National Military Doctrines of the Five Nations

FIELD LECTURE — REKKENMARK ACADEMY, 997 YK To the visiting delegates of the Thronehold Military Commission: "Before the war, we all trained at the same academy. We drilled the same formations, read the same manuals, saluted the same crown. Then in 894 the crown broke, and we spent a hundred years learning how different we really were." — Brigadier Helyn ir'Talan, Karrnathi War College

When King Jarot died in 894 YK, his five heirs shattered a kingdom that had stood for centuries. The armies they inherited had trained together, drilled at the same academies, and marched under the same banners — the soldiers of the Five Nations had served in the united army of Galifar for hundreds of years. Then the alliance broke, and what had been one army became five, each trying to remember where its loyalties ended and its enemies began.

The Last War was not one conflict but many: a century of shifting alliances, years of stalemate, and sudden periods of catastrophic intensity. It reshaped not only borders but the nature of warfare itself. Massive magical siege staffs — staffs fashioned from entire tree trunks, capable of holding enormous arcane charges and hurling destructive force over a thousand feet — filled the role of artillery. Semi-sentient warforged titans scattered squads of infantry like a battering ram through a formation of tin soldiers. Arcane sappers spread fields of blast disks and glyphs of warding to deny entire regions to the enemy, their work as dangerous and painstaking as any mundane sapper defusing charges in the dark. Wands and rods did not replace the sword or the bow, but elite wandslingers — military spellcasters who could hurl force blast or fire bolt at range — became an ever more common and feared presence as the war ground on, their wands holstered at the hip like a gunslinger's iron.

Each nation adapted these shared innovations to its own character, its own history, and its own understanding of what war was for. What follows is an examination of how the five successor states of Galifar waged their century-long struggle — not just their weapons and their tactics, but the philosophies, the fears, and the cultural convictions that drove them.

Breland — The Pragmatist's War

"Breland fights the way it builds: take stock of what you have, figure out what's needed, and find the most efficient path from one to the other. Sentiment doesn't enter into it."

The Brelish are a practical people in a way that is sometimes mistaken for cynicism. Their national character — tolerant, self-reliant, skeptical of abstract principle — emerged from a history of democratic pressure and commercial competition that produced soldiers who thought for themselves rather than dying in formation. Breland had no equivalent of Rekkenmark's iron tradition or Thrane's zealous unity. What it had instead was industry, ingenuity, and a talent for asking the right question at the right moment.

From the beginning of the Last War, Brelish commanders understood that they could not match Karrnath soldier for soldier, match Aundair spell for spell, or match Thrane's true believers conviction for conviction. Instead they resolved to outthink, outbuild, and outlast their enemies. If the Five Nations were an adventuring party, Breland would be the rogue — adaptable, opportunistic, and always calculating angles the fighter never considered.

Brelish industrial output was the foundation of everything. Thanks to their superior manufacturing capacity, they were able to field more soldiers in medium armor than any rival, outfitting their armies for function rather than flair: standardized equipment produced at scale, well-maintained arms, and a logistical network that could sustain a campaign long after a more brilliantly outfitted force had run out of supplies. Brelish soldiers carried nearly identical gear — mass production ensured consistency — though personal touches for comfort and functionality were common enough. Field officers were trained to adjust to shifting conditions, and common soldiers were expected to show initiative rather than wait for orders that might never come. Breland was one of the few nations where a talented soldier from common stock could rise to command — the kind of social mobility that would have been unthinkable in the rigid hierarchies of Karrnath and that the church-bound Thranes largely reserved for those who had first distinguished themselves in faith.

The crown jewel of Brelish military innovation was Argonth, the floating fortress. The product of House Cannith ingenuity and Brelish industrial will, Argonth was the largest engine of war ever built — a moving city capable of housing thousands of soldiers and redeploying to wherever the threat was greatest. Where Aundair had the Arcane Congress and Karrnath had generations of martial tradition, Breland had Argonth: proof that money, manufacturing capacity, and creative ambition could produce something no other nation thought to attempt. In the present day, Argonth patrols the edge of the Mournland, a monument to Brelish problem-solving that has no one left to fight — though if tensions with Droaam or Darguun escalate, the fortress can be redeployed to a threatened border within days.

Breland's elite aerial cavalry was built around pegasi — rare, exceptional mounts that cannot be forced into service but that the House Vadalis enclave in Sharn is one of the few places in Khorvaire to successfully train. The Brelish pegasi riders were a small force, but devastatingly effective in the reconnaissance and strike roles for which they were deployed.

The Redcloak Battalion exemplified the Brelish ideal at its finest — elite soldiers who won their reputation on the battlefield rather than in bloodline, whose motto "First in battle, last to fall" captured the tenacious pragmatism of a nation that never had the luxury of heroic overconfidence. Bards in Menthis still sing of Khandan the Hammer and Meira the Huntress. After the Treaty of Thronehold, the battalion was split and distributed to cities and strongholds across Breland — a decision King Boranel made because he valued their contributions but feared their concentrated power, and one its veterans continue to bitterly resent. The Sharn contingent, headquartered in Daggerwatch in Upper Dura, nurses a fierce rivalry with the King's Swords of the Citadel, whose agents enjoy greater authority and prestige despite far less battlefield experience.

The King's Citadel gave Breland a second front that its enemies could never fully counter. Its four divisions — the Dark Lanterns (intelligence and covert operations), the Swords (elite special combat forces), the Shields (royal protection), and the Wands (arcane support) — allowed the crown to conduct espionage, execute covert operations, and eliminate threats before they reached the battlefield. The Dark Lanterns in particular became one of the finest intelligence agencies in Khorvaire, with over five hundred agents operating within Breland's borders and roughly a fifth that number stationed abroad. Led by a changeling known as Captain Vron, they carried an unwritten license to neutralize any creature that threatened Brelish interests. The war was fought on paper as well as on soil, and Breland understood that better than most.

The weakness in all of this was that Brelish decentralization was a double-edged sword. The same culture that produced brilliant independent-minded officers also produced uneven discipline and poor cohesion in large-scale offensives. Breland's doctrine was most effective on home ground or in drawn-out standoffs, but it struggled when forced into aggressive campaigns deep in hostile territory. The nation's instinct for pragmatism occasionally shaded into opportunism, and the same parliament that gave Breland its civic strength was a constant check on the kind of sustained, unified commitment that total war sometimes demands.

FROM THE KORRANBERG CHRONICLE, 993 YK: "ARGONTH HOLDS THE LINE — Brelish floating fortress repels third attempted crossing at the Brey River. Garrison commander Colonel Tera Kenmarsh tells our correspondent: 'They can come again tomorrow. We'll still be here. We don't get tired and we don't run out of arrows — we just manufacture more.'"

Aundair — The Arcane Art of War

"Other nations teach their soldiers to endure the battlefield. We teach ours to understand it. The commander who knows what magic can do — and what it cannot — wins. The one who doesn't understand both halves of that equation is the commander who dies surprised."

Aundair is a small nation that punched far above its weight for a century, and the reason is simple: it had the Arcane Congress. While other nations fielded swords and bows, Aundair had been studying magic as a tool of governance, scholarship, and eventually war for generations. The floating towers of Arcanix housed the finest institute for mystical study in Khorvaire, and magic was deeply ingrained in Aundairian culture at every level, from the cleansing stones in peasant kitchens to the animated farming equipment working the vast vineyards of Bluevine. When the Last War began, Aundairian commanders took stock of their resources and made a clear-eyed decision: they would win by mastering what others only dabbled in.

Aundair assembled the first regiment of arcane dragoons and developed the war staff and the battle rod. Its soldiers were trained not just to cast but to fight — light infantry wandslingers, fashionably equipped and built for mobility, who wielded a rapier in one hand and a wand in the other. The wandslinger became the iconic Aundairian soldier: lightly armored, quick-moving, capable of loosing force blast at ranges exceeding a longbow and following it with concussive burst — a pulse of energy that could knock an entire formation off their feet. Both spells were developed specifically by the Arcane Congress to answer tactical needs: force blast because Aundair needed a ranged cantrip that could match the effective distance of Thrane's devastating archers, and concussive burst to break up massed infantry without the lethality of burning hands or thunderwave. Aundair prized grace and skill over heavy armor and brute endurance. A Karrnathi knight in full plate might laugh at an Aundairian wandslinger — right up until he was dead.

Aundair's air superiority was unmatched. The dragonhawk — a creature similar to a giant eagle and the national symbol of Aundair — was bred and trained as both scout and aerial strike unit. Dragonhawk riders served in elite squadrons, and their capacity for hit-and-withdraw attacks from altitude gave Aundairian commanders flexibility no ground-bound force could easily counter. In the war's final decade, Queen Aurala and her consort Sasik d'Vadalis established Project Dragonhawk, a cooperative venture between the Arcane Congress and House Vadalis that blended cutting-edge transmutation magic with Vadalis magebreeding to permanently transform a group of volunteers into aarakocra — avian humanoids with the features of dragonhawks. The project was ultimately successful, but its full potential was never realized before the war's end. Uniquely among the nations, Aundair also deployed squads of broom riders in genuine combat formations; other nations managed to replicate this on a small scale for scouts and spies, but only Aundair fielded them as a dedicated military unit.

The Arcane Congress devoted much of its wartime energy to practical weapons research. Its most significant recent breakthrough is the wand of magic missiles — an uncommon item requiring no attunement and usable by any creature, not just trained spellcasters. This broke a barrier that House Cannith had not yet managed to cross, flooding Aundairian ranks with standardized ranged firepower that could be placed in the hands of soldiers with no arcane training whatsoever. House Cannith will eventually replicate the technique, but for the moment these wands remain largely an Aundairian advantage. The Royal Eyes of Aundair, the nation's intelligence arm, specialized in divination magic, giving Aundairian commanders battlefield intelligence that blended arcane reconnaissance with traditional espionage. The Knights Arcane were an elite unit of eldritch knights — spellcasters who had mastered both sword and sorcery to a degree that made them terrifyingly effective in close quarters.

Aundairian military culture prized wit and education. Its officers were expected to understand the theory behind every spell on the battlefield, not just follow orders. This made Aundair's command cadre extraordinarily adaptive — capable of identifying a tactical situation and constructing an arcane solution in the field. But it also made Aundair's military deeply reliant on conditions being favorable — and on individual Aundairians being quite as clever as they believed themselves to be. (Regardless of your Intelligence score, as an Aundairian you're sure you're the smartest person in the room.)

The critical fragility was that when magic was neutralized — through antimagic fields, dispelling tactics, or disrupted supply chains of dragonshards — Aundairian forces were often outmatched by sheer numbers and heavier arms. Their smaller population meant every loss of a trained wandslinger stung more deeply than the loss of a Karrnathi infantryman. And the secession of the Eldeen Reaches in 958 YK stripped Aundair of crucial farmland and western resources mid-war, a wound from which the nation never fully recovered economically. Aundair learned to win quickly and brilliantly; a long grinding war of attrition suited it poorly.

FROM A RECOVERED FIELD MANUAL — AUNDAIRIAN ARCANE DRAGOONS, 3rd REGIMENT: "The wandslinger does not stand in line. The wandslinger moves. If you are standing still long enough for a Karrnathi knight to reach you, you have already made the mistake that will kill you. Fire, reposition, fire. Grace is not vanity. Grace is survival."

Karrnath — The Crucible of Endurance

"You ask what made the Karrnathi soldier fearsome. I will tell you: he was not afraid to die, and the commanders who sent him knew he might be back on the field the following morning. That changes the mathematics of war in ways that take your enemies a very long time to understand."

Before the Last War, all of Galifar trained its officers at Rekkenmark Academy. This is not a neutral fact. It means that when the war broke out and Karrnath's rivals scrambled to build officer corps from nothing, Karrnath already possessed an unbroken tradition of military excellence stretching back to Karrn the Conqueror — the warlord whose campaigns unified eastern Khorvaire and whose very name became the nation's. Karrnath did not need to invent doctrine. It already had one.

Karrnathi martial tradition emphasizes teamwork, focus, and force. Its infantry favored heavy armor and heavy weapons. Its commanders were trained to exploit terrain and concentrate strength at decisive points. Mandatory military service, institutionalized by the Code of Kaius at the war's outset, ensured a steady supply of trained soldiers who had already learned discipline before they ever saw a battlefield — all Karrnathi citizens are required to serve a minimum of two years, with deployment commitments sometimes extended to eight years during the war's worst periods. Deployments kept soldiers from the same town or village together, a strategy that built ferocious unit cohesion but left some communities completely depleted of a generation when battles went badly. A Karrnathi squad held the line not because of faith or fear but because every soldier in it had served beside the others and knew exactly what was expected. That trust, forged in training and hardened in combat, was the bedrock of Karrnathi doctrine.

Then the plagues and famines came.

In the early years of the war, Karrnath was crippled by shortages that would have broken most nations even without an active conflict. King Kaius I, faced with armies that were starving faster than they could fight, accepted a bargain that would define Karrnath for generations: the Blood of Vol became the state religion in 896 YK, its necromancers came to the army's aid, and Karrnath's dead began to rise. The undead soldiers that resulted were not the mindless shambling horrors of popular imagination. The Odakyr Rites — developed by Gyrnar ir'Shult and the priest Malevanor at Fort Bones, within the powerful Mabaran manifest zone of the County of Odakyr — produced something far stranger and more unsettling. These undead could make tactical decisions and operate without direct guidance. They were tireless, fearless, capable of standing motionless and silent for days when there was no reason to move, and their darkvision gave Karrnathi commanders the ability to attack in perfect darkness — an advantage ruthlessly exploited in night campaigns against Cyre. Fort Bones' garrison today consists primarily of Karrnathi undead soldiers; no lights burn there, for these soldiers have no need of them.

But the uncanny nature of the Karrnathi undead runs deeper than any tactical advantage, and this is where the accounts start to feel less like military history and more like ghost stories. Every Karrnathi skeleton raised through the Odakyr Rites appears to know the same things, as though they share a single distributed memory. They speak rarely and only when necessary. Their opinions — when expressed — are identical, absolutely committed to the Karrnathi cause. If one knows a poem, all of them know that poem, though no one ever taught it to any of them. Most strangely of all, the skeletal swordsmen favor a twin-blade fighting style that Rekkenmark never taught. No one knows where that technique comes from. The traditionalist warlords who despised necromancy pointed to it as proof of something fundamentally wrong — that the undead were not merely animated soldiers but something else wearing the shape of one. The Blood of Vol priests called it the martial spirit of Karrnath itself, expressed through the bones of the fallen. Neither explanation sits comfortably with anyone who thinks about it for very long.

The bone knights who commanded units of mindless undead were paladins of the Blood of Vol, channeling divine power to direct their charges with focused authority. Chivalric orders such as the Order of the Emerald Claw became renowned — and feared — for their fighting skill, though they were repeatedly sanctioned for brutal treatment of enemy soldiers and accused of slaughtering civilians. When Regent Moranna condemned the Blood of Vol in 976 YK and restored the Sovereign Host as the state religion, the Order of the Emerald Claw refused to disarm and went underground, becoming the terrorist organization it is today. When Kaius III came to power in 991 YK, he continued the break, sealing most of the undead in the catacombs beneath Atur — the City of Night, where massive vaults hold legions of Karrnath's undead soldiers in case they are ever needed again.

The wound that never closed was the one Karrnath dealt to itself. The proud warlords who believed the undead disgraced their nation's military heritage never fully trusted the bone legions. When the undead did not betray Karrnath during the war, the question merely shifted: what would happen if Karrns fought Karrns? Would the undead follow their local commanders, or the crown, or something else entirely? No one knows. The undead sit in their vaults beneath Atur, and the question waits with them.

RECRUITMENT BROADSIDE, KORTH — PRINTED 942 YK: "KARRNATH CALLS — KARRNATH ENDURES Your nation asks two years. Your forefathers gave their lives. Report to your local garrison commander by the first of Zarantyr. Deferments will be considered only in cases of critical agricultural need. Failure to report is an act of dishonor under the Code of Kaius. — By order of the Warlord of Rekkenmark"

Thrane — The Sword of the Silver Flame

"We are not fighting for Thrane. We never were. We are fighting because someone has to stand between the innocent and the horrors that hunger to destroy them. Thrane simply had the courage to say so."

When Thalin of Thrane died in 914 YK, the Church of the Silver Flame assumed direct temporal authority over the nation — a transformation that was simultaneously a reorganization of political power and a clarification of what Thrane's armies had always believed they were doing. The templars of the Silver Flame had been founded to defend the innocent from supernatural evil. The war had made that mission continental in scale. The fusion of church and state simply named what had been true for twenty years.

This is what made Thrane's military unlike any other: it was not, at its core, a national army. It was a religious institution that happened to be fighting a war. Thrane produced more clerics and paladins than any other nation in Khorvaire — not through arcane training programs or deliberate policy, but because its people genuinely and deeply believed in the Silver Flame, and faith of that kind has always produced extraordinary soldiers. Even the typical templar was a mundane warrior rather than a divine caster, but one who fought with the unshakeable conviction that the Flame would guide their hand and that dying in its service was not a defeat. The three orders of the church's clergy — ministers who tended congregations, friars who spread the faith as wandering missionaries, and templars who fought evil in the flesh — provided Thrane with a depth of institutional structure that most national armies could not match.

Archery was a devotional practice of the Silver Flame long before it was a military doctrine. Communities devoted to the Flame trained their militias in the bow as both a meditation and a martial art — the silver arrowhead a common token worn at the throat, the act of draw and release a practice of focus and spiritual discipline. Some say the rainbow-feathered arrows represent the couatl defending the innocent, but they also reflect the practicality of remaining as far from danger as possible when fighting aberrations that can kill you with a touch. The result was Khorvaire's most feared ranged infantry, soldiers who had been putting arrows through targets since childhood and who fought with a calm that unnerved enemies accustomed to the emotional charge of battle. The longbow is the chosen weapon of the priesthood, and the Flame's symbol is commonly found engraved on silver arrowheads. Aundair specifically developed the force blast cantrip to match the effective range of Thrane archers — one nation's entire new school of battle magic, necessitated by the other's devotional practice.

The Seven Commanders of the templar order — one for each of the Five Nations of old, one for foreign lands, and one for the seas — kept knights free to move across jurisdictions and respond to threats wherever they arose, under the Grand Master's overall leadership. This system gave Thrane's military a mobility and flexibility that belied its theocratic rigidity. When a knight templar crossed from one commander's jurisdiction to another, their responsibility was simply to report to the new commander in case a pressing mission awaited — a system that worked better between some commanders than others, but that ensured the templars could react to supernatural threats anywhere on the continent without waiting for diplomatic permission.

Thrane communities were built around fortified churches designed to serve as strongholds in times of trouble. Every village maintained a militia prepared to deal with supernatural threats regardless of whether a national army was nearby. This decentralized defensive structure made Thrane extraordinarily difficult to occupy — even overrunning a position meant facing an armed civilian population organized around a building designed to hold against assault.

Thrane's aerial cavalry was built around wyverns — the nobles of Thrane had maintained a small stable of the creatures since long before Galifar. Thrane was the first nation to employ bags of holding to devastating effect in aerial warfare, allowing a rider to carry a supply of blast disks or simply to drop any number of large, heavy objects onto enemy formations from heights that ground-based soldiers could not answer. A single wyvern rider with a bag of holding full of stone blocks could do to an infantry square what a siege staff could do to a fortification, and with considerably less warning.

What broke down was the very thing that made Thrane strong. The fusion of church and state invited both zealotry and corruption, sometimes in the same person. Zealous Thranes believed the church was destined to reunite Galifar under the Silver Flame — a conviction that made diplomatic compromise nearly impossible and turned potential allies into enemies. Under cover of the war, templar units launched assaults on temples of the Dark Six and cults of the Lords of Dust in foreign territory — actions that would have been acts of war if war were not already underway. The more violently extreme factions — elements of the Pure Flame movement, which advocated violence over compassion as the primary tool for rooting out evil — wiped out communities of Sovereign Host worshippers who stood in the path of their expansion. The church punished those who were caught. In the chaos of a century of war, many were not caught.

And beyond the zealotry, there was simply the corruption that power invites. A church that rules a nation must also manage a nation — its budgets, its politics, its compromises. Not everyone who sought rank in the theocracy sought it for pure reasons. The same hierarchy that produced extraordinary paladins also produced bishops more interested in influence than in the Flame. This tension — between the ideal of the Silver Flame and the reality of those who wielded it — remains unresolved, and it defines much of Thrane's internal politics to this day.

A PRAYER OF THE TEMPLAR — recited before battle: "Flame above, Flame within: I am the arrow loosed against the dark. If I fall, let me fall forward. If I break, let no innocent stand behind me. Tira, who gave everything — lend me the courage to give what I can."

Cyre — The Dream That Burned

"We kept saying we had the best of everything. The best wizards, the best soldiers, the finest artificers in Khorvaire. And it was true — every single one of those things was true, and none of it saved us." — Cyran veteran, refugee encampment

Cyre was the heart of Galifar. When Galifar Wynarn forged his kingdom, it was his eldest daughter Cyre who imagined the warring nations working together as a single family — Karrnathi might, Thrane faith, Aundairian wisdom, and Brelish industry combined into something greater than any one of them alone. The province that bore her name became a cultural nexus, a treasury of the continent's best work, and the seat of a civilization whose motto — "What our dreams imagine, our hands create" — captured both its ambition and its fatal confidence. Cyre was the seat of House Cannith and House Phiarlan, second only to Aundair in arcane sophistication. Floating gardens drifted above its cities, petals falling on the wind. Crystal theaters in even small towns let audiences scry on the great performances in the Demesne of Shape. There was always music in the air and lights in the sky.

This self-image was Cyre's greatest strength and its most dangerous liability.

When Mishann's claim to the throne was rejected and the war began, Cyran morale was initially high. Everyone knew that Cyre had the finest wizards, the best soldiers, the foremost artificers. The Wynarn Institute of Art had explored the magical arts with a depth and creativity that the Arcane Congress, focused on practical application, had not matched. The Vermishard Guard was a unit of genuine excellence, the finest warriors drawn from across Galifar to serve in the crown's capital. But a single unit of exceptional soldiers meant little against the sustained martial culture of Karrnath. Cyre's finest wizards were artists and theoretical scholars — not wandslingers. And the expert artificers who could have built Cyre's war machine were largely tied to House Cannith, which remained officially neutral.

Cyre adapted because it had to. It relied heavily on mercenaries in the early years, drawing on Galifar's treasury with which Metrol had been entrusted — the Royal Treasury, commonly known as the Vault, held both the kingdom's mint and its most precious cultural artifacts. As the scope of the conflict became clear, Cyrans devoted themselves to war with the same creativity and commitment they had once brought to art. The Vermishard Guard became the core of a new military academy. Cyre's wizards proved a match for any nation other than Aundair, and they brought a distinctive Cyran style to the battlefield — somatic components performed almost as a dance, verbal components with the cadence of song, an artistry in spellcasting that was beautiful to watch and lethal to face. Cyre poured its extraordinary wealth into House Cannith's coffers, urging the house toward ever-deadlier weapons. The soldiers of Cyre were widely known as the "Greencloaks" for their distinctive uniform cloaks — a fashion choice that became a symbol of Cyran military identity across the continent.

In 959 YK, Cannith presented Queen Dannel with the first warforged titans — hulking constructs that could clear a path through infantry formations and hold positions no living soldier could defend indefinitely. For a time, this gave Cyre an edge. Then Cannith, as always, began selling its creations to other nations. Cyre kept spending. As the war entered its final years, Cannith unveiled its most ambitious achievement: the warforged colossi. Standing between two hundred and three hundred feet tall, these gargantuan machines required a specialized crew for optimal performance — a captain with the Mark of Making controlling the construct through a mithral helmet connected to a distributed network of docent nodes, a weapons officer with the Mark of Storm to direct the bound elementals that served as the colossus's primary armament, and a helmsman with the Mark of Passage. They could direct themselves in a diminished capacity when necessary, and they carried contingents of elite troops who could ride in safety within the colossus while it crushed through enemy lines, then pour out through hatches once it was in position. They were meant to end the war decisively, to establish Cyre's martial supremacy for centuries and vindicate a hundred years of sacrifice.

On 20 Olarune 994 YK, the Mourning came. The colossi perished with the nation they were built to save. Their remains lie in the Mournland now, like fallen mountains — some collapsed and overgrown, others half-swallowed by ground that turned to liquid and re-hardened, still others standing with only a hand or a head visible above the twisted earth. They are filled with secrets and waiting for whoever is brave or foolish enough to go in after them.

The lesson Cyre never learned was that its belief in its own legitimacy — the absolute conviction that it represented the best of Galifar and therefore deserved to win — was not a strategy. It was a story Cyre told itself, and the other nations were not persuaded by it. The mercenaries Cyre hired eventually found better opportunities elsewhere — the Tairnadal turned on their employers and seized Valenar in 956 YK, and the hobgoblins Haruuc led into rebellion carved Darguun from Cyre's southern lands in 969 YK. The weapons Cyre commissioned were sold to its enemies. And the gold that bought all of it eventually ran out. Cyre's dream was beautiful, and it was real, and it burned with everything else.

RECOVERED LETTER — found on a Cyran soldier's body, Mournland border, 994 YK: "Dalla — the new constructs arrived today. They are enormous. Captain Rena says they will end the war by autumn. I have heard this before, but this time even the skeptics among us believe it. I will be home for the Harvest Festival. — Your Corren"

The Shared Battlefield

Despite their doctrinal differences, the Five Nations shared a common battlefield transformed by arcane innovation. All nations employed arcane artillery — siege staffs that could bombard massed troops from over a thousand feet, long rods that served as portable field artillery, and blast disks that functioned as magical landmines and aerial bombs. A typical blast disk held a single charge, its dragonshards shattering when the effect was triggered; more advanced versions recharged at dawn. Finding a buried blast disk required sharp eyes and a working knowledge of arcane concealment; disarming one required steadier hands still, and getting it wrong meant detonation. All nations fielded aerial cavalry, though in different forms: Aundairian dragonhawks, Thrane wyverns, Brelish pegasi, and the Mror dwarves' manticore cavalry riding in from the mountains. Hippogriffs and griffons — both Vadalis staples — served across all nations. And all nations eventually integrated wandslingers into their forces, though it was Aundair that pioneered the practice and remained its master throughout.

House Cannith stood at the center of this shared transformation, supplying every side with ever-more-devastating creations. The warforged — tireless soldiers formed of wood, metal, and alchemical fiber — first saw combat in 965 YK and ultimately changed the face of the war. But as with all of Cannith's inventions, any advantage gained by one nation was eventually sold to its enemies. The Treaty of Thronehold forbade the creation of new warforged and granted freedom to those who survived the conflict, but the unanswered questions surrounding them — whether they truly have souls, where their loyalty lies, what becomes of sentient beings made for a purpose that ended — remain open wounds in a world that has not yet decided what it owes them.

The Last War ended not with a victor but with a catastrophe. The Mourning destroyed Cyre and terrified every surviving nation into silence. The Treaty of Thronehold brought a fragile peace — but no one won the war, and most believe it is only a matter of time before the next one begins. The doctrines described here were not retired when the treaty was signed. They were archived. Every nation is refining them. Every nation is watching the others. The Mournland sits at the center of the continent like an open question, and the answer — whatever it turns out to be — will determine whether these doctrines are ever needed again.

Comparative Overview