Karthene was one of the greatest cities of old Commona; a proud dominion whose banners once flew across the southern valleys. The city sat at the meeting of trade roads and riverlands, its terraces crowned with marble halls and shrines to Thestus, god of light and fire. For centuries, the Karthene Council ruled its domain with confidence and severity, maintaining old laws and traditions long after neighboring realms softened theirs. It was a place known for its scholars, artisans, and faith; but also for its rigid hierarchy and the cold authority of its magistrates. Hardship came in failed harvests, rising tithes, and the stifling weight of privilege; in response, unrest first took hold among the merchants, craftsmen, and younger officers of the city guard.
The protests began with petitions and processions through the market streets. On the twenty-fourth day of Gloomdawn, the crowd gathered before the Council Hall demanding the release of imprisoned reformers. The dominon's guardsmen opened fire with crossbows and balistae, killing dozens and scattering the crowd in panic. Within hours, the city was in revolt, and a coalition of traders, guildmasters, and dissenting officers, seized the docks and granaries. The Karthene Council entrenched itself in the upper city, and High Karthene and Low Karthene became two armed camps divided by barricades. The outlying lords, uncertain where power would fall, split their forces between the two sides. In the months that followed, famine and fire spread through the streets.
Among the insurgents rose a faction of zealots who separated from the Church of Thestus. They claimed the Council had corrupted the god’s light with false worship and greed. Their leader, the fire Cleric Daphlan Valore, preached purification by flame; his sermons drew farmers, laborers, and dispossessed soldiers into the uprising, but his fanaticism frightened the coalition's moderates. These fanatics began burning shrines and executing officials, deepening the chaos; in response, the Council used these acts to brand all opposition as heresy, and within its walls, suspicion turned to desperation.
An assassination attempt against the Arch-Magistrate, Cecily Crosse, hardened her resolve and gave her absolute command of the city’s defense. Daphlan Valore’s fanatics attempted to kill Cecily, and the rest of the noble Crosse house, in the upper terraces during the height of the Still Rebellion. They struck at dusk, when the Council Hall was preparing emergency deliberations, and tried to breach her inner chambers by setting the outer colonnades alight with consecrated oil. The blaze drew guards out of position, and two assassins forced their way to the magistrate’s antechamber before being cut down. The Archi-Magistrate survived without injury, but the attempt shattered the Council’s last doubts and gave her the justification she needed to argue that the rebellion was not reform, but heresy.
Cecily Crosse was a Sorceress of formidable power and a woman of severe conviction. She announced that divine retribution had come to Karthene and revealed that the Council was in possession of a relic known as the Stonebinding Scepter, or Stonebinder. No one knew how the Council had acquired an Epochal Artifact, and long after the rebellion, this mystery was never answered. When Cecily raised the scepter over the captured district of Southgate, a wave of magic spread through its streets, petrifying thousands of soldiers, rebels, and bystanders alike. Their flesh turned to stone, the victims were left standing where they perished, locked in postures of defiance, flight, or prayer. Word of Stonebinder's horror spread quickly through the dominion, but it did not bring surrender.
Over the next two days, the Karthene Council would vote on the next quarter to apply Stonebinder's effects to. It retook the city quarter by quarter, with each binding result in immediate victory. Streets, plazas, and temples were filled with statues of the dead, frozen in place as warnings to those who still resisted. The assembly of dissidents and Daphlan Valore's sect fought on, convinced that death or stone were their only choices, but the rebellion leaders were captured and executed. Eventually, Valore vanished; it was said he perished with his followers while burning the city's Temple of Thestus.
When the rebellion ended, nearly half of the city's residents had fled, been petrified, or were killed. Before any mass mourning could begin, Cecily Crosse issued the Edict of Stillness, commanding that the petrified remain where they had fallen. The decree claimed they stood as witnesses to treachery and sacrifice alike. In time, it became tradition for families to leave flowers and tokens before the stone forms of their kin. The act, once one of mourning, also served as a reminder of the Council’s power, and the damage any rebellion against the Karthene Council could inflict.
Karthene survived, but at a terrible cost. Half its population was lost. The lower terraces lay silent beneath ivy and soot, and whole districts stood like graveyards under open sky. Trade with the outer dominion collapsed, and the surviving lords were brought to heel. For decades, the city lingered in uneasy tension, its pride hollowed by fear and guilt. When the Theurge Iodun the Unifier approached to bring the dominion into the Common League nearly fifty years later, Karthene offered no resistance.
The dominion was dissolved, its autonomy curtailed, and Stonebinder taken to the new capital at Emblem for safekeeping; with it left Karthene's greatest defense, and the Common League became known as the "Land of Tome and Scepter", half in reference to Stonebinder itself.