The Stillwardens began as an emergency listening circle after the early rockfalls around Orun. Their first success was a sequence of low, regular tones that reduced a dangerous resonance in the settlement's foundations. Over decades, they became responsible not only for the wards but also for quiet hours, tremor warnings, and the care of residents displaced by damage. Their standing rose because their work was visible: when the wards were tended, homes lasted longer. The order's defining watershed was the Night of the Split Resonance, roughly sixty years ago. A deep shudder crossed Hearthrest, and two ward districts answered each other in a rising echo. The wardens halted bells, drums, and machinery across the settlement while crews retuned the resonators by hand. The shaking passed without the expected collapse. Afterward, the Stillwardens formalized the Covenant of Silence with the Dawncallers, who had also been trying to interpret the event. The agreement barred either side from forcing a decision about Orun and appointed Mara Bellweather as neutral mediator. The settlement later prospered, and the Stillwardens expanded their civic authority. Their success hardened into doctrine: what had once been a practical discipline became a moral code in which quiet signified care and noise suggested recklessness. In recent years, reports of valuable minerals in Orun's bones have drawn secret extraction. The order's public certainty now conceals a difficult truth: some of the people charged with preserving Orun are profiting from his body.

The order's headquarters occupies a low, thick-walled complex near the settlement's central listening chamber. Its rooms are designed to absorb sound, with felted doors, padded benches, and shelves of tuning stones. The chamber itself is a shallow, guarded space where wardens compare the faint vibrations recorded from different parts of Orun. No one is allowed to speak during a reading; questions are written on slate and answered afterward.