The Vestran Stewards' resolve to refrain from intervention in the affairs of their neighbors did not last long. Only four years after the Council's founding, its members determined that the Rhythnorian Wizards, a mysterious group of sorcerors who lived in the mountains north of Vestra, constituted a threat to the safety of the Cholaeic peoples and exterminated them. In the mid-thirties, the expansionism of the Chaeronians under Varus had led the Council to a heated debate over whether or not their intervention was justified, and although the Council opted not to act in defense of Tyr, its non-interventionist stance was clearly weakening.
By the 40s, the Vestran Stewards had begun selecting promising young men from the surrounding lands to adopt as their own children, raising them at Vestra, training them in the sciences, and allowing them seats on the Council. It was also in this period that the Stewards began to share their superior knowledge of engineering with the surrounding peoples, helping to build roads, dams and bridges throughout Ventria and Tyrrhonia. Political marriages were not far behind: in the year 45, Pyrandor, the adopted son of the Council's First Speaker, was wed to King Hardin's daughter, the Princess Sarcona.
This transformation of the Council from an isolationist body to an active participant in the political life of Tympania was accompanied by a growing factionalism on the Council itself. Debates over the Council's appropriate role in the new world grew increasingly acrimonious, until the Vestrans were divided into two distinct factions: those who favored intervention in the affairs of the surrounding nations, and those who championed the ideal of strict impartiality.
