The Treaty of Thronehold
SPECIAL EDITION — KORRANBERG CHRONICLE, 11 Aryth 996 YK:
WAR IS OVER!
Treaty of Thronehold signed. Galifar is no more.
Overview
On 11 Aryth 996 YK, two years after the Mourning consumed Cyre, delegates from the surviving nations of Khorvaire signed the document that formally ended the Last War. It was not a peace born of resolution. No nation had won. No faction had been defeated so completely that further resistance was impossible. What ended the war was fear — fear that the Mourning could happen again, that continuing the conflict might be the thing that caused it to. The negotiations that produced the Treaty of Thronehold were not conversations between parties working toward justice. They were conversations between exhausted powers managing the fact that they had terrified each other into the same room.
The site chosen for negotiation carried its own weight. Thronehold — the great castle on the island in Scions Sound, built by Galifar I so that his seat of power would belong to none of the Five Nations above the others — had stood largely abandoned since Jarot's death in 894 YK. A special detachment of House Deneith guards called the Throne Wardens had kept the castle sealed throughout the century of war, but the town of Throneport in the castle's shadow had become something else entirely: a haven for dissidents, criminals, spies, and mercenaries, a rough-and-tumble port with no allegiance to anyone. By 975 YK, all major nations and dragonmarked houses had at least a small presence there, making it already a hotbed of international intrigue before the formal negotiations began. Representatives of every faction operated simultaneously — and Cyrans, who had no peacekeeping force on the island, found work as spies and agents for whoever would employ them.
After Thronehold, Throneport was reconstituted as a multinational capital under the watch of small peacekeeping forces from Aundair, Breland, Karrnath, and Thrane, with the Throne Wardens ensuring treaty terms were honoured on the island itself. The castle and its grounds remain off limits. The town beneath it is neutral ground — which is to say, it is a gladiatorial arena for diplomats and spies, a dangerous playground for bored nobles, and a haven for treacherous double agents. Alliances shift daily. It is impossible to tell friend from foe. The entertainments are excellent — diplomats and spies share a weakness for pleasant distractions — and the conversations at Throneport's better establishments are often more consequential than the formal diplomacy happening in the castle's shadow.
"Thronehold is a postcard of the peace: a sealed castle nobody can enter, a treaty nobody fully trusts, and a town full of people pretending to be friends while sharpening their knives beneath the table." — Unnamed Brelish diplomat, overheard at Throneport
Recognised Nations
The Treaty of Thronehold's most foundational act was the formal recognition of sovereign states across Khorvaire. The recognised nations were: Aundair, Breland, Darguun, the Eldeen Reaches, Karrnath, the Lhazaar Principalities, the Mror Holds, Q'barra, the Talenta Plains, Thrane, Valenar, and Zilargo.
This list is notable for what it contains and what it does not.
Darguun's recognition was, for many delegates, one of the most contested decisions of the negotiations. The goblinoid nation existed because Lhesh Haruuc Sharaat'kor had united the Ghaal'dar clans during the war and seized a large swath of southern Cyre while ostensibly employed there as a mercenary force — goblinoid mercenaries that House Deneith had been brokering since 878 YK, turned against the nations that armed them. Haruuc's betrayal was remembered bitterly by Cyrans, but Cyre no longer existed to press the objection, and the majority of delegates chose recognition over the alternative: a new conflict with a unified goblinoid army on a continent that had just barely agreed to stop fighting. The practical calculation won. Darguun is recognised, though many nations still treat it as a frontier state operating outside the norms of the treaty's common laws.
Valenar received recognition under similar logic. The Tairnadal elves had seized eastern Cyre in 956 YK, turning on the nation that had hired them as mercenaries and invoking a claim to the land from long before humanity's arrival on the continent. After the Mourning, no one wanted to challenge their claim to land that was no longer claimed by anyone else. Recognition was given in the interests of peace and promptly resented by nearly everyone who gave it. The Valenar elves devote themselves to the arts of war, their cavalry has no equal in Khorvaire, and they combine talent for magic with stealth and swordplay — challenging them militarily would have been a costly proposition even for a coalition of exhausted nations.
The Eldeen Reaches, which had seceded from Aundair forty years before the treaty in 958 YK, received formal recognition despite Aundair's deep opposition. Most Aundairians consider the Reaches' secession an act of treason committed at a time of national vulnerability; most Reachers live in quiet anticipation that Aundair will eventually try to reclaim what it lost. The treaty recognised the Reaches. Recognition and acceptance are not the same thing.
Droaam sent representatives to the negotiations demanding to be recognised as a sovereign nation. The petition was denied, led primarily by Breland. Legally, Droaam remains part of Breland's territory; its monstrous inhabitants have no rights under the Code of Galifar and are not considered citizens of any treaty nation. In practice, most current maps include Droaam by name and mark its territory. The Daughters of Sora Kell declared sovereignty in 987 YK with an army of trolls, ogres, and gnolls behind them, and House Tharashk has been brokering Droaamish mercenaries since 988 YK. The legal fiction that Droaam does not exist has not stopped it from existing. Kaius III of Karrnath, privately, sees opportunities in all the problems these distant monsters can create for their neighbours.
Cyre, notably, was not represented at Thronehold. Prince Oargev ir'Wynarn, the last surviving member of the Cyran royal family — serving as Cyre's ambassador to Breland when the Mourning struck — was not invited to participate in the negotiations that determined the fate of his nation's former territories. The treaty ratified Valenar and Darguun's claims to what had been Cyre. New Cyre — the refugee settlement in eastern Breland — is not a recognised nation under the treaty. Its status, and Oargev's, remains unresolved. Publicly, Oargev praises Breland's hospitality. He was shut out of the proceedings, and the treaty was signed without him. Having been excluded from the process he was raised to believe in, the only value he holds dear now is the good of the Cyran people — but whether the welfare of the survivors or justice for the fallen comes first changes from day to day.
FROM THE SHARN INQUISITIVE — Editorial, 996 YK: "Twelve nations recognised. One destroyed. One excluded. The mathematics of the treaty are not complicated: the nation that started the war by insisting on its legal rights was the nation that had no voice when the war was ended. Cyre's claim was just. Cyre's reward was silence."
Key Provisions
Warforged Freedom. The treaty forbade the creation of new warforged and granted freedom to all warforged who survived the conflict, releasing them from any form of indenture. What this meant in practice was more complicated. Freedom was granted without land, without accumulated savings, without recognised social infrastructure to receive them. The treaty created warforged personhood as a legal category while doing almost nothing to address what life as a free warforged in Khorvaire would actually look like.
In Karrnath, warforged have been pushed back into near-indentured servitude under the continuation of martial law, with barely better status than skeletons raised by the Odakyr Rites. In Thrane, indentured warforged populations provide the most fertile ground for the Lord of Blades' evangelists. In Breland, the treaty is nominally respected, but warforged in the Cogs of Sharn work foundry shifts for maintenance rather than wages, and unscrupulous employers exploit beings who were designed to follow orders and have limited experience with the concept of refusal.
Creation Forge Destruction. House Cannith was required to dismantle the creation forges that produced the warforged. The house complied — at least officially. The creation forges in Cyre were assumed destroyed by the Mourning rather than deliberately deactivated, which leaves their status as an open question that various factions have not stopped quietly investigating. At least one creation forge is rumoured to persist in the depths of Sharn, maintained in secret by Merrix d'Cannith.
House Cannith Restrictions. Beyond the creation forge mandate, House Cannith's situation after the treaty was shaped as much by the Mourning as by its terms. The house lost its recognised central leadership, its headquarters, and the majority of its manufacturing facilities when Cyre was destroyed. It fractured into three semi-autonomous branches — Cannith East under Zorlan d'Cannith in Korth, Cannith South under Merrix d'Cannith in Sharn, and Cannith West under Jorlanna d'Cannith near Fairhaven — which have since been in uneasy competition. The treaty's restrictions on Cannith were thus partly redundant: the house's capacity to cause the problems the treaty was designed to prevent had already been significantly reduced by the disaster that made the treaty necessary.
Border Ratification. The treaty drew new maps. Many of those maps ratified conquests and seizures that had taken place over the course of the war, which meant that the nations with territorial grievances signed the treaty acknowledging losses they had no intention of permanently accepting. Thaliost remains Thrane's, legally — but the ancient Aundairian city, placed under the authority of Archbishop Solgar Dariznu and turned into a haven for Aundairian Silver Flame followers even as brutal suppression of Aundairian dissent continues, remains an open wound that the treaty has done nothing to heal. Violence in and around the city continues. The Council of Cardinals is determined to hold it. Queen Aurala's court is determined to reclaim it. The treaty is silent on the question of who is right.
Peacekeeping at Thronehold. The treaty established Throneport as multinational neutral ground, with small peacekeeping forces from the four major powers and House Deneith's Throne Wardens maintaining the terms. This arrangement has functioned as intended for the island itself. Its broader influence on Khorvaire's political stability has been more limited.
TREATY EXTRACT — commonly reprinted in civic almanacs across the Five Nations: "Let it be known that the war which has consumed our peoples is hereby ended; that the borders herein described are recognised as lawful and sovereign; that the creation of new warforged is forbidden and existing warforged are granted the freedoms and obligations of sentient peoples; and that any nation which violates these terms forfeits the protections of this accord."
Compromises and Contradictions
The treaty was riddled with half-measures, and its architects knew it. No reparations were required from any party. No individual was held accountable for wartime atrocities. The cause of the Mourning was deliberately left unaddressed — raising it would have meant assigning blame, and assigning blame would have meant someone refusing to sign.
Several nations signed with visible reluctance and have behaved accordingly. Karrnath maintains mobilised forces along contested borders and continues low-intensity conflict with Valenar on the Talenta Plains. Thrane has not softened its position on Thaliost regardless of Aundairian pressure. Aundair's Queen Aurala has made no secret of her ambition to one day restore Aundair's claim to the Galifar throne — which is not technically incompatible with treaty membership but is not exactly the spirit the document intended. Karrnath's warlords, many of whom believe Karrnath would have won the war if Kaius III had not signed the treaty, constitute a volatile faction; some have organised into secret societies — like the seditious "At All Costs" movement within the Order of Rekkenmark — that seek to unseat the king and resume the war.
The warforged provisions, while foundational, created their own complications. The ban on new warforged production left House Cannith forbidden to create new ones but still responsible for maintaining existing ones — a line that different branches of the house have interpreted differently. Cannith East's secretive research in Korth, blending Karrnathi necromantic techniques with traditional artifice under Zorlan d'Cannith's direction, tests the edges of what the treaty permits without technically violating its letter. The treaty forbade a specific thing. What it permitted by omission is a separate question that several parties have been quietly exploring.
The Korth Edicts — which predated the treaty by centuries and were designed to constrain the dragonmarked houses from accumulating power that might rival the crown — formally remain in effect but are widely understood within the houses to be obsolete. No single fragmented nation can enforce them. The treaty reaffirmed the houses' political neutrality, which in practice means they continue operating across borders that the treaty drew, serving whoever has coin to pay them. The war transferred power from the nations that were fighting it to the institutions that were supplying it. The treaty did not transfer it back.
Aftermath and Ongoing Tensions
Two years after the treaty's signing, the political landscape it created is less a settlement than a pause. The nations of Khorvaire are at peace in the sense that their armies are not currently engaged in formal battle. They are at peace in the way that people who have spent a century learning to hate each other are at peace when they are too tired to keep fighting — which is to say, provisionally, and under conditions that anyone paying attention can see will eventually change.
The dragonmarked houses emerged from the treaty with their positions largely intact — and in many cases, strengthened. The Twelve, the organisation that coordinates cooperation between the houses, operates from its headquarters in Korth and continues to mediate inter-house disputes with quiet authority. House Deneith provides mercenaries through its Blademark Guild and law enforcement through its Sentinel Marshals. House Orien struggles to fund the reconstruction of its lightning rail through the Mournland. House Cannith's three branches compete for dominance while the house's combined revenue grows quarter after quarter. The houses were not parties to the war. They were its suppliers. The treaty confirmed their neutrality. Their power, it did not address.
The mystery of the Mourning is, for now, the only thing holding the warmongers at bay. If someone finds an answer — if responsibility is established, if the weapon is identified, if the cause is understood well enough that someone believes they could repeat it or defend against it — the calculations that produced the Treaty of Thronehold will change. Everyone at Thronehold understood this. No one said it aloud.
"People call it the Last War, meaning they intend it to be the last one. People who study it call it the Last War, meaning the most recent one. Both usages are correct. They cannot both remain correct." — Korranberg political analyst
THRONEHOLD HOLIDAY OBSERVANCE — 11 Aryth, celebrated across the Five Nations: On 11 Aryth 996 YK, the signing of the Treaty of Thronehold formally ended the Last War, bringing a century of bloodshed to a close. The day has become an important holiday. It is a new holiday, celebrated for only the second time this year. The Lord Mayor of Sharn intends to hold one of the most extravagant celebrations ever seen, and tourists and celebrants from across Khorvaire are expected to attend. In New Cyre, Prince Oargev has declared the day one of remembrance rather than celebration. No festivities are planned.