Article Written: 15 March 1453
In the late afternoon of 15 May 1340, two hunters found Ceraphin Blayne and a young woman named Kintella Marshall dead at Blayne's summer cabin. In March 1341, seventeen Stonekeepers from Hywater Bank were convicted of conspiracy and sentenced to prison.
So what unfolded?
It all began with the acquisition of Hywater Bank by the Linbraean Royal Treasury, following the 1309 Revolution in Retun, the secession of Pimdan from the Republic, and the province's acquisition into the Linbraean Regiondom. The Bank had previously been owned by Jon Carlston and the Carlston family, who, despite associations with bad investments, had been militarily vigilant against the act of stagmarcation, or the selling of tradestones at much higher prices than their actual value by merchants with the intent to gain wealth outside legal bounds. In fact, Jon Carlston made it a strict policy to allow no one to access tradestone vaults without his expressed permission.
Five years after Jon Carlston's death, the Bank, now under the management of his son, Robert Carlston, was approached by the Linbraean Royal Treasury, who offered to purchase the Bank for a large sum of money. Robert Carlston agreed to the transaction and was given a comfortable and early retirement while the Bank was transferred to Linbraean Royal Treasury ownership. To head this Bank, the Treasury appointed one of their Senior Officers: Ceraphin Blayne.
Ceraphin Blayne was described by many to be witty, impulsive, charismatic, and often not afraid to speak his mind. Despite his flashy appearance, he ruled Hywater Bank with an iron fist, cementing his agenda to maximize profits for the executive board and establishing stringent policies imposing harsh disciplinary actions against those in lower-paid positions who spoke out against him.
Furthermore, Ceraphin Blayne was a criminal, though he was not discovered to be one until after his death. His stepson, Derek Greenly, was deeply involved in a nationwide stagmarcation scandal known as the Chadwick Scandal. Blayne was aware of this and, instead of taking measures to report and stop it, took interest in the Scandal's lucrative potential. Blayne quickly hired Greenly as second-in-line on the corporate ladder and convened to randomly select clients' tradestones in holding and make dud low-value copies of them to sell at the stagmarcated price of the original.
When the Pimdanian uprisings happened and the Province of Pimdan returned to the Republic in 1321, the Republic purchased back the Bank from the Linbraean Royal Treasury. And since Ceraphin Blayne was an Officer of the Treasury, he was mandated to return to the Linbraean Regiondom to the North. However, he and his affiliates were able to convince the working body of Hywater Bank to vote in Derek Greenly as the Head Manager and to continually re-elect him. He then convened with Greenly again to coerce the working body to vote in close affiliates as Stonekeepers in a similar fashion. As a result, Blayne and Greenly were able to establish an inner ring to copy and stagmarcate clients' tradestones while each Stonekeeper paid 15 percent of the illegal financial proceeds to Blayne. Blayne, in exchange, took advantage of a loophole in Linbraean Royal Treasury policy to divert funds from administrative accounts to members of the Hywater Bank working body in order to continue bribing them to continue re-electing Greenly and his inner ring.
In 1339, Greenly had a falling-out with Blayne in a personal matter. And in 1340, Greenly and his inner ring came to the revelation that they no longer wanted to pay proceeds to Blayne in Linbrae; so they came to a resolution: to assassinate Blayne. They hired Tom Harkin, a known outlaw and sniper in the Great North at the time, to carry out the deed.
And on 15 May 1340, the deed was done. Harkin spotted Ceraphin and Kintella Marshall on the upper patio of Blayne's luxury cabin, and Harkin climbed a towering pine next to the place, unnoticed. With a high-precision shotgun, Harkin fired two shots, one for each target. And each shot hit each target square in the head without error.
Harkin was aware of the hunting party afoot that day, so he was quick to flee the scene before the two hunters arrived to find the victims. What Harkin did not know was that there was a third hunter afoot, and that hunter had infrared detection spectacles. When he received a radio signal from his two colleagues about the victims, the third hunter turned his attention to Harkin, who he found and caught using the help of his infrared technology. This third hunter, named Robert Carter, caught up to Tom Harking and held him at gunpoint until the authorities arrived.
The law enforcement agency who arrested Harkin was known as the Law and Order Taskforce, a secretive police force based in the Linbraean Regiondom but had controversial jurisdiction all over Remikra. Two weeks later, the Taskforce brought Harkin to a special panel hearing where, fearing the harsh penalties, Harkin testified and confessed everything happening with Derek Greenly, Hywater Bank, and the late Ceraphin Blayne. The Taskforce conducted a search on the premise of Blayne's summer lodge, and found evidence of the tradestone stagmarcation ring being coordinated at Hywater. The Taskforce submitted evidence to a Justice of the International Court of the Remikran Union in Cotts, who then subpoenaed the Independent Commonwealth State of Retun to conduct a federal investigation of Hywater Bank. Such an investigation led to the arrest of Derek Greenly, the other six members of the inner ring, and ten other employees in the lower ranks who had served either as accomplices or had worked to redact damning evidence.
All seventeen participants were brought to trial, which lasted until March 1341, when they were finally convicted and each received between 5 and 20 years of imprisonment.
Further investigations revealed the initial motive directly tied to the killing. Kintella Marshall, the young woman who died alongside Ceraphin Blayne, was someone of interest to Derek Greenly. Ceraphin Blayne had made a promise with Greenly to "fetch her" for him, but Blayne had ultimately decided, instead, to coerce her into an intimate bond, himself. It is very likely that Blayne had used aggressive tactics on her and victimized her mentally and emotionally, leading Blayne to having a notorious reputation posthumously.
Unknown to all at the time, immediately following the arrest of Tom Harkin, Derek Greenly was believed to have destroyed all the files at Hywater that would have exposed the nationwide Chadwick scandal.
It was not until a forensic mastermind by the name of Myslie Sorna, who exposed the Chadwick Scandal years later, was able to find other pieces of evidence connecting that scandal to the Hywater Scandal. She was, furthermore, able to indicate that the files connecting Greenly to the Scandal had been destroyed.