The Reversed Edge

For its first two decades, the Reversed Edge worked as a conventional mercenary band, accepting escort, siege, and battlefield contracts. Its reputation changed during the War of Three Standards, when Captain Maera Sorn infiltrated the command staff of the largest invading army. She discovered that its generals were competing for prestige and deliberately withholding information from one another. Sorn did not assassinate them. Instead, she issued orders that gave each general exactly the victory they wanted, causing the army to divide itself into three mutually hostile forces. The campaign ended in a negotiated peace, and the Reversed Edge became feared as a company that could defeat an army before the first clash. The watershed moment came at the Siege of Seven Bells. The company was hired to defend a city but secretly contracted by the besieging lord to assassinate the city's commander. Rather than choose one employer, the Reversed Edge copied the commander's methods, exposed the siege lord's betrayal, and turned both armies against their political masters. The city survived, but the company became a power in its own right. Since then, the company has grown more selective in public while becoming more intrusive in private. Its members now study rulers, generals, guildmasters, religious authorities, and revolutionary leaders. They claim this knowledge prevents war. Their enemies argue that it gives them the power to choose who wins one.