Humans of Khorvaire

The majority population, the dominant political force, and the people most likely to forget that neither of those things was always true

Origins & History

Humans are not native to Khorvaire. They came from Sarlona roughly three thousand years ago — first as pirates and renegades following the explorer Lhazaar (whose lieutenant, Malleon the Reaver, earned his name honestly), later as refugees fleeing the conflicts that would eventually produce the Unity of Riedra. These were not organised colonisation programmes; they were waves of outlaws, dissidents, and the displaced, carrying fragments of Sarlonan culture they could not fully replicate in a new land. The magic of the old kingdoms depended on Sarlona's abundance of manifest zones and planar energies, and when Khunan wizards fled to what is now Valenar, they found that their spells simply did not work. Human civilisation on Khorvaire was, from the start, a project of reinvention rather than transplantation.

What humans found on Khorvaire was not empty land. The goblinoid Empire of Dhakaan had ruled the continent for over five millennia, and though it was in advanced decline — shattered by the catastrophic daelkyr invasion — its cities, roads, and peoples remained. The human colonists displaced goblinoid populations, displaced and enslaved them at scale, and built their own settlements on Dhakaani foundations, sometimes literally. Sharn itself sits on the ruins of a huge goblinoid city by the name of Ja'shaarat. The roads of the Five Nations follow Dhakaani routes. Every major city in central Khorvaire rests on goblin stonework, a fact that humans rarely dwell on and goblinoids rarely forget. When early scholars encountered the ancient structures, many assumed they must be the remnants of a forgotten human civilisation — a narrative that was convenient, self-serving, and false, but which persisted long enough to justify the displacement it was designed to excuse.

Galifar Wynarn unified the squabbling human nations into a single kingdom around a thousand years ago, abolishing slavery and granting citizenship to the goblinoids his predecessors had subjugated. His Kingdom of Galifar, endured for nearly a millennium — an extraordinary achievement built on the Sovereign Host's blessing (or so the faithful believe), the Korth Edicts' careful separation of house and crown, and a succession system that rotated the throne through the royal family. The eldest child governed Cyre and inherited the crown; the other four children governed the remaining provinces. It worked until it didn't. The death of King Jarot in 894 YK triggered a succession crisis that spiralled into the Last War — a century of shifting alliances, devastating battles, and industrial-scale magical warfare that ended only when the Mourning consumed Cyre in 994 YK. The Treaty of Thronehold, signed in 996 YK, formally ended the conflict, but nobody won. The Five Nations remain divided, bitter, and haunted by the knowledge that the next war is probably a matter of when, not if.

FROM THE CHRONICLES OF GALIFAR, VOLUME I — STANDARD SCHOOL TEXT, FIVE NATIONS CURRICULUM

In the year now reckoned as 1 YK, Galifar Wynarn, of the bloodline of Karrn the Conqueror, united the warring nations of Khorvaire under a single crown. He named his five eldest children as governors of the provinces, and the kingdom endured for nearly a thousand years. Under Galifar, slavery was abolished, the Korth Edicts established peace between the dragonmarked houses and the throne, and the Arcane Congress was founded in Aundair to advance the magical arts. The Five Nations — Aundair, Breland, Cyre, Karrnath, and Thrane — became the heart of the greatest civilisation the continent has ever known.

Biology & Physiology

Humans are the baseline against which other peoples of Khorvaire are measured, which says more about human dominance than about biology. They stand between five and six feet tall on average, with the full range of skin tones, hair textures, and builds found across the Sarlonan refugee populations that originally settled the continent. They reach physical maturity around eighteen, live roughly eighty years under good conditions (somewhat longer with access to Jorasco healing or Irian manifest zones), and show visible signs of aging from their fifth decade onward — grey hair, lined skin, the accumulated wear of a body that was never designed for permanence.

What makes humans biologically distinctive is their absence of biological distinction. They have no darkvision, no innate magic, no natural armour, no breath weapon, no ability to change their shape. They are generalists — adaptable, quick to learn, capable of excelling in any discipline without being predisposed to any. Their relatively short lifespans make them restless innovators; a human who wants to master a craft cannot spend a century perfecting it the way an elf can, and this urgency has driven the explosive pace of Five Nations civilisation. Humans reproduce readily and mature quickly compared to most other peoples of Khorvaire, which accounts for their demographic dominance. A human couple can produce multiple generations of children in the time it takes an elf couple to raise one, and this simple arithmetic has shaped the continent's population balance for three thousand years.

National identity produces more visible variation than biology does. A Karrnathi human tends to be taller and broader than a Thranish one; an Aundairian carries themselves with different posture than a Brelish dockworker. These are the products of diet, climate, and culture rather than genetic divergence, but they are the markers that other humans read first — before ancestry, before species, before anything else.

Cultures & Subgroups

The most important thing to understand about human identity on Khorvaire is that nationality matters more than species. A Brelish human has more in common with a Brelish dwarf than with an Aundairian human. Accents, customs, cuisine, political loyalties, religious affiliations, and the specific regiment you served in during the Last War all mark you more deeply than the fact that you are human. That said, the Five Nations share a common Galifaran foundation — the same legal traditions, the same basic calendar, the same Sovereign Host theology, the same Wynarn dynastic mythology — and despite a century of war, an Aundairian still has more common cultural ground with a Thranish citizen than with a Lhazaar pirate or a Zil gnome.

The Aundairians prize wit, education, and magical sophistication. Aundair is home to the Arcane Congress and the University of Wynarn; its people take pride in being properly cultured, with an emphasis on the word properly. Even Aundairian patriotism is expressed as a quiet confidence that their nation is simply more refined than everyone else's. An Aundairian learns from an early age to stand their ground — in an argument, at a dinner table, or on a battlefield.

The Brelish are pragmatic, entrepreneurial, and politically restless. Breland is the most progressive of the Five Nations — its parliament has real power, its press is relatively free, and movements like the Swords of Liberty push for an end to the monarchy entirely. Brelish culture values cleverness and self-reliance; its people are comfortable with moral ambiguity in a way that Thranes find alarming and Karrns find undisciplined. Sharn, the City of Towers, is the beating heart of Breland and arguably the most important city on the continent.

The Cyrans are a people defined by loss. Cyre was the jewel of Galifar — the seat of the crown, the centre of art and culture, the province with the highest standard of living and the most ambitious social programmes. All of that was annihilated in the Mourning. Cyran survivors are scattered across the Five Nations as refugees, carrying grief and a fierce conviction that they alone were in the right during the Last War. They maintain their identity in exile — in the refugee district of High Walls in Sharn, in the camps of New Cyre in Breland, in scattered communities across every treaty nation. Other nations regard them with a mixture of pity, guilt, and resentment; many believe the refugees should be treated as enemy combatants rather than offered charity.

The Karrns are disciplined, stoic, and shaped by a climate and a history that reward endurance. Karrnath has the strongest martial tradition of the Five Nations, and its culture reflects it: duty, hierarchy, and a practical willingness to do what must be done, including the deployment of undead soldiers during the Last War. Karrns eat hearty food — casseroles, stews, sausages, dark bread, strong ale — and endure bitter winters with the grim satisfaction of people who consider comfort a reward rather than a right. Their relationship with necromancy is the most prominent source of friction with other nations, particularly Thrane.

The Thranes are the people of the Silver Flame. Thrane became a theocracy during the Last War, replacing the traditional monarchy with the Church of the Silver Flame's governance, and its identity is now inseparable from its faith. The overwhelming majority of Thranes are honest, passionate, and sincere in their belief — they are not mindless zealots, despite what Karrns may claim — but the nation carries the weight of the Purge's legacy, the occupation of Thaliost, and a culture of restraint, modesty, and intensity held under strict control. Arcane magic is not forbidden, but it is treated as secondary to faith. The Blood of Vol is viewed with particular horror.

Beyond the Five Nations, humans are the majority population of Q'barra (frontier settlers), the Shadow Marches (intermingled with orcs for millennia, producing the orc-kin communities that bear the Mark of Finding through House Tharashk), and the Lhazaar Principalities (descended from the original pirate settlers, proud, flamboyant, and fiercely independent).

Religion & Spiritual Life

The Sovereign Host is the dominant faith of humanity on Khorvaire — a pantheon of nine deities whose worship is so deeply woven into the fabric of daily life that many citizens observe it without thinking of themselves as particularly religious. The Galifar Code of Justice invokes Aureon. Merchants pray to Kol Korran. Soldiers honour Dol Dorn and Dol Arrah. The Sovereign Host is not a demanding faith; it asks for acknowledgment rather than transformation, and it accommodates the casual believer as comfortably as the devout.

The Church of the Silver Flame is the second most widespread human faith, dominant in Thrane and with churches across all Five Nations. Its militant emphasis on protecting the innocent from supernatural evil gives it a sharper edge than the Sovereign Host, and its history — including the Purge — makes it a polarising institution.

The Dark Six — the gods the Sovereign Host would prefer you not pray to — receive quiet acknowledgment from those who need the Devourer's mercy at sea, the Mockery's luck in battle, or the Traveler's favour on the road. Their worship is common in practice and uncommon in admission.

The Blood of Vol maintains a significant following in Karrnath and the Lhazaar Principalities, teaching that divinity lies within the self and that the true enemy is mortality. Its association with undead and with the Emerald Claw makes it controversial everywhere and openly despised in Thrane.

Human engagement with religion is, like everything else about humans, defined primarily by where they grew up. A Thranish human's relationship with the Silver Flame and a Brelish human's relationship with the same institution are so different as to be almost unrecognisable to each other.

The Dragonmarks

Humans carry more dragonmarks than any other people on Khorvaire — five of the twelve recognised marks appear in human bloodlines, a dominance that mirrors and reinforces human institutional power across the continent. House Cannith bears the Mark of Making and dominates manufacturing, both mystical and mundane; its forgeholds produce everything from everbright lanterns to warforged. House Deneith carries the Mark of Sentinel and provides bodyguards, mercenaries, and the Sentinel Marshals who enforce justice across national borders. House Orien bears the Mark of Passage and operates the lightning rail and continental trade caravans. House Vadalis carries the Mark of Handling and breeds the finest mounts and animals on the continent. Humans also appear within House Tharashk, sharing the Mark of Finding with their orc kin.

The sheer number of human-bearing dragonmarked houses ensures that the most common professional interactions most Khorvairians have with institutional power — transport, manufacturing, security, animal husbandry — are mediated by human-run organisations. This is not accidental. The dragonmarked houses were recognised and formalised during the rise of Galifar, and their regulatory power was established by the Korth Edicts at a time when humans dominated every political institution on the continent. The result is a self-reinforcing system in which human organisations control the infrastructure of daily life, and the infrastructure of daily life confirms human centrality.

Relations & Perceptions

Humans are the default. That is the central fact of human identity on Khorvaire, and it shapes every interaction humans have with every other people on the continent — often invisibly, because the default has the luxury of not being examined. Humans founded Galifar. Humans run four of the five surviving nations. Humans created the legal systems, economic structures, military traditions, and calendar that define modern Khorvaire. When a dwarf, elf, goblin, or warforged navigates these systems, they are operating within structures that were designed by and for humans — structures that accommodate other peoples with varying degrees of success, but that were not built with them in mind.

This dominance was established through colonisation, and the colonial history is not subtle. Humans arrived on a continent inhabited by goblinoids, displaced them, enslaved them, built on their foundations, and then forgot — or chose to forget — that the foundations were not their own. The institutions of Galifar, admirable as many of them are, were built on this displacement. Every human city stands on goblin ground. The goblins know this. The Heirs of Dhakaan know this. Most humans do not think about it, which is itself a form of privilege that the goblinoids would describe, in their own language, as chaat'oor behaviour — the conduct of defilers.

Within the Five Nations, the primary source of human-on-human prejudice is national identity. A century of war carved regional differences deep enough that they now function almost as ethnic distinctions — a Karrnathi accent in a Thranish market can provoke suspicion, and a Cyran accent in a Brelish pub can provoke pity, contempt, or guilty generosity depending on the neighbourhood. The Treaty of Thronehold stopped the fighting, but it did not stop the feeling that the people across the border are the enemy.

GRAFFITI — MALLEON'S GATE, LOWER DURA, SHARN The "greatest civilisation the continent has ever known" is standing on our foundations. — Dar shan gath'kal dor

Hooks & Tensions

The human condition on post-war Khorvaire is defined by a single question: was Galifar worth it?

The kingdom lasted nearly a thousand years. It abolished slavery, established law, built the lightning rail, founded universities, and created a standard of living that — in Cyre, at least — was higher than anything on the continent before or since. It also displaced entire peoples, imposed a single cultural model on a diverse continent, and ultimately collapsed into a war so devastating that it consumed one of its own nations in a magical cataclysm nobody can explain. Whether Galifar was a golden age or a colonial project that generated its own destruction depends entirely on whom you ask — and the answer correlates almost perfectly with whether the person asking benefited from it.

The treaty nations are nominally at peace. Nobody believes it will last. Aundair wants the Eldeen Reaches back and regards the secession as treason. Karrnath and Thrane despise each other across a religious and philosophical divide that predates the war. Breland's democratic movement threatens the old order, and the Swords of Liberty would happily burn the monarchy to the ground. The Cyran diaspora carries a grief that has nowhere to go and a conviction that the world owes them a country. And the Mourning — the single most important event in modern history — remains unexplained, which means that whatever caused it could happen again, to anyone, at any time.

The dragonmarked houses, meanwhile, are testing the limits of the Korth Edicts that have kept them in check for a millennium. House Cannith is fractured into three rival factions. House Orien lost its primary lightning rail routes through the Mournland. House Deneith's mercenary business is booming in the post-war chaos. Every house is asking, with increasing boldness, whether the rules that applied when Galifar was strong should still apply now that Galifar is gone.

For a human, the tensions are personal because they are national. You are not just human — you are Brelish or Aundairian or Karrnathi or Thranish or Cyran, and that identity was forged in a century of fire. Your accent tells people which side you were on. Your regiment number tells them what you did. Your opinion about the Mourning tells them whether you think it was a tragedy or a judgement. And the question that sits at the bottom of all of it — the question that nobody asks out loud because the answer might be unbearable — is whether the war is really over, or just paused.