[@OwO][@Silver Carrot][@Rune_Alchemist][@SilverPaw]
Loving the timelines and planning ideas. As I was reading through the stuff you've all done so far to try and mesh it with my own ideas behind the scenes, I came up with some stuff. You can freely ignore it if you wish, it's mostly just me rambling and coming to my own conclusions:
[hider=BRAINSTORMING]
Earliest Event: The mother of Ophelia, Estelle, Silver's Character, and possibly others is known as a talented dame (female knight) who actually impressed the Patriarch enough that he took her as a wife. This in and of itself (not being of noble blood; being able to hold Martenos's attention; being an otherwise good person among the social circles of the politically corrupt) is enough reason to want her dead---but given her ability and closeness to the Patriarch, it makes sense that it'd be more reasonble to go after her only vulnerabilties---her children who cannot yet protect themselves.

Next Event (so far): Infant Ophelia is targeted; because of her age, I think this implies the grudge either would've been against her mother or the Kaides family as a whole, not Ophelia herself. Even Estelle is only 6 years old at this time, so her "talented" status wouldn't be established as a source of threat to anyone yet. Sherry is also 5(?) at this time, so it's unlikely she's involved UNLESS maybe her own mother (or a maternal uncle, grandpa, etc?) was involved? (Is Sherry also one of the Patriarch's children?)

Final Assassination Attempt: Estelle is taunted into a dangerous situation, and poisoned in an attempt to secure her failure. The poison used was something rare that even Alchemic healing potions had a hard time dealing with, implying the assassin or whoever provided them with the poison has some affluent means (and, possibly, that they learned from their failure to kill Ophelia even though they crippled her?). Sherry COULD have been involved here, meaning that Estelle's incident might be entirely unrelated and thus further throwing off some of these latter assumptions, but let's keep going for brainstorming's sake.

Suggested Future Events: Possibly their mother learned more about the assassins, and as a result was silenced or manuevered into a position where her death at the demons' hands was engineered. Possibly, the assassins, their benefactors, or their organization were involved with the unknown and unnamed "traitors" who provided the Demons with the info needed to counter Luzia's military strategy. In either case their goal may have been as much to further weaken Kaides as it might've been to silence a potential witness against them.

Knowing what I know as GM (mwahahaha), I think the mystery of the assassins thus points towards either an [b]Organization, or a Powerful/Rich Individual[/b]---not necessarily mutually exclusive. A Powerful/Rich Individual's goal would be personal: They would likely have a [b]specific grudge against the mother,[/b] and possibly Estelle as she grows up (perhaps due to being too much like her mother, in that she's naturally talented). A grudge against such a woman, to me, implies a sort of "feminine" motivation in and of itself---something based around the idea that their own "relationship" with Kaides was damaged by this commoner woman who forged her own relationships with the House. That would, in turn, point to someone who has [b]something to gain from the House[/b]---and thus points away from their rivals in Arkivum and Noxicana. Instead, it becomes more likely that such an individual is a member of a [b]Vassal House,[/b] either a Branch family of Kaides looking to re-strengthen their bloodline ties or a group of nobles trying to get "in" with the Great Clans.

If an Organization was NOT hired by such an individual, however, then their reason for such a thing seems to be "weaken House Kaides," and the only reason for that IMO is to [b]weaken Luzia's military strength.[/b] Thus, such an organization would likely be tied to one of the [b]other nations,[/b] seeing as these events happen several years before the Demon War. Between the Elves, Geviel, and Briterra, the latter two are the ones directly on Luzia's borders with the most reason to do such a thing. Geviel currently has blood alliances through marriage with Luzian nobility and the countries have been building a mutually profitable trade relationship, but they have warred with each other in the past and maybe Kaides' Previous Generation was too powerful for their liking. Briterra, however, has never had a good relationship with Luzia---their form of governments clash, their histories are directly opposed to one another, and Luzia's more hawkish factions would love to simply invade the smaller country and annex its territories entirely. They have plenty of reason to try and lessen the influence of the kingdom's biggest trump card.[/hider]

[h3]Also, OOC will be up today![/h3]