The city of Ravenshollow presented problems that made Lower Ashmark's corruption seem almost quaint by comparison. Where Lower Ashmark had suffered from criminal organizations filling gaps left by incompetent government, Ravenshollow's dysfunction stemmed from a more insidious source—systematic collusion between legitimate authorities and criminal enterprises that had created what Elena called "institutional capture."
"The difference," Dust explained to his new team as they established their operations, "is that in Lower Ashmark, we could work around corrupt officials by creating alternative institutions. Here, the officials are the primary architects of the corruption. We're not dealing with failed governance—we're dealing with governance that's succeeding at its actual purpose of enriching those in power."
The Brightwater Institute's expansion had brought Dust a team of specialists trained in different aspects of systematic reform. Marcus Thornfield, fresh from the Academy, provided expertise in financial analysis and economic modeling. Dr. Sarah Whitehaven contributed knowledge of legal frameworks and regulatory design. And Captain James Aldric—no relation to Captain Aldrich from the Sea Witch—offered practical experience in security operations and logistics.
But their most valuable team member was someone Dust hadn't expected—Vincent Marks, formerly one of Marcus Garrett's lieutenants, who had requested assignment to the Ravenshollow operation.
"I understand how criminal organizations think because I used to be part of one," Vincent explained during their initial planning session. "More importantly, I understand how they adapt when they face systematic opposition. That knowledge could be useful here."
Ravenshollow's power structure was more complex than anything Dust had encountered. The mayor, city council, and judicial system all functioned according to their official roles, but their actual decisions were coordinated through informal networks that included crime bosses, corrupt businessmen, and what appeared to be foreign agents with unclear objectives.
"It's like a three-dimensional chess game," Dr. Whitehaven observed after spending weeks mapping the relationships between different power centers. "Every action creates reactions across multiple levels of authority, and every authority figure has both official responsibilities and unofficial allegiances."
Their first intervention attempt illustrated the complexity they faced. When they tried to establish a legitimate security company similar to the one that had succeeded in Lower Ashmark, they discovered that the licensing process required approvals from seventeen different offices, each controlled by different factions with competing interests.
"The genius of the system," Marcus Thornfield noted, "is that it makes reform impossible without the cooperation of the very people who benefit from preventing reform. It's a perfect closed loop."
Breaking the loop required a different approach than they'd used in Lower Ashmark. Instead of working around corrupt institutions, they needed to find ways to turn the institutions' own complexity against the corruption they enabled.
"The key insight," Dust realized after studying Ravenshollow's governmental structure, "is that complexity creates opportunities for those who understand it better than others. If we can master the system's own rules more thoroughly than the people currently exploiting it, we can use those rules to create change from within."
Elena's legal expertise proved crucial for developing this approach. Working with Dr. Whitehaven, she identified obscure regulations and jurisdictional authorities that could be used to bypass the normal approval processes that corruption had made impassable.
"Every complex system contains contradictions and redundancies," Elena explained during one of their strategy sessions. "The people currently in power rely on others not understanding these complexities well enough to exploit them. But if we understand the system better than they do, we can use its own mechanisms to create accountability they can't prevent."
Their breakthrough came when they discovered that Ravenshollow's charter contained provisions for "emergency commercial authority" that could be invoked during periods of economic disruption. The provisions had been written centuries earlier to deal with wartime conditions, but they'd never been repealed or superseded by later legislation.
"If we can demonstrate that current conditions constitute economic disruption severe enough to invoke emergency authority," Dr. Whitehaven explained, "we can establish legitimate businesses under provisions that bypass normal licensing requirements."
Proving economic disruption required documentation that the current system was failing to serve legitimate commercial needs. Fortunately, Ravenshollow's corruption had created exactly the kind of dysfunction that the emergency provisions had been designed to address.
"Systematic exclusion of legitimate businesses, artificial barriers to entry, regulatory capture by criminal enterprises—it's a textbook case of economic disruption caused by institutional failure," Elena reported after completing her legal analysis.
Invoking emergency commercial authority required approval from provincial officials rather than local ones, effectively bypassing the entire corrupt local system. Within weeks, they had established the legal framework for legitimate businesses to operate in Ravenshollow regardless of local opposition.
But legal authority was only the beginning. Implementing their reforms required confronting the economic interests that benefited from Ravenshollow's dysfunction, and those interests were more sophisticated and better organized than anything they'd faced in Lower Ashmark.
"We're not just dealing with local crime bosses," Vincent warned during one of their security briefings. "Some of these operations have connections that reach the capital and beyond. They have resources, political influence, and the kind of long-term strategic thinking that makes them genuinely dangerous opponents."
The first test of their new authority came when they opened a legitimate lending cooperative designed to provide alternatives to the loan sharks who exploited Ravenshollow's working population. Within days of opening, they faced challenges that ranged from legal objections to physical intimidation.
"The legal challenges are frivolous but expensive to defend," Dr. Whitehaven reported. "They're trying to tie us up in court proceedings that drain our resources without addressing the merits of our authority."
"The physical intimidation is more direct," Captain Aldric added. "Vandalism, theft, threats against our employees and their families. They want to make it clear that legal authority doesn't provide practical protection."
But their opponents had underestimated both the resources behind the Brightwater Institute and the lessons learned from defending reforms in Lower Ashmark. Elena's legal team was prepared for frivolous litigation, Captain Aldric's security operations could handle physical threats, and their emergency commercial authority provided them with protections that local corruption couldn't easily circumvent.
"The difference this time," Dust observed after their first month of operations, "is that we're not trying to work within a corrupt system—we're operating parallel to it under different authority structures. They can't co-opt what they don't control, and they can't corrupt authority that originates from outside their sphere of influence."