Eldeen Reaches
Capital: Greenheart | Ruler: Great Druid Oalian | Government: Druidic guidance with local village councils | Hallmarks: Agriculture, animal husbandry, druidic magic, primal industry
"The world ends at the Towering Wood." — Dalen Book, Chronicle of Thaliost
Fertile farmlands stretching to the horizon, split by lazy rivers and low stone walls — and beyond them, a forest so vast and ancient that humanity has barely made a footprint in it. The Eldeen Reaches is the youngest nation in Khorvaire and one of the oldest inhabited regions on the continent, a place where druidic magic has replaced arcane industry and an awakened greatpine serves as head of state. If Breland is the nation of spies and factories and Aundair the nation of wizards and vintners, the Eldeen Reaches is the nation of druids, farmers, and people who decided they would rather govern themselves than be governed badly by someone else.
The Reaches occupy northwestern Khorvaire, bordered by the Byeshk and Shadowcrags mountains to the west and north, Lake Galifar and Aundair to the east, and the Blackcaps and Droaam to the south. The eastern half is open farmland — golden grain, orchards, livestock pastures — that once fed the armies of Aundair. The western half is dominated by the Towering Wood, one of the largest and most dangerous forests on the continent, home to shifter tribes, druid circles, fey courts, aberrant horrors, and things that have not been catalogued by any sage in Khorvaire. Most of the population lives in the farms and towns of the east, but the spiritual heart of the nation lies deep in the Wood, in the grove called Greenheart.
The Reacher Spirit
The Eldeen national character runs on self-reliance, hospitality, and a deep-rooted suspicion of distant authority. The Reachers are not rebels by temperament — they are farmers and foresters who paid taxes to Aundair for centuries and received nothing in return during the worst years of the Last War. When the druids of the Towering Wood stepped in to protect the communities that Fairhaven had abandoned, the people of the west didn't adopt something foreign — they returned to ancestral traditions that predated Galifar's daughter Aundair and her love of arcane civilization. The Reacher ideal is balance: between the wild and the settled, between independence and community, between the living land and the people who work it.
The dark side of these qualities is insularity. The Reaches are not cosmopolitan, and the deep Wood tribes in particular have little experience with the wider world. Foreigners may be welcomed warmly or regarded with open suspicion depending on the village, the season, and the latest rumors about Aundairian scouts on the border. And the druid sects, for all their wisdom, do not always agree on what "balance" means — a disagreement that has led to bloodshed between the sects in the past and will again. The Ashbound raid farms in the eastern Reaches and arcane academies in Aundair; the Children of Winter patrol the Gloaming and have been known to spread plague in the name of the natural cycle. The Wardens try to keep the peace, but they cannot be everywhere, and they know it.
LETTER — recovered from an Aundairian courier's satchel, Aryth 958 YK
Captain,
The western farms have declared for the druids. We rode to Erlaskar expecting to requisition winter grain and found the granaries flying green banners. The village reeve said, "We feed our own now." There was a Warden ranger standing behind him, and a hawk on the ranger's shoulder that I swear was watching me take notes.
I recommend we do not press the matter with force. These people are not rebels — they are farmers who stopped receiving anything for their taxes thirty years ago.
— Lt. Corren Haldas, 4th Fairhaven Reconnaissance
Oalian and the Wardens
The spiritual and political leader of the Eldeen Reaches is the Great Druid Oalian — an ancient greatpine rooted in a sacred grove called Greenheart, deep in the Towering Wood. Oalian is not merely an awakened tree; the rituals that created the Great Druid were far more significant than the standard awaken spell, investing the greatpine with primal power that connects it to the land itself. Some say Oalian is a child of Eberron, others that the tree holds the spirit of an ancient druid. Whatever the truth, Oalian has served as a source of wisdom for thousands of years, and every druidic sect in the Reaches acknowledges the Great Druid as the ultimate spiritual authority.
The Wardens of the Wood, the largest druid sect, serve as the practical governing force of the nation. Each village has a druid counselor who provides magical assistance, spiritual guidance, and advice to the local council — councils made up of representatives from each farming family in the community. Bands of Warden rangers patrol the forest and the roads between settlements. Justice is swift and local — closer to frontier law than the codified systems of the Five Nations, with the Wardens acting as sheriffs and communities relying on neighbors rallying together when trouble strikes. The Wardens also maintain Oalian's Voice, a network of awakened animals — birds, wolves, hounds — who serve as scouts, messengers, and traveling storytellers across the Reaches, filling the role that Sivis message stations and the Korranberg Chronicle fill in the east.
The Shape of the Nation
Varna, the largest city in the Reaches, serves as the gateway for commerce with the outside world. It is the ancestral seat of House Vadalis, whose largest enclave still operates there, and all the dragonmarked houses maintain outposts in its markets. Varna has the strongest ties to Aundair of any settlement in the Reaches and is the most likely place for pro-Aundairian sentiment to take root.
Greenheart is not a city in the conventional sense — it is a sacred grove surrounding Oalian, the spiritual capital, where the Wardens are headquartered and where all druid sects send emissaries for important conclaves. It has no market; inhabitants depend on offerings and local provisions. Beyond these, the Reaches are a land of villages and isolated homesteads, most too small to appear on a continental map but large enough to have a druid counselor and a guiding tree.
The Towering Wood is vast and largely untamed — a primeval forest where swathes remain entirely untouched, harboring giant beasts, ruins from the Age of Demons, and relics of the daelkyr. Within it lie the Twilight Demesne, a Thelanian manifest zone where the Faerie Court holds sway and the Greensingers make their home; the Gloaming, tied to the plane of Mabar, where undead and shadow creatures lurk in perpetual darkness; and scattered Gatekeeper seals — ancient wards that imprison the daelkyr in Khyber and suppress the influence of Xoriat.
"A Brelish merchant asked me who enforces the law here. I told him to ask the oak tree by the bridge. He thought I was joking." — overheard in a tavern near Delethorn
Faith and Culture
The Reaches are not primitive — they are a primal civilization, one that uses druidic magic where the Five Nations use arcane industry. The people of the fields have not abandoned metalworking or trade; metal comes from the soil, after all. But the scope and method differ. Primal magic locates ore, shapes stone, and heats metal at the forge. Animal messengers replace Sivis couriers. Goodberry wine substitutes for Jorasco healing. Awakened animals and guiding trees — young trees awakened by sect leaders, who walked to a community and took root — provide counsel and companionship that would seem miraculous in Fairhaven and unremarkable in any Eldeen hamlet.
Five major druid sects operate within the Reaches — the Wardens of the Wood, the Gatekeepers, the Ashbound, the Children of Winter, and the Greensingers — each embracing a different aspect of the natural world. The shifter tribes of the deep Wood follow their own tradition through the Moonspeaker druids, who honor the totem spirits of the beast within. The Sovereign Host is acknowledged in the eastern farmlands — Arawai and Balinor especially — but the druidic traditions hold spiritual primacy. Seasonal rites on the solstices and equinoxes, great feasts of food appropriate to the season, and the annual ceremony of thanks to Oalian mark the Reacher year.
Agriculture is the Reaches' primary industry and chief export. The eastern farmlands are among the most productive in Khorvaire, enhanced by druidic cultivation, and Eldeen grain and livestock flow through Varna to markets across the continent. House Vadalis breeds and trains magebred animals from its Varna enclave for clients throughout Khorvaire.
Postwar Pressures
The defining tension of the postwar Reaches is the threat from the east. Most Reachers believe it is only a matter of time before Aundair attempts to reclaim the territory — whether through diplomacy, sabotage, or force. Queen Aurala has never accepted the secession, and a vocal faction in Fairhaven agitates for reunification. Every village maintains a militia, and the Wardens keep the eastern border under careful watch. The people of the Reaches value hospitality, but fear of Aundairian aggression can cause even the friendliest Reacher to treat well-dressed easterners with sudden suspicion.
Internally, the Reaches face the challenge of being a nation that is still an experiment. The fields were unified as Aundairian citizens for centuries; they are learning how to blend civic habits with druidic guidance. Not everyone has embraced the new order — there are still people who quietly hope Aundair will take the land back, particularly in Varna. Meanwhile, the deep Wood tribes and radical sects operate with near-total autonomy, and the Wardens sometimes struggle to restrain the Ashbound's raids or the Children of Winter's darker impulses. Droaam presses against the southern borders, the Gloaming slowly expands, and the Gatekeeper seals require constant maintenance to keep ancient horrors imprisoned below.
"We didn't leave Aundair. Aundair left us. We just had the good sense to notice." — common saying in the Eldeen Reaches
External Relations
The Eldeen Reaches largely ignore the politics of the east and are ignored in return — they have no consulate in Sharn and have rebuffed diplomatic contact with Aundair. Karrnath is the closest thing to an external ally, a relationship born when Karrnathi arms flowed west and Eldeen grain flowed east during the Last War. Today the trade continues, with both nations watching for Aundairian aggression. Relations with Breland are minimal but civil. The dragonmarked houses maintain a cautious presence concentrated in Varna, but the Reaches' suspicion of concentrated economic power keeps the houses at arm's length outside the city.
The Reacher Character
The Reacher character runs on two instincts that are easy to mistake for simplicity. The first is a deep, patient attentiveness to the land — a quality that manifests not as passivity but as a kind of stubborn competence. Reachers know how to read weather in the movement of birds, how to find clean water in an unfamiliar forest, how to plant a field so the soil is stronger next year than it was this one. They trust what they can see and touch and grow over what distant authorities promise, and they measure a person's worth by what that person does when no one important is watching. This produces farmers who can organize a village militia overnight, rangers who track aberrations through the deep Wood for weeks without resupply, herbalists who know more practical medicine than a Jorasco heir, and awakened animals who have seen three human generations come and go and still show up to council meetings.
The second is a fierce, quiet territoriality — not the expansionist ambition of Aundair or the industrial hunger of Breland, but the immovable conviction that this land is ours and we will not be moved from it. Reachers do not start fights, but they finish them, and they have long memories for people who tried to take what wasn't theirs. This quality produces shifter scouts who have patrolled the same stretch of forest their grandmothers patrolled, druid counselors who stayed with their villages through a century of war when the Aundairian lords fled east, frontier settlers who rebuilt the same farmstead three times after Droaamite raids, and old Warden rangers who can tell you the name of every tree in their grove and the name of every soldier who tried to cut one down.
The dark side of these qualities is a provincialism that can shade into xenophobia, a distrust of outsiders that becomes self-defeating, and a tendency to treat the way things have always been done as the way things must be done — even when the world is changing around them. The Reaches are full of people who would rather tend their gardens than engage with the continent's politics, and that insularity is a luxury they may not be able to afford much longer.
Note on terminology: The people of the Eldeen Reaches call themselves "Reachers," and the nation is commonly referred to as "the Reaches" in casual speech. In Aundair, you may hear "the western provinces" or "the renegade territory" instead. The Reachers would prefer you knew the difference.