The Karthene Council was the ruling authority of Karthene, composed of magistrates, high clergy, and elite representatives of the city’s most powerful guilds. They operated with rigid hierarchy and viewed their governance as both an inherited duty and divine stewardship. The Council oversaw Karthene’s religious institutions, trade laws, and martial obligations, maintaining a strict social order that favored the established families and guilds while placing heavier burdens on laboring classes.
The Still Rebellion marked the darkest turn in the Council’s history. Faced with mass unrest, they chose to reveal their possession of Stonebinder, and petrified thousands as they ended the uprising through overwhelming force. Their subsequent Edict of Stillness preserved those petrified throughout the city as both remembrance and warning, binding that decision into the physical shape of Karthene’s everyday life. The Council remained, but never escaped the weight of that choice; even after joining the Common League and ceding imperial ambition, the Council governed under the shadow of its own past, remembered as the authority that could end dissent by turning the living to stone.