The War of the Mark

"Everyone knows Halas Tarkanan destroyed Sharn. Fewer people know why. The houses made sure the story started with the destruction and ended with the lesson: aberrant marks are dangerous. They did not include the part where the houses besieged a city full of refugees. That part does not appear in the curriculum." — House Tarkanan recruiter, Sharn

Period: c. –1,500 YK (approximately 1,500 years before the founding of Galifar, or roughly 2,500 years before the present day)

Belligerents: The dragonmarked houses (later formalized as the Twelve) versus bearers of aberrant dragonmarks

Theater: The Five Nations, culminating in the city of Sharn

Outcome: Near-total eradication of aberrant dragonmarks; destruction of Sharn; founding of the Twelve

Background

Aberrant dragonmarks appeared in the world soon after the true dragonmarks did, emerging across the Five Nations among individuals of any race, any age, and any bloodline. Unlike the twelve recognized marks, which were heritable and house-controlled, aberrant marks were unpredictable — no two were exactly alike, and they could not be bred, directed, or standardized. Aberrant marks of this era were also, in many cases, substantially more powerful than those known today, and their bearers struggled to control them.

The dragonmarked families of Khorvaire were in the midst of consolidating their economic power during the same period that aberrant marks grew more visible. The catalyst for what became the War of the Mark was a summit convened in Karrnath, called by House Deneith and House Jorasco. At the time, ten dragonmarked houses were represented — the Mark of Warding was not yet known to the broader world, and the Mark of Finding had not yet appeared in the Shadow Marches. Whether the summit was called from genuine alarm or from a more calculated desire to draw a line between "legitimate" marks and all others, its conclusion was the same: the aberrant-marked were to be eradicated.

The Purge

The war's first phase was not a war at all. It was an organized inquisition — a systematic hunt carried out by institutions with continent-spanning reach against scattered individuals who, for the most part, had no means to resist or organize.

Deneith soldiers did the arresting. Vadalis trackers and their hounds ran down those who fled. Medani inquisitives provided intelligence and identification. House Jorasco healers were enlisted to attempt to remove aberrant marks from captured individuals. When this proved impossible, the prisoners were executed.

The campaign was most ferocious in Karrnath. While most Karrnathi today know only the propagandized version — the houses heroically defending communities from dangerous aberrants — the Karrnathi dragonmarked were the first to mobilize and the most ruthless in their methods. No organized resistance arose there.

Among all the dragonmarked families, only House Ghallanda produced substantive dissenters. A number of Ghallanda members sheltered aberrant-marked individuals rather than surrender them, drawing on the house's tradition of hospitality. Those dissenters were punished severely — exiled, stripped of standing, or worse.

The houses amplified every available incident of harm caused by uncontrolled aberrant marks, turning genuine tragedies into propaganda. Superstition and fear did the rest. The purge was not presented as a consolidation of power; it was presented as a public service.

Halas Tarkanan and the Resistance

For roughly three years, the inquisition proceeded largely unopposed. Then, in the third year of the purge, a figure emerged who would change the shape of the conflict entirely.

Halas Tarkanan — known in later centuries as the Earthshaker — was a brilliant military tactician who bore an aberrant mark of extraordinary power, granting him dominion over the earth itself. He gathered the scattered aberrant-marked survivors across the Five Nations and forged them into a fighting force. Tarkanan understood that the houses could be beaten in open battle if their quarry stopped running and started fighting.

Alongside Tarkanan stood the Lady of the Plague, his queen and consort, whose aberrant mark gave her command over vermin and disease. Together, they turned the tide — for a time. Tarkanan's tactical skill and the raw destructive potential of powerful aberrant marks caught the house forces badly off-guard and reversed several years of one-sided slaughter.

Tarkanan and the Lady then made their boldest move: they seized the city of Sharn — then called the City of Towers, a major settlement in what would later become Breland — and declared it an open haven for all aberrant-marked refugees. Thousands sheltered there. For a period, Sharn served as a functioning sanctuary, a city held entirely by aberrant strength.

The house alliance responded by laying siege.

The Siege of Sharn

The forces of House Cannith, House Deneith, and the armies of pre-Breland converged on Sharn. What followed was a siege of four years. Tarkanan's forces held — and for a time, fought — but they could not be resupplied and could not replace their losses. The houses could.

Tarkanan and the Lady were slowly beaten back through the city. Their numbers thinned. Civilians sheltering inside had nowhere to go. When Tarkanan and the Lady finally understood that victory was no longer possible, they chose the terms of their own end.

Tarkanan unleashed the full power of his mark. The towers cracked and fell. Terrible earthquakes split the city's foundations, and rivers of lava surged up from the fiery lake deep below Sharn's stone plateau. The Lady of the Plague called vermin up from the depths of the undercity in numbers beyond counting — disease-infested swarms that moved through the ruins like a tide.

The besieging armies perished. The aberrant-marked sheltering in the city perished. The civilians trapped inside perished. The forces of the Twelve perished.

Sharn was left a ruin; superstition and fear kept it abandoned for more than five hundred years before Galifar I finally sent forces to reclaim and rebuild it, commissioning House Cannith — the same house that had helped lay siege to the city — to lead the reconstruction.

Key Figures

Halas Tarkanan (the Earthshaker) — The military commander of the aberrant resistance. His mark gave him power over the earth, capable of generating earthquakes and volcanic activity on a catastrophic scale. A gifted tactician, he transformed a disorganized population of hunted individuals into a fighting force that successfully held a major city against the combined strength of the dragonmarked houses. He remains the defining symbol of organized aberrant resistance.

The Lady of the Plague — Tarkanan's queen and the co-commander of the Sharn sanctuary. Her aberrant mark granted mastery over vermin and disease. Her name is not recorded in house sources; she is known only by her mark and its effects. In Sharn today, the annual observance known as the Lady's Day commemorates the city's destruction in her name — framed as a warning, but preserving her memory regardless.

Baron Hadran d'Cannith — At the war's conclusion, Hadran proposed that the victorious houses formalize their alliance and establish a unified research institute in Korth.

Alder d'Cannith — Architect, artificer, and wartime innovator whose inventions played a material role in the house campaign. Alder proposed naming the new organization the Twelve — not because ten marks were currently known, but because he believed twelve true dragonmarks would eventually flow through living blood. He was proven right roughly a millennium later, when House Tharashk was inducted in 498 YK.

Aftermath

The War of the Mark achieved what it set out to achieve. Aberrant marks were almost entirely eradicated from Khorvaire. Those that reappeared in subsequent centuries were dramatically weaker than the marks Tarkanan and the Lady had wielded. The houses had demonstrated that they could coordinate military action across political boundaries more effectively than any city-state could resist.

The formal founding of the Twelve followed directly from the war. The institution that had coordinated the purge became the permanent governing body of the dragonmarked houses — standardizing practices, resolving disputes, and presenting the houses as a unified political force to any king who might think to challenge them. Galifar I, when he eventually united the Five Nations, was shrewd enough to negotiate with the Twelve rather than fight them.

In Karrnath, the official history of the war describes the houses as protectors of the common people against a marauding army of dangerous aberrants. The role of Karrnathi dragonmarked families as the instigators and most aggressive participants in the purge does not appear in that version.

Sharn was rebuilt on sealed ruins. King Galifar I had all passages to the undercity — Old Sharn — closed with gates of metal and magic. It is illegal to tamper with them. It is widely assumed that those ruins contain ghosts, undead, and perhaps the lingering curse of the Lady of the Plague. Jorasco healers still walk the streets on the Lady's Day every year, offering examinations and blessings to a city built on the foundations of a massacre.

Legacy and the Present Day

Fear and prejudice toward aberrant marks did not end with the war. They were baked into the cultural assumptions of Khorvaire: that aberrant marks are touched by Khyber, that their bearers cannot be trusted, that uncontrolled power makes them inherently dangerous. The houses made no effort to correct this view.

Since the Mourning of 994 YK, however, something has changed. Aberrant marks have begun appearing with greater frequency and greater power than they have shown in centuries. No explanation has been found.

In 992 YK, a group of disavowed Brelish commandos — all aberrant-marked — fled Brelish intelligence after their handler program collapsed, and established themselves in Sharn under the name House Tarkanan. Their leader, a woman named Thora Tavin who operates among Sharn's elite as Thora Tarkanan, chose the name deliberately: a mockery of the dragonmarked houses, and an act of historical memory. House Tarkanan trains aberrant-marked individuals, organizes them, and funds expeditions into the ruins of Old Sharn in search of whatever Halas Tarkanan and the Lady of the Plague left behind. They are preparing for another purge, because they understand — as the houses understand — that everything that produced the first one is still in place.