The New Thronehold Nations
The Treaty of Thronehold didn't just freeze the borders of the Five Nations in place. It also formalized something that had been happening on the ground for decades: the emergence of new sovereign states carved from territory that, under Galifar, belonged to one crown.
During a hundred years of war, the Five Nations bled control. Some territories were lost to opportunistic secession. Others were abandoned out of strategic necessity, or simply drifted beyond the reach of governments that couldn't afford to hold them while fighting on three other fronts. By the time the Treaty of Thronehold was negotiated, the map of Khorvaire had already been redrawn by force, migration, and neglect. The treaty didn't create the new nations. It finally acknowledged ones that had long been in practice and gave them legal weight.
These breakaway and successor states are sometimes called the Thronehold Nations, though the term is more bureaucratic than cultural. Nobody in Darguun or Valenar introduces themselves as a "Thronehold national." The label refers to a specific legal status: recognition under the treaty framework, with the rights and obligations that entails.
Being a Thronehold nation means you are, on paper, part of the postwar order. It means your citizens have legal protections when they cross borders, your merchants can access trade networks without tariffs designed to strangle you, and your sovereignty is supposed to be inviolable. In practice, it means you signed a document that the most powerful nations on the continent honor exactly as long as it serves their interests—and not a day longer.
Zilargo — The gnomish nation, and the most polite surveillance state on the continent. Zilargo's surface is all charm: skilled diplomats, brilliant alchemists, a thriving publishing industry, and a reputation for civil discourse. Underneath, the Trust—Zilargo's secret police—monitors virtually everything. Dissent doesn't get punished publicly. It gets handled. Visitors find Zilargo delightful. People who understand Zilargo find it unsettling.
The Mror Holds — A confederation of dwarven clans sitting on some of the richest mineral deposits on Khorvaire. The Mror dwarves are bankers, miners, and smiths whose wealth gives them outsized political influence. Their recent deep excavations, however, have breached into older spaces—Dhakaani ruins, sealed vaults, and things that were buried deliberately. The profits are enormous. So are the risks. Now, deep below the mountains, they wage an unending war against alien hordes that the surface world has no proper inkling of.
The Talenta Plains — Vast grasslands roamed by nomadic halfling clans who ride domesticated dinosaurs, practice ancestral traditions, and have very little patience for outsiders who arrive with plans to settle, civilize, or extract. The Talenta halflings are not quaint. They are territorial, resourceful, and mounted on creatures that can bite a warhorse in half.
The Shadow Marches — Swampland on Khorvaire's western edge, home to orc clans and the mixed-blood communities that gave rise to House Tharashk. The Marches are a source of Eberron dragonshards, Gatekeeper druidic traditions, and old planar scars left by the daelkyr incursion. It is not a comfortable or well-known place, but it is an important one.
Valenar — Carved from southern Cyre by Tairnadal elves who were originally hired as mercenaries during the Last War and decided to keep what they saw as ancestral land. The Valenar are warrior-mystics who channel the spirits of their ancient ancestors through combat, seeking to honor those ancestors by surpassing their deeds in battle. They are superb cavalry, fiercely proud, and aggressively uninterested in negotiating away territory they consider theirs by spiritual mandate.
Q'barra — Khorvaire's last true frontier. Dense jungle, swamp, and river systems that settlers from the Five Nations have been pushing into for decades, drawn by natural resources and the promise of land unclaimed by any treaty. The land, however, was not empty. Lizardfolk and dragonborn communities have lived here for millennia and do not agree that newcomers get to redraw the map. The tension between colonists and indigenous populations defines Q'barra more than anything else.
The Lhazaar Principalities — A loose confederation of island city-states, pirate fleets, merchant captains, and maritime powers held together by tradition, rivalry, and the understanding that cooperation at sea beats drowning alone. Law here is local, negotiable, and frequently optional. The Principalities are where you go when you need something moved quietly, something found discreetly, or somewhere to disappear.
Darguun — A goblinoid nation that exists because its founders saw an opportunity during the Last War and seized it with both hands. Goblin, hobgoblin, and bugbear mercenary armies hired by Cyre turned on their employers, claimed a swathe of territory, and declared sovereignty under Lhesh Haruuc Shaarat'kor. The Treaty of Thronehold grudgingly recognized Darguun sovereignty as the final territory lines were drawn. Internally, warlords jostle for dominance, and beneath the surface, Dhakaani remnants stir with ambitions that predate every nation currently on the map.