The Still Rebellion had completely changed the proud city of Karthene, when merchants, artisans, and city guards protested the heavy taxes and strict rule of the Karthene Council. The uprising quickly escalated into full civil war, led by an assembly of rebels and bolstered by the zealots of Daphlan Valore, ardent followers of the Church of Thestus. The Arch-Magistrate, Cecily Crosse, a powerful Sorceress who had survived an assassination attempt, assumed command of the Council’s forces. In the desperate days that followed, she wielded the Stonebinding Scepter, an ancient and terrible artifact, to petrify entire districts of the city. Thousands of rebels and civilians were frozen mid-stride or mid-gesture, leaving the streets, plazas, and temples of Karthene filled with stone figures that bore witness to both defiance and suffering.
When the rebellion was finally crushed, Cecily and the Karthene Council issued a law before the city was allowed to mourn. Called the Edict of Stillness, the law commanded that the petrified remain where they had fallen. The decree declared them eternal witnesses to treachery and sacrifice, both to honor the dead and to warn the living of the consequences of revolt. Over the following decades, the people of Karthene came to leave offerings before the stone forms of their kin; what began as mourning also became a ritual of remembrance and caution.
Even under the later governance of Commona, the Edict of Stillness retained its terraces and streets filled with the silent statues, a permanent reminder of the Still Rebellion and the terrible power once wielded in the city.