough to be considered almost as much of a Cormyr courier as they were actual, independent merchants. In that respect, they were mostly retained as political insulation between Cormyr and anything *Stonehearth*.

## The Grynwydde Merchant Company

The GMC was an 82-year old company, now in it's fifth generation of the Grynwydde family. Based out of the capital of Suzail, it was the merchant arm of House Grynwydde, Cormyrean baronets with estates just north of Suzail.

Much of the family were veterans of the Purple Dragons, both faithfully serving their kingdom and using the experience as security training for the family business once they were discharged.

The attack has gutted both the House and the family. The family patriarch, Aide Grynwydde IV, and the greater part of the family perished. House Grynwydde is in mourning and taking their first steps to recovery, though with an heir that's well under the Age of Majority and limited resources after the loss, it's uncertain if the House will survive.

The regular purchases are confidential, there is no royal announcement from Cormyr; nor is there any declared acceptance on the part of Stonehearth Mercantile. The timing of the merchant runs is very secret, as is which exact overland route they'd use – but it's always one of the same three routes. The merchant company knew the routes and had procedures to scout out risk points before the caravan passed.

Everybody in the merchant company was trusted and well-paid, practically a family member at this point. The company's reliable consistency and best-practices made them a known quantity. It also made them predictable: *the routines worked until they didn't*.

House Stonehearth's point of concern: this attack was particularly heavy and the Stonehearth collective fears there was a leak (as does Cormyr). **Neither Cormyr nor Stonehearth know where that leak is**.

While Cormyr naturally suspects Sembian agents, the Sembian army (already on the southern Dragon Coast) mobilized westward into search mode. That they did so at at all, now risking skirmishes – *and did so well after Cormyr* – it's possible that they didn't actually know about it. That would mean it was either a very compartmentalized operation by the *Silver Ravens* (Sembian intelligence)… *or it wasn't the Sembians*.

### The Optics of Fireballs

The attack itself was nowhere near the Marquisate, so neither Stonehearth Mercantile nor House Stonehearth itself have any agency in this incident.

It would be awkward if the scrolls wound up in the hands of Sembia, but it wouldn't be the first time someone lost control of their materiel and had it used against them.

## Where To From Here?

* **Background Notes 1:** the scene of the crime
* **Background Notes 2:** What's in the crate?
* **Background Notes 3a:** *Where that leak actually is*...
* **Background Notes 4:** Stonehearth's own investigation
* **Back to the Overview**...