1488

## **Shadowbane: the Marquisate annexes former Netheril**

### **The *Second Sundering* still reverberated**

While the earthquakes and volcanoes had subsided, not everything had snapped back to the comfort zones. The **1488** **DR** solstices and equinoxes did not align correctly – and it looked like certain elements were still in motion, not least of which were astronomical positions. Did that mean the heavens had shifted? No, it meant the planet was shifting...

Stonehearth was measuring everything, now tweaking their model to ascertain what was [still] happening to Toril. This data is used in the formulation of a long-term plan to stabilize the Toril-Abeir rift in a very permanent fashion.

### **Meanwhile, Netheril had splintered after the fall of Shade**

Stonehearth had rangers and Sergeants at Arms scouting the area, still considering interdiction after Shade destroyed Myth Drannor. Part of the reticence was respect for the boundaries and borders of the area, especially with neighboring Cormyr. The other portion was simply their policy of non-intervention.

Just east, Sembia was now free of the Netherese, and its city-states formed tentative alliances with each other to restore their nation's sovereignty. Aside from a handful of minor settlements throughout Faerûn, the "Netherese Empire" was no longer a regional power.

The Stonehearth eyes and spies now had a front row seat to witness the remained of the Shadovar battling the now-rebelling Bedine for control of ancient Netheril. The Bedine, formerly desert-life specialists in the Anauroch, had been largely absorbed into the Netherese surface culture, forming much of the new middle class. After the fall of Shade, an anti-Netherese faction known as the Sand Kings rose up to fight the.

The Sand Kings title was a reference to the Bedine's one-time desert-dwelling, anti-magic days. The irony, of course, was that the desert itself was magically created, a product of being drained of life by the phaerimm. Faerûn didn't give credit to the Shadovar for restoring the lands to their former pastoral glory (it was simply too soon), but evoking the phaerimm-induced sands sent a particular message.

The Stonehearth SA was close enough to witness a battle on the Memory Spire (an ancient Phaerimm tomb) – and a rush of awakened, formerly dormant Phaerimm. The aberrant beasts destroyed both sides and went on to wreak havoc on the immediate area, draining it of life that didn't so much transform the pasture into a sandy desert as a patch of ash and dust.

***Thus ended Stonehearth's non-intervention policy.***

### **Stonehearth deploys the 3d Battalion**

The Marquisate was well-versed with the phaerimm, though this tomb-awakened group may not have heard the scream of ultimate suffering some 62 years prior ("The Dimming"). It wasn't simply the Stonehearth Arms that responded, it was the totality of the Coronet.

They started the hunt, and over three quick successes, destroyed *most* of the estimated awakened nest. The rest... went deep, *deep* underground. It didn't matter: Stonehearth would tunnel through the Far Realm-touched Underdark and straight to the core of Toril to root out those toxic windsocks.

Despite combative Bedine, pockets of Shade Netherese, and a storm surge of bad karma, Stonehearth immediately worked to reverse the active-decay damage. It was the local resistance to containing and correcting the contamination that forced the executive decision.

***Stonehearth was annexing former Netheril.***

### **Shadowbane: the Marquisate foothold in ex-Netheril**

The coronet didn't need much time to make a decision: they'd been infiltrating survey teams through the area since the return of Shade, mapping it and preparing for the day they had to take the fight to the Shadovar. That had been pre-empted by the Shadovar themselves, but that didn't stop the Stonehearth SA from keeping tabs on the area.

Tracking magic residual of the phaerimm, the SA rounded their activity toward the southwestern edge of the Plain of Standing Stones. For geographic reference, this was northeast from the Greycloak Hills. The surface settlements were few and far between – mostly farming that supported the floating cities – so this area was virtually pristine (and still well below the normal density of life that there would be in the area).

It was green and lush, but plants rushed in where the animals still feared to tread...

Along the southwestern edge of the mountain range there, the marquisate used every ACD team they had to build a *massive* white castle, ***Shadowbane***, visible for more than 20 miles distance.

#### **The High Citadel**

The High Citadel was atop the western peak. Wind-whipped and defiant, it felt as massive as solid as the ancient mountain itself. The top of the highest tower contained “The Sky Well,” essentially a massive portal-valve to the elemental plane of water. There, it bubbled in a fountain around a brilliant magical beacon.

The water formed a waterfall down the outside of the tower, keeping the southwestern face wet, shining and sparkling, eventually landing in a pool inside the lower walls of the High Citadel.

The peak of the high tower, where the fountain was, also hosted a brilliant magical beacon, acting as a kind of lighthouse in the still-desolate grasslands. Glowing a scintillating gold, it was radiant energy – doing damage to undead that approached within 5 miles.

The positive energy fed into the water – creating the equivalent of a holy water waterfall. In the winds and dry air, caused continued clouds to form, most of which headed southeast to eventually rain *holy water* over the grasslands.

The lower walls were astride the descending ridge, the spine of the mountain itself as the ward. The pool at the base of the High Citadel fed a stream of rapids that roared down the ridge line. There was massive evaporation from the ridge line rapids, forming mists down the ridge that were also visible from afar.

The walls and towers bracketed the mountain ridge all the way down to the upper edge of the plateau itself. There, atop the edge of the plain, was a massive, city-sized keep.

#### **Shadowbane Keep**

Shadowbane Keep, the main structure of the complex by size alone, was triple-walled – and that was just for the main city. The Keep itself had defilades outside the walls of gold-plated disks that spun in the wind, creating a twinkling in any sort of daylight.

Inside the walls, the holy water river flowed through via waterfall, split the city-sized ward in two, and passed out the other side to drop again to the desert level below. The city was planned and the roads paved, though no additional structures were built, initially, as the city was finished.

On the Keep level, similar to the counties, there was a single permanent portal back to a portal gate built just southeast of North Point. The North Point portal was inset into the cliff wall that led to the highlands.

Both sides of the portal were framed as if the barbican to a castle, though it was impossible to tell if those massive gatehouses protected going to or coming from.

From the Keep, the drop – and the continued castle walls – was near-vertical down to the foot of the plateau and the lower desert. A thousand feet below, in the Netherese-built emerald grasslands, the Low Citadel was a contrasting white beacon.

#### **The Low Citadel**

Itself the size of a city, the waterfall entered and flowed toward the middle of the ward, where there was a tiny oasis-lake, with a rocky island in the middle. A heavy flow of water still reached the pool despite all the evaporation from mountain top – a prominence more than 7,000 feet in altitude from the grassland floor.

Where was this holy water going? Through fissures, dripping through the underdark, *slowly flooding it*. This strategy was borrowed from the Sarrukh, executed some 34 millennia prior, but instead of rerouting the Narrow Sea and precipitating climatological disaster, this imported planar water, blessed it into holy water, and carefully dribbled it into areas of known phaerimm lairs.

## **The Evolution of the Lords' Alliance**

Earlier that year, the Zhentarim – *formerly of the Black Network* – were given formal membership in the Lords’ Alliance. Granted, the Zhents had suffered handily at the hands of the Shadovar, but that was after they'd made an abortive deal with the phaerimm. The rage of the Shadovar over discovering that deal had made it crystal clear to the rest of civilization.

## State of the Zhentarim

To so many in the Alliance who'd not only fought the Zhents but reasonably suspected the duplicity in their current agenda, the credible charge of collusion with phaerimm was nauseating. The Zhents gave half an apology – and half a denial, as it was the Shadovar who held the supposed evidence and could they be trusted?

The Zhents new base was Darkhold, west of Cormyr and uncomfortably closer to the Sword Coast. While the far-reaching organization was supposedly reformed (and their gold convinced enough Lords' Alliance members to vote like they believed it), there was high-confidence intelligence that the Zhents had already allied with the slaver kingdom of Najara to their immediate north...

Stonehearth changed the dynamic there as well. The Lords' Alliance was the loosest of confederations and the Coronet was all but flipping the table on the group. The Alliance itself had formed in 1325, and House Stonehearth was already a major patriar in Baldur's Gate at the time. When The Gate joined as a founding member, it was Stonehearth gold funding the group.

The Zhents were bracing for impact, but Stonehearth didn't excise them. Rather, the Coronet drew them in close, face-to-diplomatic face as they asserted the leadership role that others had been begging them to take for two decades.

Before the Lords’ Alliance, the Stonehearth Coronet submitted a complex code for Laws of War, which led to the signings of the ***North Point Convention***.

* The immunity from capture and destruction of all establishments for the treatment of wounded and sick soldiers and civilians.
* The impartial reception and treatment of all combatants.
* The protection of civilians providing aid to the wounded.
* The recognition of identified persons and equipment covered by the agreement.

What many saw was House Stonehearth building their case for war. Those who didn't agree found themselves on the business end of justifiable hostility. On the convention, even the Zhents signed that – though some regional factions like Najara thought themselves about it.

What Stonehearth couldn’t get a consensus on [from otherwise civilized groups] was a Code of Ethics known as the ***Duty to Act***. There was general agreement that there were four common practices that were objectively evil:

* genocide
* war crimes
* ethnic cleansing
* crimes against the Common Good

What should be done about that, however, was open to debate. Some were ready to follow Stonehearth's lead and sign it unconditionally. This meant no less than following that code of conduct, even if the enemy didn't. Some only wanted to follow it if the enemy did. Some, like the Zhents, objected to specific language such as what defined "crimes against the Common Good." This would limit the collection of the spoils of war and limit exploitation of conquered lands... the Zhents felt as if part of that language was written with them in mind (*and it was*).

The Stonehearth Marquisate was initially the only signatory to the *Duty to Act*. While many agreed, they couldn’t necessarily control their elements (such as the masked lords of Waterdeep). Others could control themselves, and strongly believed in the concept, like peripheral members such as Hardbuckler, but for the time being, this was only available to the core members.

If the Zhent membership was the uncomfortable darkness in the Alliance, Stonehearth was uncomfortable brightness. This even extended to the theocratic allies of Elturgard, who maintained Fort Tamal at Boareskyr Bridge, yet still allowed the Najaran slave trade to cross it.

## Timeline Exploration

* Go back to the Primal Magic timeline...
* Check out 1488 in the Forgotten Realms original timeline...