Sharn — History

Excerpted from a public lecture at Morgrave University, 997 YK:

How old is Sharn? Which Sharn? The goblins would tell you ten thousand years, if anyone thought to ask them. Cannith historians date it to the reconstruction under Galifar I — roughly a thousand. The archivists in Highest Towers point to King Breggor's renaming, which pushes it back another eight centuries. But go down far enough and you'll find stonework so ancient no living scholar can date it. Sharn is not one city. It is five cities stacked atop one another like pages in a book. The only thing they share is a refusal to stay buried.

Five cities have stood on the bluffs above the Dagger River, and every one of them has fallen. The modern city of Sharn rises from the bones of all that came before, and to descend through its towers is to travel backward through time.

Ja'shaarat: The Bright Blade

Thousands of years before humans crossed the ocean from Sarlona, the Dhakaani Empire built the sprawling metropolis of Ja'shaarat — "Bright Blade" — on the bluffs above the Dagger River. The early Dhakaani carved their city into the living stone rather than building above it, hollowing out vast halls beneath the surface. Their miners pushed deep into Khyber, discovering a lake of fire that burned with supernatural heat — ideal for forging weapons in what they called khaar draguus, the blood of the dragon. Later generations raised monolithic structures across each of the plateaus, so massive and so solidly constructed that they would serve, thousands of years later, as the foundations for a city their builders never imagined.

When the daelkyr invaded Khorvaire, the Dhakaani empire broke. Ja'shaarat was devastated, its population scattered or twisted into aberrations. The goblin tribes who sheltered in the ruins renamed their home Duur'shaarat — the Blade of Sorrows — and there they remained for centuries, diminished and divided, while the memory of what Ja'shaarat had been faded into legend. Those ruins still exist beneath the foundations of modern Sharn, buried and largely forgotten.

Shaarat and the Coming of Humans

Around 2975 YK, the human explorer Malleon the Reaver — a lieutenant of the famed Lhazaar — discovered the inlet of the Dagger River. Malleon enslaved the goblins who remained in the ruins, saw their strategic value, and built a fortress on the bluffs. Over six centuries, the settlement grew into the wealthy city of Shaarat.

When Breggor, first ruler of the nation that would become Breland, demanded Shaarat submit to his authority, Malleon's descendants refused. A long siege followed, ending when Breggor ordered his wizards to rain destruction on the city. Within a decade, he had rebuilt it under a new name: Sharn.

The War of the Mark and the Destruction of Early Sharn

For eight hundred years, Sharn flourished — its towers rising on the power of the Syranian manifest zone, its economy growing alongside the dragonmarked houses. It was during this era that tensions between the established houses and the bearers of aberrant dragonmarks escalated into the War of the Mark: less a war between equals than a purge, with Deneith soldiers, Vadalis trackers, and Medani inquisitors hunting aberrant-marked individuals on behalf of the Twelve. The houses amplified public fear with propaganda, using true stories of innocents harmed by uncontrolled marks to justify an inquisition.

In the third year, the brilliant tactician Halas Tarkanan rallied the aberrant-marked survivors into an army. Tarkanan and his consort, the Lady of the Plague, seized Sharn and held it for four years against the combined forces of House Cannith, House Deneith, and the armies of pre-Breland. When defeat became inevitable, they unleashed the full power of their marks deliberately. Tarkanan's mark shattered the towers and opened channels to the lake of fire deep below, sending rivers of lava through the city. The Lady called swarms of vermin from the depths and spread vile diseases through the ruins. Both the aberrants and the besieging armies perished. Sharn was destroyed.

For over five hundred years, the ruins were shunned — cursed ground, haunted by the memory of the aberrant lords. No one rebuilt. No one dared.

"On the Lady's Day, we remember the tragedy that once befell Sharn, and we prepare for the possibility that it could happen again." — From a broadsheet distributed by House Jorasco healers during the annual observance

Galifar's City

When Galifar I united the Five Nations, he recognized what superstition had obscured: the site had too much strategic and economic value to leave empty. House Cannith provided arcane expertise, dwarf engineers came from the Mror Holds, and Brelish noble families invested heavily — none more so than the ir'Tain family, whose tenement empire began here and endures to this day. The remnants of old Shaarat and older Duur'shaarat were sealed behind gates of metal and magic, and Galifar's builders constructed upward, trying to forget what lay beneath. It remains illegal to tamper with those seals. Most citizens know nothing of the ruins in the Depths, though treasure hunters and cultists occasionally venture past the gates.

Galifar also offered freedom to the goblins who had survived in the ruins — or what passed for it. Liberty came in exchange for service as soldiers and laborers, and for many, the practical difference from their previous condition was slim. Over the centuries, some goblin families established trades and businesses, congregating in what became Malleon's Gate in Lower Dura.

The towers rose. The Syranian manifest zone made impossible architecture possible, and Sharn became a symbol of Galifar's ambition — a city that reached for the heavens.

The Last War and the Modern City

Inscription on a memorial in Fallen, Lower Dura:

IN MEMORY OF THE CITIZENS OF GODSGATE WHO PERISHED ON 9 OLARUNE 918 YK WHEN THE GLASS TOWER FELL MAY BOLDREI KEEP THEM

Sharn survived the Last War because it was too valuable to destroy. Industry, finance, and the concentration of dragonmarked house operations made it indispensable to Breland's war effort. The city never fell under siege, but it was not unscathed.

The war's most devastating blow came on 9 Olarune 918 YK, when Aundairian saboteurs destroyed the enchantments supporting the Glass Tower, one of the city's oldest floating citadels. The tower broke apart as it fell, and its spires struck the district of Godsgate in Lower Dura, killing hundreds. The city council declined to restore a lower-ward district, and Godsgate — now called Fallen — has never been rebuilt. Every year on the anniversary, the people of Sharn observe Crystalfall, carving ice sculptures of towers and hurling them into the Dagger River.

Beyond the sabotage, the war reshaped the city in slower ways. Refugees flooded in from Breland's devastated borders and, after 994 YK, from the annihilated nation of Cyre. High Walls in Lower Tavick's Landing — originally a wartime detention facility — was converted into a refugee camp now grotesquely overcrowded with Cyran survivors. Veterans drifted into every ward, some broken, some nursing grudges the Treaty of Thronehold did nothing to resolve. Criminal organizations expanded in the chaos.

By 996 YK, Sharn remained standing — the largest city in Khorvaire, a center for trade and intrigue. But it was also fractured, overcrowded, and haunted by the consequences of a century of war whose survivors had all come here looking for something the city may not be able to give them.

History in the Walls

Sharn's history is physically embedded in its architecture. The upper wards are the newest layers — built or expanded during Galifar's height and the Last War, their polished stone and broad streets reflect confidence and capital. The middle wards grew rapidly during Galifar's prosperity; some neighborhoods still carry the bones of a wealthier era, while others were built hastily and show it. The lower wards are the oldest inhabited portions of the modern city, many of them once-prosperous districts that wealth and attention left behind as the city climbed upward. And below even those, the Cogs churn on — forges burning with the same Fernian lava that Tarkanan cracked open fifteen centuries ago, still powering the city's industry, still filling the wards above with smoke and heat.

To descend through Sharn is to read the city's history in stone and silence and soot, all the way down to the ancient foundations the goblins carved when the city's name meant something bright.