Military & Security of Sarlona

"A Karrnathi military attaché asked to observe a Harmonious Shield drill. The request was denied. He asked why. The Inspired ambassador smiled — the way the Inspired always smile, with that beauty that makes you forget what you were saying — and told him that the Unity's soldiers train for the defense of all Sarlona, and that there was nothing to observe that a friend would need to see." — from a Brelish intelligence summary, classified

The Harmonious Shield

The military of Riedra is called the Harmonious Shield, and it is the largest standing army on Eberron. Its precise numbers are unknown — the Inspired do not publish force assessments, and the Iron Gate politely declines all requests for military data — but the most informed estimates from Khorvairian intelligence services place the Shield's strength at several hundred thousand active soldiers, with the capacity to mobilize millions more from the civilian population on short notice. Every Riedran citizen participates in regular martial drills. Even Nulakeshi peasants — descendants of the old empire's warrior culture, still shaped by the planar influence of Shavarath — maintain a level of combat readiness that would qualify them as militia in any Five Nation.

The Shield operates out of the bastion cities, each of which serves as a military garrison as well as an administrative and transportation hub. The teleportation circle network that links every bastion to Durat Tal, the administrative center of the Unity, allows the Inspired to move troops and supplies across the breadth of the continent with a speed that no Khorvairian nation can match. A border incursion in Dor Maleer can be reinforced by soldiers from Corvagura within hours, not weeks. This logistical advantage — combined with the sheer size of the standing army — makes Riedra functionally unassailable by conventional military force.

The province of Nulakesh provides the bulk of the Shield's soldiers, a legacy of the old empire's martial traditions. The planar influence of Shavarath and Daanvi still permeates the region, producing citizens with an innate aptitude for discipline, obedience, and violence — qualities the Shield cultivates with careful precision. Other provinces contribute specialized units: the Taskaan Legion draws its soldiers from the shifter populations of Dor Maleer, trained at the garrison of Malin on the northeastern border, where they serve as scouts, raiders, and shock troops in terrain too harsh for conventional infantry.

The Horned Guard is a distinctive element of Riedran military culture — oni warriors, descendants of the ogre mages of Borunan, who serve the Inspired with a loyalty that appears absolute. The Horned Guard provides security for high-value sites, foreign quarters, and the Inspired themselves, and their imposing presence — towering, powerful, and visibly inhuman — serves as a reminder that the Unity commands forces beyond the merely human.

"The soldiers of the Harmonious Shield do not talk to you. They do not threaten you. They do not need to. They stand where they are told to stand, they watch what they are told to watch, and the weight of their attention is enough to make you reconsider whatever you were about to do." — Zil merchant, recounting a visit to Dar Jin

The Thousand Eyes

If the Harmonious Shield is the fist of the Unity, the Thousand Eyes is its gaze. Riedra's intelligence and surveillance apparatus is, by universal consensus, the most comprehensive on Eberron — and the most difficult to detect.

The Thousand Eyes monitors dissidents, foreign visitors, border activity, and the internal loyalty of the population. Its agents operate openly in some contexts — the Tower of Eyes in Dar Jin is a known headquarters — and invisibly in others. Any Riedran citizen could be an agent. Any guide in the Jhodra could be reporting to the Eyes. Any priest in a garden of reflection could possess psionic abilities that allow them to read surface thoughts, detect deception, or project emotions that encourage compliance. The Thousand Eyes does not rely primarily on force. It relies on the understanding — shared by every citizen of Riedra — that someone is always watching, and that the watchers cannot be identified.

For foreigners in the Jhodra, this creates a particular kind of paranoia. A Riedran who makes eye contact with you might be seeking help. They might be testing you. They might be an agent of the Eyes, gauging your response to see whether you are a tourist or something more dangerous. You cannot tell the difference, and that uncertainty is, itself, the system working as intended.

The Edgewalkers

The Edgewalkers are an elite order tasked with protecting the people of Riedra from the planar threats that permeate the continent. Their primary duty is patrolling the borders of wild zones — those regions where another plane projects directly into the material world, producing everything from rampaging megafauna and hostile elementals to razor storms and fiendish incursions.

Many wild zones do contain genuine threats, and the Edgewalkers serve a legitimate protective function. But they serve another function as well: ensuring that Riedran citizens do not enter the wild zones and rediscover the old magic. The manifest and wild zones of Corvagura hold ruins associated with the Houses of the Sun and Moon, along with forgotten treasures of the sorcerer-kings. The wild zones of Khalesh are saturated with the influence of Irian and the Silver Flame — energies that inspire hope and the will to resist tyranny. The Edgewalkers keep these zones sealed, and the Thousand Eyes ensures that no one tells the stories of what lies inside them. Whether this is for the citizens' protection or for the Inspired's, the effect is the same.

The Sleeping Sword

Almost nothing is known about the Sleeping Sword. Its existence is acknowledged in a handful of Korranberg intelligence assessments and dismissed as rumor in most others. What little information exists suggests an organization of elite operatives — utterly loyal, amazingly skilled, charged with tasks that require ruthlessness and discretion far beyond the Thousand Eyes' remit. If the Thousand Eyes is the surveillance arm and the Harmonious Shield is the conventional military, the Sleeping Sword is the weapon that the Inspired draw when they need something done that no one can ever know about.

Whether the Sleeping Sword operates in Khorvaire is a question that the kalashtar answer with a firm yes and that everyone else finds easier to ignore.

The Siege of Adar

The longest military operation in the history of Eberron is the Riedran siege of Adar — a campaign that has been ongoing for over a thousand years without a decisive outcome.

Adar occupies some of the most defensible terrain on the continent — nearly impassable mountain ranges whose natural geography is augmented by the psionic and arcane defenses of the kalashtar fortress monasteries and by the ancient power of the Storm Guardians, a draconic presence that has protected Adar since before the Inspired existed. The Harmonious Shield has thrown wave after wave of soldiers against the mountain passes. The Inspired have deployed their most powerful psionic operatives. Riedran expeditions to Xen'drik have searched for ancient giant weapons that could crack open the mountains. None of it has been sufficient.

The kalashtar and the Adarans hold. The Riedrans retreat, regroup, and attack again. The cycle has repeated for a millennium. The Inspired describe the siege as a sacred duty — the liberation of the last holdout of heresy on the continent. The kalashtar describe it as a war for the soul of the world. Both sides believe they are fighting for something that transcends territorial ambition, and neither side shows any sign of stopping.

The siege is not a constant bombardment — it ebbs and flows, with periods of relative quiet punctuated by major offensives. The Riedran military maintains fortifications along the Adar frontier, and the bastion of Dar Mun in Nulakesh coordinates operations. The commitment of resources is significant but not total — the Inspired have other concerns, and the frontier garrisons must also watch for incursions from Syrkarn and the Tashana Tundra.

The Dragon Question

Riedra's relationship with the rogue dragons of Sarlona is one of the stranger aspects of the continent's security landscape. The Inspired have systematically wiped out or subjugated every creature that might threaten their control — psionic yuan-ti, dangerous aberrations, dissident populations. But the dragons are treated differently. Rogue dragons are typically left to their own devices unless they come into direct conflict with human settlements, and even then, the Harmonious Shield often attempts to drive troublesome dragons into Syrkarn or the Tundra rather than engaging in all-out battle. Only against dangerous psionic dragons — rare creatures driven mad by their pursuit of the art — does Riedra unleash its full military force.

This policy of quiet containment seems at odds with the Inspired's absolute control over everything else. Rumors persist of Riedran forces kidnapping wyrmlings or stealing dragon eggs, of hidden fortresses where young dragons are raised and indoctrinated into the Path of Inspiration. These rumors are unverified. They are also, to those who understand the scale of the Inspired's ambitions, entirely plausible.

What Riedra Does Not Do

Riedra has never attacked Khorvaire. It has never invaded any foreign territory beyond the Adar frontier and the colonial bastion of Dar Qat in Xen'drik. It has never deployed the Harmonious Shield against any nation that did not first threaten the Unity. During the Last War, it offered military aid to Q'barra and food aid to Karrnath and Aundair — assistance that was provided without obvious strings and accepted without obvious suspicion.

This restraint is either evidence that Riedra is genuinely a defensive power with no interest in conquest — which is the Inspired's stated position — or evidence that whatever the Inspired are doing, military conquest is not the method they have chosen. The kalashtar, who have been fighting the Inspired for a thousand years, point out that an empire that controls the dreams of its citizens does not need to conquer foreign nations by force. It only needs to wait.

The Defenses of Adar

Outside Riedra, the most notable military force on the continent is Adar's defense. The fortress monasteries are defended by kalashtar monks, warriors, and psionicists whose martial disciplines have been refined over a millennium of continuous warfare. The Storm Guardians — a draconic presence within the mountains — provide additional protection, and the terrain itself is an ally: narrow passes, sheer cliffs, and weather that can kill an unprepared army before it ever reaches a monastery wall. Adar has no offensive capability — it cannot project force beyond its borders. But within those borders, it has held against the largest military on Eberron for longer than the Kingdom of Galifar existed, and it shows no sign of falling.

The Tashana Tundra's defense is simpler: the land itself is hostile, the shifter nations are fierce, and the cost of conquest exceeds whatever strategic value the frozen north might hold. The Akiak guerrillas in the Frostblade Mountains add an additional layer of persistent, low-level threat that the Harmonious Shield has been unable to eliminate. Syrkarn is defended by its emptiness — the Inspired shun the region, the Thousand Eyes operates there but cannot dominate it, and the scattered populations of eneko, humans, and yuan-ti are too dispersed to constitute either a threat or a worthwhile target.

"The Unity has the largest army in the world and it has never used it to conquer anyone. Think about that. A thousand years of military supremacy, and not a single war of aggression. Either they are the most peaceful civilization in the history of Eberron, or they have found a way to achieve their goals that does not require armies. I do not know which possibility frightens me more." — Professor Danarath ir'Lain, in a lecture that was subsequently removed from the University of Wynarn's public archive