Arcane Warfare

OPERATIONAL MANUAL — BOMBARDIER CERTIFICATION, ARCANE CONGRESS FIELD DIVISION "The breath of Siberys is not a reagent. It is a weapon. The siege staff is not a focus. It is a weapon. You are not a scholar. You are a weapon. Treat each of these facts with the respect they deserve, and you will serve your queen well. Forget any one of them, and you will die in a way that teaches your replacement a valuable lesson."

When Galifar I forged his kingdom, his armies relied on sword and bow. The cantrip — a spell casual enough to cast at will — had not yet been mastered. The development of those techniques took centuries, as the Arcane Congress studied Aereni methods and the inherited instincts of sorcerous bloodlines. For most of Galifar's history, battle magic meant a handful of elite spellcasters doing exceptional things in exceptional circumstances. It was never doctrine. It was never logistics.

The Last War changed that. By the time the Treaty of Thronehold was signed, war magic had been systematized, manufactured, and deployed at scale. Bombardiers operated siege staffs the way a cannon crew operates a gun. Supply chains existed to deliver breath of Siberys — the refined dragonshard solution used to prime arcane artillery — to frontline units across the continent. Nations built entire research programs around countering each other's magical innovations. The wandslinger, a soldier who fights with a cantrip as readily as a sword, went from Aundairian novelty to continental standard over the course of a hundred years. Everyday magic in the Five Nations encompasses spell effects of up to 3rd level; 4th- and 5th-level effects — walls of force, cloudkill — existed on the battlefield, but they were rare, remarkable, and devastating when they appeared. What the Last War demonstrated is that magic can be scaled like any other weapon. It cannot, however, make war easier to survive.

The Wandslinger

The wandslinger is where arcane warfare began, and understanding what a wandslinger is — and what a wandslinger is not — is essential to understanding how magic changed the nature of war on Khorvaire.

At its simplest, a wandslinger is any individual capable of casting a damage-dealing cantrip. But the term is as much about attitude as ability. A scholarly wizard who avoids conflict and keeps their focus tucked away in a satchel is not a wandslinger, even if they know fire bolt perfectly well. The wandslinger carries their wand of Fernian ash with visible pride, twirls it between engagements, uses it to do flame tricks in camp, and treats arcane combat as a craft worth displaying. A wandslinger is a soldier who has made magic their weapon and wants everyone in the room to know it. As much as anything, it is about attitude.

Aundair pioneered the concept. When the Last War began, the Arcane Congress took stock of its advantages — the finest magical institution in Khorvaire, a culture that valued wit and arcane sophistication above brute force — and assembled the first regiment of arcane dragoons. These soldiers, the prototype of what would become the wandslinger corps across all Five Nations, established the foundational weapons: the war staff and the battle rod. The typical arcane dragoon needed a wand, rod, or staff in order to cast; the power was never in the focus itself but in the training of the soldier who wielded it.

Two spells developed specifically for that corps became staples of arcane warfare across the continent.

Force blast is an evocation cantrip with a range of 180 feet — exceeding a longbow — that deals force damage, a type that very few targets can resist. The Arcane Congress designed it specifically to match the reach of Thrane's feared archers; when your enemy's peasant militias have been training with the bow as a devotional practice since childhood, you need a cantrip that can hit them before they can hit you. Force blast lacks the raw offensive punch of fire bolt, but its range and damage type make it the more practical battlefield tool.

Concussive burst is a 1st-level evocation that unleashes a pulse of energy in a 20-foot-radius sphere at a range of 60 feet, dealing thunder damage and deafening targets who fail to resist it. It is not as deadly as burning hands or thunderwave, but it covers the same area of effect with less collateral risk, giving officers a tool for suppressing massed infantry on an open field. Both spells were eventually found in the hands of enemy wandslingers, as all innovations were during the war — but Aundair remained the master of their use throughout.

The techniques spread. Over the course of the war, nations that had initially relied entirely on sword and bow began integrating wandslingers at every level of their force structure. Today it is not unusual to see a Sentinel Marshal with a sword in one hand and a wand in the other, or a Sharn inquisitive who opens with fire bolt before closing to blade range. The wandslinger is no longer an Aundairian specialty. It is simply how modern soldiers fight — though wandslinging remains an elite specialty, and the typical soldier still carries conventional arms alongside their arcane training.

One of the last major breakthroughs of the war was the wand of magic missiles — an uncommon magic item requiring no attunement, usable by any creature, not just trained spellcasters. Earlier versions had been more expensive, limited to trained casters, or failed to regain charges; the Arcane Congress broke through all of these barriers. A wealthy wandslinger carrying a brace of these wands could unleash a barrage of bolts from a fresh wand each round without pausing to recover. The Arcane Congress perfected this item just twelve years ago. House Cannith has not yet replicated the technique — sooner or later they will, and wands of magic missiles will be available at any Cannith enclave — but for the moment, wands sold outside Aundair are almost certainly surplus or salvage recovered from Aundairian soldiers during the war.

"Nobody calls us 'arcane dragoons' anymore. The Aundairians tried, but it didn't stick. If you fight your battles with fire bolt or sacred flame, if you carry a wand at your hip and you're not shy about drawing it — you're a wandslinger. That's the word." — Retired Brelish sergeant, now a caravan guard out of Wroat

Arcane Artillery

The siege staff is the centrepiece of arcane artillery — the weapon that transformed magic from a tool of individual brilliance into a systematic instrument of mass destruction.

A siege staff is a massive arcane focus, typically around fifteen feet long, made of wood and engraved with mystic sigils inlaid with dragonshards. It requires attunement by a trained spellcaster, and activating one requires three actions — one to prime the staff, one to aim it, and one to release the spell — meaning that in practice, a siege staff crew works as a team, with assistants priming and aiming while the lead bombardier releases the effect. Someone trained to operate arcane artillery is called a bombardier — a specialist whose training is similar to that of an artificer or magewright, but narrowly focused on these weapons.

Bombardiers do not use spell slots to prime their weapons. Instead, they use the breath of Siberys — a small globe containing a highly refined solution of dragonshards held in a suspended state. While priming the weapon, the bombardier crushes the breath against an engraved brass plate; the sphere dissolves and the weapon is charged. A spellcaster can also prime arcane artillery by expending a spell slot, but the breath of Siberys is what makes it possible for non-casters to operate these weapons at all — and it is what made artillery a logistical concern rather than a purely magical one. Supply chains existed to deliver breath of Siberys to front-line bombardier units, and disrupting those supply lines was a priority for every nation's sappers and commandos.

There are several basic models of siege staff, each built for a different tactical purpose:

The blast staff was the most common model, designed to bombard massed troops or fortified positions. It unleashed a wide burst of energy — devastating to common soldiers, whose ability to endure magical damage was essentially nonexistent. (The mages who designed these weapons knew their targets. They were building tools to kill first-level warriors at scale, and they succeeded.)

The force staff released focused blasts of pure arcane energy. Developed later in the war, these were primarily used against fortifications and hardened targets rather than infantry.

The focus staff amplified spells cast through it by the attuned spellcaster. Any spell requiring an attack roll or saving throw could be cast through a focus staff; the range was magnified by a factor of five, with a long range of up to ten times the spell's standard range. A fire bolt cast through a focus staff had a range of 600 feet and a long range of 1,200 feet. The spell's area of effect was doubled. If the spell normally affected a single target, it instead detonated in a 20-foot-radius sphere.

Portable arcane artillery also existed in the form of the long rod — an eight-foot rod requiring a stand to brace it, weighing close to 350 pounds fully assembled. It took five actions to set up and the same to tear down. Once in position, it required one action to prime, one to aim, and one to fire. The long rod's range magnification was a factor of three (with long range up to six times normal), and its area increase was 150% — less devastating than a siege staff, but far more mobile. Where the siege staff was the heavy gun of arcane warfare, the long rod was the field piece.

House Cannith has been developing traditional staffs that can be charged using breath of Siberys — an innovation that, if perfected, would allow any charged magical item to be recharged in the field without a spellcaster. The implications for military logistics are significant, and every nation is watching Cannith's progress closely.

FROM A RECOVERED BOMBARDIER'S FIELD JOURNAL — 3rd Aundairian Artillery, Thaliost Campaign: "Fourteen breaths remaining. Resupply was due two days ago. Lieutenant says the Thranes overran the depot at Aruldusk crossing. If no resupply by morning, we are an expensive pile of wood. I have started carrying a crossbow."

Arcane Explosives

The blast disk is the most common form of magical explosive used across the Five Nations — serving a role somewhere between a bomb, a landmine, and a remotely triggered spell effect. A typical blast disk is about nine inches in diameter and one inch thick, made from layers of different metals with dragonshards embedded in its surface and arcane symbols engraved into the casing. Anyone who studies the surface can attempt to identify the spell effect contained within it, assuming they have the arcane training to know what they are looking at.

Every blast disk has three components: a trigger, a payload, and a charge.

The trigger determines how the disk detonates. A spellcaster touching the disk can activate it directly, but the whole point of an explosive is that you generally want to be somewhere else when it goes off. Standard triggers include time delay (up to ten minutes after activation), proximity (detonating when a creature enters a set radius or breaks contact), and impact (detonating when thrown or dropped). More complex triggers are possible — detonation on a spoken word, when a specific object enters range, or any number of other conditions the creator can engineer.

The payload determines what happens when the disk goes off. The simplest version produces a raw explosion in a 20-foot radius. The more sophisticated version stores a spell effect — anything that targets a single creature or an area — and releases it on detonation. The level of the stored spell determines the disk's power and rarity.

The charge is almost always single-use: the dragonshards embedded in the disk shatter when the effect is triggered, rendering the disk inert. Advanced versions recharge at dawn, but these are substantially rarer and more expensive.

All nations employed blast disks during the Last War, and the variants they developed reflect their national character with grim precision:

Aundair made extensive use of high-powered disks and was infamous for dragonhawk squads equipped with cloudkill disks — aerial cavalry dropping area-denial weapons from altitude onto entrenched positions. Breland utilized the standard explosive model without significant variation, consistent with Brelish pragmatism. Cyre experimented with psychoactive effects — confusion, fear, and explosions that dealt psychic damage — a uniquely Cyran approach that weaponized the nation's expertise in enchantment and illusion. During the ascendancy of the Blood of Vol, Karrnath created disks that first dealt necrotic damage and then inflicted effects such as danse macabre — killing victims with the initial explosion, then animating their corpses to attack the survivors. Thrane developed disks that dealt radiant damage — a tactically inspired choice, since radiant energy was devastatingly effective against Karrnathi undead — and toward the end of the war was working on dawn disks, though their full capabilities were never deployed before the Treaty was signed.

Under the Code of Galifar, blast disks are illegal for civilians to own or carry. House Cannith manufactures them but will not sell to civilians — at least, not openly. If you want a blast disk and you are not in military service, you will need criminal connections or the skills to build your own.

When exploring abandoned battlefields — and there are many across Khorvaire, particularly along the borders of the Mournland — untriggered blast disks remain an ongoing and very real threat. Finding a buried disk requires a sharp eye and a knowledge of arcane concealment methods. Disarming one requires steady hands, proficiency in Arcana, and thieves' tools. If the disarming attempt fails badly, the disk detonates. Successfully disarming a blast disk expends its charge, rendering it inert — a frustrating outcome if you were hoping to keep it, but considerably preferable to the alternative.

POSTED NOTICE — Vathirond Garrison, Eastern Breland: "ALL PATROLS EAST OF THE RIVER: Sappers have confirmed untriggered blast disks in the Cyre Road ruins between mile markers 14 and 22. Classification unknown — likely Cyran manufacture. DO NOT investigate without arcane support. Three soldiers lost last month to a proximity-triggered disk concealed in a collapsed storefront. Standing orders: mark location, withdraw, report to sapper command."

Enhanced Artillery and Other Weapons

The siege staff and blast disk were the signature weapons of arcane warfare, but they were far from the only ones. Traditional siege engines — ballistae, mangonels, trebuchets — remained in use throughout the war, enhanced with magical power in ways that made them far deadlier than their mundane counterparts.

Animated engines were partially or fully self-operating: a partially animated ballista could load itself while the crew aimed it, cutting the firing cycle substantially. House Cannith manufactured fully animated siege engines that required no crew at all — though these could only follow simple, absolute orders ("Continue to attack the north tower until it is destroyed") and had no capacity to adapt to changing conditions.

Enchanted ammunition turned conventional siege bolts and mangonel stones into magical delivery systems. Explosive ammunition detonated in a 30-foot radius on impact. Karrnathi deathbolts dealt necrotic damage and harmed only living creatures — useless against warforged or other undead, but devastating to infantry. Thrane's Tira's tears dealt radiant damage, a fitting counterpart. Aundairian firestones conjured temporary flaming spheres that rolled randomly through the impact area, sowing chaos. The gnomish binders of Zilargo developed summoning ammunition that cast conjure elemental on detonation — enormously powerful, but so expensive and rare that it saw only limited deployment.

Panic stones — mangonel ammunition that forced every creature within a 90-foot radius to make a Wisdom saving throw or drop what they were holding and flee — were a psychological weapon with no conventional equivalent. A well-placed panic stone could shatter a formation's cohesion without killing a single soldier.

The gnomes of Zilargo also produced elemental cannons — weapons that used the essence of a bound earth elemental to project stone cannonballs with tremendous force. Zilargo began supplying Breland with these toward the end of the war. While Cannith and other nations experimented with alternative cannon models, the siege staff typically filled this role on most battlefields.

House Cannith's Spark, Lightning, and Thunderbolt crossbows — weapons with engraved sigils that used an arcane interaction to add force to the bolt — saw widespread use, particularly in Aundair and Cyre. Karrnath and Breland held to the more conventional SAC-12 design. The Passage Pistol, a hand crossbow originally developed for Aundairian dueling culture, spread across the Five Nations during the war and remains associated with Passage and dueling in the public imagination.

The Logic of Arcane Arms

The Last War produced a pattern that every military planner recognized and no one could escape: any advantage gained by one nation was eventually sold to its enemies. House Cannith, officially neutral, supplied all sides. The wandslinger techniques pioneered in Aundair spread to Breland, Karrnath, and Thrane within decades. The warforged titans that gave Cyre an edge in 959 YK were in Karrnathi hands before the decade was out. The Arcane Congress developed the wand of magic missiles; Cannith will replicate it eventually. The only lasting advantage in arcane arms was the advantage of being first — which was invariably temporary.

This dynamic ensured that the war lasted as long as it did. Each breakthrough deepened the stalemate rather than breaking it. Arcane artillery could hold a fortified position indefinitely against conventional assault; it could not take one. Wandslingers could deny territory; they could not hold it against an organized counterattack. The warforged solved some of these problems and created new ones. The colossi were meant to end the war. They arrived too late.

What arcane warfare did change, permanently, was the civilian dimension of conflict. The lightning rail network — the infrastructure that linked the Five Nations and made the modern economy possible — became a military target the moment the war began. Magewright hubs, speaking stone networks, House Sivis communication stations: all of these became strategic assets, all of them were attacked. Manifest zones tied to militarily useful planes were contested and, in some cases, deliberately poisoned to deny them to the enemy. The line between combatant and civilian infrastructure did not blur during the Last War. It was erased.

"Every time Cannith sold the Karrns something we'd invented, someone in the Congress would say, 'Well, now we'll have to build something better.' And every time someone in the Congress built something better, Cannith would eventually sell that to the Karrns too. We were running on a treadmill and the floor was on fire and the treadmill was also on fire." — Former Aundairian war researcher, now at Morgrave University

The Post-War Inheritance

The Treaty of Thronehold placed limits on certain aspects of arcane warfare — the creation forges were to be destroyed, the surviving warforged freed — but it could not legislate knowledge out of existence. Every nation retains its bombardier corps. Every nation's Cannith enclave continues weapons research. Cannith East in Korth, under the direction of Zorlan d'Cannith, is openly engaged in projects blending Karrnathi necromantic techniques with traditional artifice — a marriage of disciplines that would have been unthinkable before the war and that makes every other nation uneasy. The Arcane Congress continues to advance battle magic under Queen Aurala's Arcane Initiative, an aggressive program intended to forward the development of mystical infrastructure and military applications. The Crucible, a small Thrane order of adepts and artificers, crafts items drawing on the power of the Silver Flame. Every nation is doing something. No nation is standing still.

The specific techniques that crossed ethical lines during the war — Cyre's psychoactive ordnance, Karrnath's corpse-animating blast disks — are not in official use by any state. They are not forgotten. Abandoned battlefields across the continent still contain unexploded disks of every variety, and the black market trades in salvaged weaponry that no government acknowledges owning. Under the Code of Galifar, blast disks remain illegal for civilian possession — but the Code of Galifar was written for a united kingdom, and the kingdom no longer exists.

The deeper legacy of arcane warfare is not the weapons. It is the transformation of what magic is in Khorvaire. Before the Last War, battle magic was exceptional — something a few extraordinary individuals could do in extraordinary circumstances. Now it is ordinary. A caravan guard carries a wand. A city watch captain has trained with force blast. The same cantrips that gave Aundair its early advantage are now a feature of daily life in every nation, available to anyone with the aptitude to learn them. House Cannith's ongoing research into breath-of-Siberys-compatible staffs could eventually put rechargeable magical weapons in the hands of soldiers with no arcane talent whatsoever. The genie cannot be returned to the bottle. Khorvaire is a world where magic has been proven, across a century of killing, to be an industrial resource — as manufacturable, as distributable, and as devastating as steel.

What the Last War also proved is that no amount of magical escalation produced a winner. The war ended because of the Mourning — an arcane event on a scale that no nation caused, no nation claimed, and no nation can explain. Whatever power produced it was not a weapon that any army fielded. It was something else entirely. Until that something is understood, the arcane arms race that defined the Last War continues quietly in the background of every nation's military planning — because every commander in Khorvaire is trying to solve the same problem: how to survive a next war that might look like the last one, or might look like the Mourning.

No one has an answer. Everyone is working on one.

FROM THE KORRANBERG CHRONICLE — Opinion Section, 997 YK: "The Arcane Initiative. The Ministry of the Dead. Cannith East's 'civilian research programs.' The Crucible. We name these things as though naming them tames them. They are weapons programs. Every single one. The only question that matters is whether the fear of the Mourning will last longer than the patience of the people building them."