History of Breland
"The ruins go down forever. Goblins built the first city. Malleon built on those bones. Breggor smashed Malleon's city and built on his. Tarkanan cracked that city open like an egg. Galifar paved over the wreckage. And we built Sharn on top of all of it. Every stone in this city is a headstone." — Hagen Tarrith, Morgrave University surveyor
The Bones Beneath
The territory that would become Breland has been inhabited — and fought over — far longer than human memory. The earliest stratum belongs to the Empire of Dhakaan, the goblinoid civilization that ruled Khorvaire for millennia before the daelkyr invasion shattered it. The site of what is now Sharn was originally Ja'shaarat — "Bright Blade" in Goblin — a Dhakaani city built atop a manifest zone tied to Syrania, the plane of peace. The Dhakaani raised monolithic buildings across each of the plateaus, structures so massive they would later serve as the literal foundation for the City of Towers. When the daelkyr and their armies of aberrations broke the empire, Ja'shaarat was devastated and never restored. The goblin survivors renamed the ruins Duur'shaarat — "Blade of Sorrows."
The ruins beneath Sharn are not metaphorical. They are physical — layers of goblinoid construction, sealed chambers, forgotten passages, and things that were buried deliberately rather than lost. The Dhakaani ruins extend beneath Breland's other cities and across the western mountains as well; in the Graywall range, a set of thousand-foot statues commemorates the six kings who came together to form the ancient empire. The land remembers a civilization that human Breland has built on top of without fully understanding what lies beneath.
Malleon, Breggor, and the Making of Sharn
Around –2,975 YK, a wave of Sarlonan settlers followed the pirate Lhazaar to Khorvaire's eastern shores. These were not paragons of their nations — many were outlaws, renegades, or refugees. Lhazaar's lieutenant Malleon the Reaver discovered the inlet of the Dagger River, enslaved the goblins inhabiting the ruins of Duur'shaarat, and built a fortress called Shaarat atop the old Dhakaani foundations. Over six centuries, Shaarat grew into a powerful and wealthy city.
When Breggor, first ruler of the city-state of Wroat, demanded Shaarat's submission, Malleon's descendants refused. A long siege followed. Around –2,400 YK, Breggor ordered his wizards to rain destruction on the city, then rebuilt and renamed it Sharn. This annexation established Wroat's dominance over southwestern Khorvaire and laid the geographic foundation of what would become Breland. For the next eight centuries, the towers began to rise and the city flourished alongside the Five Nations.
The War of the Mark
As the dragonmarked houses grew in power, they turned against bearers of aberrant marks — a conflict called the War of the Mark, though it was more purge than war. In its early years, the aberrant-marked were hunted individually. But in the conflict's third year, Lord Halas Tarkanan — a brilliant tactician whose aberrant mark gave him power over the earth — gathered his aberrant kindred and turned the tide. Tarkanan and his consort, the Lady of the Plague, seized Sharn and held it as a bastion for the aberrant-marked.
They could not hold it forever. Tarkanan lacked the numbers. The forces of Cannith, Deneith, and pre-Galifar Breland closed in over four years of grinding siege. When defeat became inevitable, Tarkanan and the Lady unleashed their full power rather than surrender. Terrible quakes collapsed the towers. Rivers of lava flowed up from the fiery lake below the city. Swarms of vermin and deadly plagues devoured the survivors. Sharn was destroyed — not taken, not conquered, but broken open from within by people who chose annihilation over submission.
The city was abandoned for over five hundred years. When Galifar I rebuilt it, House Cannith played a critical role in the reconstruction, establishing the foundational relationship between that house and Sharn that persists today. Brelish nobles invested heavily — chief among them the ir'Tain family, who made a fortune from tenement properties and remain one of the most powerful families in Breland. The remnants of the old cities were sealed away and forgotten. To this day, Sharn observes Lady's Day: warning bells toll at dawn, residents don plague masks, and Jorasco healers roam the streets — a tradition commemorating the tragedy and the possibility that it could happen again.
SHARN INQUISITIVE — Lady's Day Edition:
"Today, aberrant dragonmarks are rare. But there was a time long ago when they were far more common. An army of aberrant heirs made their home here, led by the villainous Halas Tarkanan — known as the Earthshaker — and the Lady of the Plague. When the dragonmarked houses laid siege to the city and their defeat became inevitable, the two unleashed their full might. On Lady's Day, we remember the tragedy that once befell Sharn, and we prepare for the possibility that it could happen again."
Integration into Galifar (1–894 YK)
When Galifar I unified the Five Nations in 1 YK, Wroat and its territories were incorporated as the province of Breland — named for one of Galifar's daughters. Those leaders who had the pragmatism to ally with the conqueror became the foundation of Breland's aristocracy. Brelish commoners accepted the feudal structure without ever fully embracing its ideological premises — a Brelish farmer has always considered himself the equal of any king, and that attitude predates Galifar by centuries.
Breland's frontiers remained wild throughout the Galifar period. The province was nominally granted dominion over all lands south of the Byeshk Mountains and west of the Seawall — but west of the Graywall Mountains lay the Barrens, a region of foul swamps, barren plains, and deadly monsters that the Brelish had neither the need nor the desire to tame. The Barrens were far older than Galifar or Wroat — rich in mineral deposits, possibly the original homeland of the goblinoids, certainly home to creatures that had fought each other for dominance since the daelkyr devastated the region. Gnolls, orcs, ogres, trolls, harpies, minotaurs, and worse had held the territory in anarchy for millennia, with occasional bastions of civilization — the Venomous Demesne, the hidden village of Lost — that had no interest in expanding beyond their own walls.
Zilargo's grand duchies were incorporated into Galifar's administrative structure, but the gnomes retained their internal governance through the Trust — a functional autonomy that would have lasting consequences for Breland's intelligence capabilities and its relationship with its smallest, most capable, and most unsettling ally.
Over centuries, the Brelish slowly expanded westward. Castle Arakhain became a favored royal residence in the eighth century, and a wave of settlers followed. They were met by fierce raiders — minotaurs, orcs, ogres — crossing the gap between the Graywall Mountains and Silver Lake. The brief Westward War drove the raiders back across the Graywall and obliterated many of the marauding bands. The fortress Orcbone was established as the gate between Breland and the Barrens, and the Westwind Riders were founded to patrol the border. Settlers staked claims along the Graywall throughout the ninth century, peaking with the founding of the fortress-town of Stubborn in the foothills. The Riders held the line. The settlers built farms. And then the Last War changed everything.
PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE — recovered from the family archives of the ir'Tain estate, circa 870 YK:
"The land west of the Graywall is not empty. It is full of things that want to eat us. But the mineral rights alone are worth the investment, and if we can hold the gap for twenty years, the returns will be extraordinary. I recommend we fund the Stubborn expedition. If it fails, we lose settlers. If it succeeds, we own the foothills."
The Last War (894–996 YK)
The death of King Jarot ir'Wynarn in 894 YK triggered the succession crisis that ended Galifar. Three of the five ruling princes rejected the claim of Mishann of Cyre; Wroann of Breland was among them, declaring herself Queen and promising Breland would be a place where "people would be judged by word and deed instead of social class." In 895 YK — one year into the war — she granted the Brelish Parliament full legislative authority, a constitutional reform that persists today. The parliament makes the laws. The crown enforces them and oversees foreign affairs and national security. This division of power is the single most distinctive political feature of Breland and the reason its government survived a century of war without the authoritarian drift that consumed Karrnath or the theocratic transformation that reshaped Thrane.
Breland's conduct during the war was defined more by endurance than conquest. Its large population and industrial base sustained prolonged conflict where other nations faltered. Where Aundair fielded wizards, Breland built machines — culminating in Argonth, the last and largest of the floating fortresses, a moving city home to thousands of soldiers and one of the marvels of the Last War. In 965 YK, House Cannith perfected the modern warforged in Brelish workshops, and Breland's forges produced them in great numbers. The nation that other nations called pragmatic and unromantic fought for a century without breaking, and the pragmatism was the reason.
In 918 YK, unknown saboteurs destroyed the Glass Tower of Sharn — a floating spire whose collapse devastated the district of Godsgate, killed hundreds, and created the ruin now called Fallen, a district strewn with rubble and haunted by feral scavengers known as Ravers. The Glass Tower's destruction remains unsolved, and the district has never been reclaimed.
The internal crises of the war's middle decades reshaped Breland as profoundly as any battle. In 961 YK, King Boranex committed suicide after the deaths of his two eldest sons. Prince Boranel, initially dismissed as a dilettante, ascended the throne and proved to be exactly the leader Breland needed — pragmatic, charismatic, and genuinely popular. That same year, Commander Rand Faldren — who had hoped Boranex's death would end the monarchy — seized the border fortress of Orcbone, proclaimed it "New Wroat," and called on all who sought freedom to join him. Boranel, pressed on every front, left Faldren to his experiment. The settlers would pay the price when Droaam's forces arrived decades later — Faldren was killed and his colony destroyed. His memory remains a rallying point for the Swords of Liberty, who celebrate his stand against the crown without discussing how he died.
In 962 YK, Zilargo formally aligned with Breland, cementing an industrial partnership and intelligence-sharing relationship that survives to the present day. The Trust's capabilities became available — at a price the gnomes have never fully disclosed — and Breland's intelligence apparatus acquired a depth it could not have achieved alone. In 969 YK, the hobgoblin chieftain Haruuc Sharaat'kor united the Ghaal'dar tribes and seized the southern Cyran territories his mercenaries had been contracted to protect. Breland negotiated an alliance rather than fight a second war, and Darguun emerged as a de facto nation.
"Boranel's genius was knowing what he could not fix. The Glass Tower — unsolved. Faldren — ignored. Darguun — accepted. Three problems, three different kinds of letting go, each one a decision not to fight the battle that would cost more than losing it. This is what Breland calls leadership. Every other nation calls it something less flattering." — Professor Dara Keln, Morgrave University, in a lecture on wartime governance
The Fall of the Western Frontier (986–988 YK)
In the war's final decade, the western frontier that Breland had been expanding for centuries collapsed in a matter of months.
The Westwind Riders had been Breland's first line of defense against the Barrens, but they were not all Brelish — when Wroann took the throne and recalled her forces, soldiers from other nations returned home, and the Riders were reduced to a minimal force patrolling between Orcbone and Stubborn. Aundairian and Karrnathi intelligence services saw the weakness and funneled equipment and training to Barrens raiders, hoping to open a second front against Breland from the west. The provocateurs found the raiders undisciplined and impossible to unify — but the effort meant that when the Daughters arrived, they found a region that had been deliberately destabilized by Breland's enemies.
In 986 YK, the Daughters of Sora Kell arrived at the Great Crag with an army unlike anything the Barrens had produced in living memory. Phalanxes of armored trolls fought with deadly skill. Squads of disciplined ogres acted with coordination no chib had ever imposed. Harpies whose songs sent defenders leaping from their own walls screamed above the battlements. Stubborn fell. The fortress that had survived decades of raids had no answer for an army that fought like a nation.
"Tell your rulers there's a new power in the west," Sora Katra told the survivors. "What you've called the Barrens, we now name Droaam. The land beyond the Graywall and below the Byeshk belongs to our people. Withdraw yours quickly and respect our claim; next time, there will be no survivors."
She was true to her word. The Westwind Riders deployed in full force. There were no survivors, nor any records of their last battle. A retaliatory strike from Droaam inflicted terrible damage on Orcbone itself. Boranel deployed every soldier he could spare, reinforced the fortress, and in 987 YK formally ordered all Brelish citizens to withdraw from the lands west of the Graywall. He refused to acknowledge the sovereignty of the Daughters. Clashes continued. In 988 YK, House Tharashk began brokering monstrous mercenaries from Droaam, and Daask established its presence in Sharn. Through Tharashk, gargoyles and harpy couriers found niches in Sharn — the Gargoyle replaced the Bat in the Race of Eight Winds — and ogre laborers appeared in Fairhaven and Wroat. The legal ambiguity remains: Droaam's territory is still part of Breland on paper. In practice, it has been an independent nation for over a decade, and it is stronger than ever.
RECOVERED DISPATCH — Westwind Riders, final patrol, 986 YK. Found in a sealed courier's pouch near the Graywall gap. The courier did not survive.
"Command — contact with organized force west of the gap. This is not a raiding party. Estimate several hundred, possibly more. Trolls in formation. Repeat: trolls in formation. Ogres with siege equipment. Request immediate reinforcement. We cannot hold."
No reinforcement arrived.
The Mourning and the End of the War (992–996 YK)
In 992 YK, disavowed Brelish commandos bearing aberrant dragonmarks — soldiers sent on suicide missions until the survivors turned on their masters — fled to Sharn and founded House Tarkanan, naming themselves after the aberrant lord who had once held the city. The irony was deliberate. The message was clear: what Breland throws away, Breland will face again.
On 20 Olarune 994 YK, Cyre was destroyed. The dead-grey mists engulfed an entire nation in a single day. Tens of thousands of Karrnathi soldiers — staging in seized Cyran territory for a push into Breland — died alongside over a million Cyran civilians. Waves of refugees surged westward. Boranel established camps that grew into New Cyre, under Prince Oargev ir'Wynarn.
From the memoirs of Captain Vasha ir'Deln, Brelish 39th Infantry:
"We didn't know what we were looking at. The sky over Cyre had gone grey — not stormcloud grey, not even ash grey, but the grey of another world entirely. We stood on the ridge outside Vathirond and watched it come. Nobody ran. Nobody gave an order. We just stood there, thinking: this is the end of the world."
The fear of the Mourning — not the Treaty of Thronehold, signed in 996 YK — is what ended the Last War. The treaty recognized twelve sovereign nations, mandated the destruction of House Cannith's creation forges, and granted warforged the rights of sentient beings. Breland emerged with its institutions intact and its sovereignty uncontested — one of the few nations that could say both. The treaty notably did not recognize Droaam, leaving the question of those western territories legally unresolved. No one is entirely happy with the outcome. Although people optimistically call it the "Last" War, most believe conflict will resume.
The Unanswered Questions (996 YK–Present)
In the years since the treaty, Breland has focused on economic recovery, internal stabilization, and the management of pressures the war created. Its cities absorb refugees, veterans, warforged seeking a place in the postwar world, and criminal organizations operating in the space left by exhausted institutions. The dragonmarked houses emerged from the conflict stronger than ever, with divided nations dependent on their services.
Three unresolved legacies define the postwar period. The Cyran refugee population under Oargev ir'Wynarn represents a potential territorial challenge — the Dark Lanterns maintain a persistent intelligence presence in New Cyre, watching for signs that Oargev's anger may become action. Boranel has made clear he will not cede an acre of Brelish land. The Droaam frontier remains active, with ongoing skirmishes along the Graywall border and Argonth patrolling the Mournland's edge, ready to be redeployed. And House Cannith South under Merrix d'Cannith operates workshops and research programs across Breland that the crown monitors but has not moved to shut down.
The Swords of Liberty remain one of the kingdom's most dangerous internal factions — presenting themselves as democratic revolutionaries while their methods grow increasingly violent. Since the treaty, many within the movement have shifted from anti-monarchism to the belief that Breland should reignite the war and impose its model on the rest of Khorvaire. Within Parliament, the movement led by Lord Ruken ir'Clarn, supported by Hass ir'Tain, advocates ending the monarchy when Boranel dies. The outcome of the succession — whether Boranel's children can hold the crown, whether Parliament seizes power, or whether the Swords force the question through violence — remains the defining open question of Brelish political life.
Scrawled on a wall in the Bazaar of Middle Dura, painted over by the Watch, painted again the next night:
FALDREN WAS RIGHT. CROWNS ROT. — S.L.