1437

## **An Arcane Explosion Flattens a Portion of Central North Point**

### **1437 DR:** Eight years after the completion of the city walls, it felt safe as heaven itself

North Point Keep was the central fortress of the city, but even the city walls felt incredibly solid. Tall, thick and heavily warded, it gave people a reasonable and true sense of peace and security.

Late one night, that serenity was shattered as a blinding white explosion flattened two buildings and damaged dozens more. Thirteen people were dead as Stonehearth Arms sprung into action, conducting search and rescue operations.

As they combed through the debris, they found shards and remnants of unusual items...

They soon discovered enough parts to realize what happened: *a lich had attempted to teleport into the city*. Everything in the city walls, however, had been warded against any form of undead. When the teleporting lich hit the ward, it exploded in spectacular fashion.

The word soon got out exactly what happened. Despite the damage, the sense of protection of the wards against such evil as a lich couldn’t be overstated.

What people didn’t know was that Stonehearth had recovered bits of lich – and traced it’s energy back to the hidden phylactery. With optimized scrying, they figured out the body still hadn’t reformed after the spectacular destruction.

Using the shards of recovered lich, they used the returning consciousness against it, sending a pulse right through the spectral lich – *blowing apart the phylactery*. They discovered some weeks later that an explosion ripped through *Warlock’s Crypt*.

It wasn’t Larloch, unfortunately, but rather one of his sub-lich lieuteants – and it was likely on a reconnaissance mission for Larloch at the time. It probably wasn’t the intelligence Larloch was looking for, but it was no doubt valuable nonetheless. Larloch now had some idea of the wards North Point, that they were prepared for some level of undead – and after the phylactery – that they could hunt down and destroy the soul of a lich *at a distance*.

### **Roll Call of the Stonehearth Arms**

By late 1436, the new battalions were going through their commissioning process. The first to be organized was 4th Battalion, destined for Manchester, but the first to make it through was 5th Battalion – they were prioritized to fill in where 3d Batt had been.

By mid-1437, all of the garrison battalions were in place and 3d Batt had rebased to a new fort at the last (major) east bend to Winding Water River as it headed into the Trollclaw Hills. The fort would eventually earn an ACD-built stone keep, but they weren’t thinking of it as home. As such, it was Fort East Bend (and they usually dropped the “Bend”).

* 1st Battalion, Baldur’s Gate (Garrison)
* 2d Battalion, North Point (Garrison)
* 3d Battalion, Fort East Bend (Expeditionary)
* 4th Battalion, Manchester (Garrison)
* 5th Battalion, Rivergard (Garrison)
* 6th Battalion, Adlington (Garrison)
* 7th Battalion, Durham (Garrison)

### **In Baldur’s Gate, the Elfsong returned… and undead followed**

After the Elfsong returned, along with a concurrent undead infestation, there were red flags that indicated there may be significantly deeper issues at stake. Stonehearth was already the defacto bulwark of the city, just behind the high-profile Flaming Fist, but this sparked another round of investment in Baldur's Gate COOP plans.

To increase resilience, Stonehearth created a dedicated ACD team for southern deployment and sent them Baldur’s Gate. The first point was to using the proven arcane boring technology to silently tunnel under the city.

The first excavations, finished by end of CY 1438, vastly increased storage capacity by creating secure subterranean chambers…