The Hearthwardens
The Hearthwardens are the works crew of the Scales of Eldath given to Karma on her elevation to Balancewarden. They calm what is being stirred up, gather what is needed, and rebuild what has been broken.
They carry no weapons. This is deliberate, and it is not negotiable.
The letter below came with a wagon, four people, and a great deal of timber.
The letter
Karma —
Balancewarden. It suits you better than it has suited most, and I have handed it to a fair number of people who thought peace was something you announce.
It isn't. Peace is a thing you build, and it is mostly carpentry. So the Scales are not sending you healers, and they are not sending you guards. They are sending you four people and a wagon.
Aldith Fenn runs them and stays at your fort — she is the one who knows what a place needs before the place has finished explaining. The other four go where you send them, and there will be a fifth as your name carries further, and a sixth beyond that.
Mollify
Send them into a village and the village does not catch fire.
I want you to understand what this is actually for. The Cult of the Dragon does not only burn places — it works them. It puts the right story in the right mouth and it lets fear do the labour, and by the time anyone with a sword arrives the town has already decided who to blame. Frightened people are the cheapest weapon on the coast and the Cult buys in bulk.
Hearthwardens are the answer to that. Put them where the Cult is working and the work does not take. They will sit in the common room, they will say the unexciting true thing over and over, and they will be there the next morning, which is more than the Cult's people ever are.
You will rarely get to see this succeed. That is the nature of it. Nothing happening looks exactly like nothing happening.
Forage
Tell them what you are looking for — name the kind of thing, not the thing itself, and where it might grow — and they will go and find it. Yessa is very good and the others have learned enough to carry a basket properly.
Set your expectations honestly. Common and uncommon they will bring you reliably. Something rare turns up now and then, and when it does it is luck and season and Yessa's nose, not effort. Asking harder does not make it grow.
And they gather. They do not hunt. If you want something cut out of a dead thing, that is your friend Keyleth's people, and there is no shame in it — it is simply not what these hands are for.
Tend
This is the one I would spend them on.
Send them to a place that has been hurt and give them a week. They will not nurse it. They will rebuild the roofs, re-dig the well, get the walls back up, and — this is the part that matters — they will teach the place to finish the job itself and send word for whatever else it needs. We are not in the business of making villages dependent on us. We are in the business of making them able.
At the end of the week the place stands. It also knows who came. That is not a small thing and it does not fade the way a bribe fades. A village that Deez Nuts put back together will feed you, hide you, and send word up the road when strangers start asking after you — and it will do all of that for your people too, for the Harper girl's agents and the Gauntlet's soldiers and those squires of yours. They will not ask whose you are. They will just know you are.
Moving them
Hours across a town. Three to five days across a region. Ten days or more across the coast. While they travel they are building nothing.
What you must not forget
They have no weapons and they are not going to get any. I have been asked, and my answer does not change: the moment a Hearthwarden carries a blade, every door on the coast shuts to them, and the whole worth of them is that the doors open.
Which means the danger is yours to judge, not theirs. They will go where you send them. They will go somewhere you were assured was quiet, and they will start unloading the wagon, and if you were wrong about quiet they cannot fight their way back out of it. They get taken. They get caught up in things. Dangerous country is still dangerous to people who arrived meaning well.
Be sure before you send them. That is the whole of the responsibility, and it is a real one.
Eldath keep you, and mind the roads.
The crew
Aldith Fenn — Eldathyn, resident at Nuts Deep, and not counted among the four. Runs the yard, the wagon, and the supply lists. Has an unnerving habit of arriving with precisely what was about to be needed.
| Hearthwarden | Trade | Currently posted |
|---|---|---|
| Rilla Bexley | Carpenter. Halfling, fast, and openly contemptuous of anyone else's joinery. | Nuts Deep — putting the barracks right so Elturel will garrison it |
| Dunmar Holt | Mason and well-digger. Dwarf. Believes most problems are drainage. | Nuts Deep — the well and the inner walls |
| Yessa Greenwold | Herbalist and forager. Can find a thing growing where there is no reason for it to grow. | The Chionthar valley |
| Brother Padrig | The voice. Talks crowds down, and can say the same dull true thing forty times without tiring of it. | A village on the eastern road where the Cult has been busy |
See also
- Scales of Eldath — the wing; standings are tracked on the Renown Tracker
- Council Disposition Tracker — where goodwill is recorded
- Monster Harvesting — what the Hearthwardens are not for
- The Nightingales · The Anvil · Talonfall · The Broken Latch — the other companies' cells
- Karma