"What our dreams imagine, our hands create." — the national motto of Cyre
All locations listed here now lie within the Mournland unless otherwise noted.
Cyre was the heart of Galifar — the province that drew experts and artisans from across the united kingdom, the nexus where all five national traditions came together, the place that claimed to represent the best of what Galifar could be. When the Arcane Congress perfected the everbright lantern, Metrol was the first city whose streets were lit with them. Soldiers trained at Rekkenmark, but the finest warriors served in the Vermishard Guard. Where Aundair focused on practical applications of magic, Cyre's Wynarn Institute explored the artistic potential of the arcane. The people of Cyre called this approach the "Cyran appreciation" — blending the best of all traditions and continuing to innovate. Some citizens of other nations called it appropriation. Whatever it was, it is gone.
Known as the Rising City, Metrol was the capital of Cyre and the practical political center of the kingdom of Galifar. While Thronehold was technically Galifar's seat, the governorship of Metrol fell to the heir to the throne — those seeking influence with the future ruler of the continent came here. Before the war, the city's nobles commissioned art that made broad, sweeping statements about the future. Metrol was lit with everbright lanterns before any other city in Khorvaire. It was said that no one went hungry in Metrol and no one felt the bite of winter. Floating gardens orbited the Royal Vermishard, flower petals falling on the wind to the city below. Crystal theaters let audiences scry on the great performances in the Demesne of Shape. There was always music in the air and lights in the sky.
Its most distinctive feature was the seven Royal Vermishards — towering natural columns of rock rising above the flatlands, each capped with a palace, visible from a great distance. Their original contents were divided by function: the Royal Vermishard for the crown; the Vermishard of Blood for the noble families of old Metrol; the Vermishard of Gold for the Royal Treasury; the Vermishard of Law for civic administration; the Vermishard of Lore for the Vermishard Academy and House Phiarlan; the Vermishard of Steel for House Cannith; and the Vermishard of War for military command. As war debts mounted, the crown sold the Steel and Lore Vermishards to Cannith and Phiarlan — a visible retreat from the material symbols of Galifar's inheritance. The two houses worked with Cyran magewrights to embed illusory lighting into the spires, making the Vermishards glitter across the flatlands at night.
The Wynarn Institute of Art was simultaneously one of Khorvaire's foremost arcane academies and one of its most significant museums, exploring the artistic potential of magic at an institutional level no other nation attempted. Its Hall of Kings allowed visitors to converse with illusory replicas of the past rulers of Galifar — not preserved rulers as the Aereni maintain, merely a tourist attraction, but one that captured the Cyran belief that history was a conversation rather than a monument. The Cathedral of the Sovereign Host was, by the reign of King Jarot, a wonder unto itself: nine colossal statues encircled the temple, illusory displays depicted scenes from the faith within, and it held a vast collection of relics and artifacts. The Vault — sometimes called the Golden Palace — served as both the mint of Galifar and the repository for cultural artifacts deemed too valuable for public display.
The city sat on the River Melandor, an offshoot of the Cyre River, with Starmantle Bay providing a deep freshwater basin for its shipyards. During the war, those docks housed the Cyran navy and its flagship, The Mishann. The Orien lightning rail station in Metrol was the grandest on the continent — a mammoth building of the finest construction, reflecting King Jarot's massive infrastructure investments. Colossus WX-5, known as Norr, was the most humanoid of the warforged colossi built for Cyre by House Cannith — designed not only to guard the city but to inspire its residents. It now lies slumped against one of the Vermishards.
Today, Metrol is intact but transformed. Unlike many Cyran cities, it did not suffer outright destruction on the Day of Mourning — but maps from before that day are useless. The city has been rearranged: several Vermishards have been swapped, and surrounding districts have seen entire blocks and buildings moved without apparent pattern. The days are quiet. The nights bring a cacophony of chaos and violence as misshapen monsters emerge from their lairs to prowl and wail, hunting each other for food. Expeditions into modern Metrol disproportionately end in tragedy — despite the city being close to the Mournland's border, it remains far less explored than many other sites. Uncountable treasures were left behind. Groups like Ikar's Salvagers have begun sending expeditions, but there is far more left to explore and plunder.
Making was Cyre's industrial capital and the mundane operational heart of House Cannith — architecturally the inverse of Metrol, with plain and functional buildings laid out on a grid reflecting the practical priorities of its primary institution. Where Eston was Cannith's research center, Making was its factory floor: textiles, processed ores, and the transformation of raw materials into finished goods at a scale no other city approached. The relationship between local leadership and House Cannith was less obviously in violation of the Korth Edicts than more flagrant examples like House Lyrandar's arrangement in Stormhome — but it was close.
Its most significant facility was the Genesis Foundry, where proficient Cannith heirs could use the Mark of Making to transform raw materials into finished goods in a fraction of the conventional time — a technique that could not be replicated outside of Making and has not been recovered since the Mourning. The city also housed one of the continent's first airship docking towers, positioned for cross-continental flight paths and enabling direct passage to and from Metrol, though airship production had not yet scaled to make this economical by 994 YK.
Making also held the seeds of something its ruling house did not encourage. A nascent labor movement had begun to speak out about the lives of ordinary citizens — assembly line workers producing clothing demanded protections from cottonlung, fairer wages, and reasonable hours. Whether this movement would have changed anything had Cyre survived is one of the Mourning's smaller but more human tragedies.
Making sat on the northern edge of the Galifar Forest, a protected fey-touched reserve with Thelanian manifest zones. Legend held that Galifar made a deal with a hag who ruled the woods: so long as the forest stood, so would the kingdom.
Many in Khorvaire believe Making was the epicenter of the Mourning. The cataclysm reshaped the terrain around the city into the Glass Plateau — a great highland formation, mostly smooth and flat, though jagged spikes and spires jut up from the ground in seemingly random places. The central portion is obsidian, and bursts of fiery light can sometimes be seen in its dark depths. Toward the edges, the glass becomes lighter and more transparent, appearing almost pale white along the jagged cliffs. Nothing grows on the plain of glass. The ruins of Making still peek through the obsidian flats. Those who believe that the Mourning started here also expect that Making is where the mystery of its origin will be unraveled — and reports persist of a secret Cannith facility somewhere in the city's subterranean depths.
Eston was House Cannith's ancestral seat and the birthplace of the warforged. It began as a mining settlement extracting iron and rare ores from nearby hills; the artificers who worked those materials spent decades developing increasingly sophisticated constructs, eventually producing the creation forges that reshaped Khorvaire's warfare. By the war's end it was a city of wonders: clockwork birds perched in trees of steel bark; skycoaches carried artificers and magewrights between forge and forge; an iridescent dome protected the city from storms.
Its most celebrated facilities included the Clockwork Menagerie, showcasing centuries of Cannith construct development from early golems and homunculi through increasingly sophisticated designs; the creation forges themselves, three of which were housed in Eston; and the Steel Gardens, a late wartime breakthrough allowing Cannith to grow renewable metal resources from trees with metal bark and leaves, reducing dependence on mining. The proving grounds trained cadres of newborn warforged for active duty — the sound of that training was part of daily life.
Today, Eston is an irresistible attraction for treasure hunters hoping to access the vaults of House Cannith — but reports suggest it has become a strange and deadly place. The city is overrun by living spells: continual flames that crawl along the streets, cling to lampposts, and flee from strangers; living scrying spells that shift and shimmer, displaying distant scenes on their amorphous skin. The Clockwork Menagerie's constructs and the Steel Gardens have been twisted by the Mourning into deadly monsters — stories tell of an enormous gorgon golem, of razor-winged swarms of silver songbirds, and things stranger still. Eston was more thoroughly destroyed than nearly any other Cyran city. The complete failure of house leadership to evacuate suggests either that whatever caused the Mourning originated here, that communications were cut before warnings could be issued, or that some force prevented departure.
Before the war, Dollen on the River was one of the richest ports on Scion's Sound, moving goods inland on Orien caravans to the rest of Cyre. The Dollen family had held the lands along the Cyre River for over a millennium, maintaining their position even through Galifar's conquest. At the war's outbreak, Queen Mishann granted the ruling family's patriarch the title "Shield of Dollen" in recognition of the county's strategic importance.
The Karrnathi military sacked Dollen early in the war. The Cyran army retook it and converted it: the crown seized most of the city's infrastructure and transformed the harbor into a naval fortress and forward control point for the Cyre River. Arcane cannons capable of launching blasts of lightning, warforged sentries positioned below the waterline to watch for undead legions walking the riverbed, and small mephit-powered experimental watercraft were all installed through a collaboration between Houses Cannith and Lyrandar. The conversion left little room for ordinary commerce; the market slowly emptied over a century of siege mentality, its storefronts replaced by services for soldiers. Castle Dollen was rebuilt multiple times after Karrnathi raids and served primarily as a military bastion rather than the noble residence it had historically been.
Dollen was one of the last cities consumed by the Mourning. Many residents fled across the river — and were immediately captured by the Karrnathi military, held as prisoners of war until the Treaty of Thronehold established them as refugees. That long imprisonment drove many Dollen survivors to Q'barra rather than New Cyre.
A coastal town on the southern tip of Cyre, Seaside was a popular vacation destination for Cyran nobles and wealthy merchants even during the war — not as celebrated as Stormhome in Aundair, but beloved for warm weather, sea air, and civilian normalcy. When relations with Breland were warm, trade with Sharn and Trolanport through Seaside was brisk; when cold, the city turned to Lhazaarite intermediaries. It had a smaller military presence than Dollen and largely escaped direct assault, allowing civilian shipping to continue throughout the conflict.
Its most celebrated establishment was the Pelican's Rest, a luxury House Ghallanda hotel that hosted the wealthy and well-connected — and, less publicly, a significant amount of Aurum-brokered commerce that paid lip service to Cyran law. A House Kundarak vault handled significant wealth for merchants and nobles cutting deals in the town. Seaside had a temple officially devoted to Arawai and Kol Korran, though its priests maintained darker ties to local criminal networks.
The memory of Seaside has become an iconic image of Cyran peacetime for the survivor generation — warm weather, sea air, and a normality that stands in contrast to everything that followed. Two millennia of continuous settlement left treasures buried in the harbor, and with the city now depopulated, House Tharashk prospectors have begun diving the basin with locate object to recover what lies beneath.
The Saerun Road was Cyre's major southwestern artery and the site of the last active military engagement before the Mourning struck. On 20 Olarune 994 YK, an outnumbered Cyran army was fighting a running battle along the road against a combined advance by Thrane and Brelish forces. The mists ended the engagement before any outcome was reached.
The Field of Ruins — the section of the Saerun Road's surrounding area where that battle was fought — now holds thousands of preserved corpses: Cyran soldiers, Thranish templars, and Brelish troops alike, lying where they fell, facedown in the dirt or staring lifelessly at the grey sky, showing no sign of rot or decay. Even seasoned bands of treasure hunters are loath to enter the Field of Ruins.
The Saerun Road is one of the most commonly cited origin points of the Mourning itself. Some survivors report seeing a blinding light near the road before the mists came — making the Field of Ruins both a mass grave and a potential crime scene, depending on which theory of the Mourning you believe.
The Verdant Canyon in northern Cyre was home to a pastoral community notable for its unusual degree of self-governance and independence from the feudal restrictions that dominated the rest of Khorvaire. The canyon's relative isolation had historically freed its people from exploitative lordship, though it also left them poorly positioned to advocate for aid when the war's burdens increased. Powerful Irian manifest zones suffused the canyon with life and light.
When the Mourning swept through, it was thorough. Earthquakes leveled and swallowed towns and villages. Survivors were transformed into aberrant versions of themselves, growing toxic indigo crystals and undergoing other strange physical changes. From the northern canyon, a Glowing Chasm — a jagged scar emitting eerie purple light — now marks the area, twisting and transforming anything that spends significant time near it. Even within the Mournland, creatures drawn to the Glowing Chasm mutate further the longer they remain. Reports from the day are conflicted about whether the Glowing Chasm was an epicenter of the Mourning or a secondary effect — it is one of several locations across Cyre that claim that distinction, alongside Making, the Saerun Road, and Metrol itself.
"Surely when the children of King Jarot began their squabbles over succession a hundred years ago, they could not have foreseen the horror that would engulf the home of Queen Mishann. Our reporters are still sifting through accounts of what has happened, but it is clear at this point that beautiful Cyre, the jewel of Galifar's vast holdings, has disappeared behind a churning cloud of dead-gray mist." — Korranberg Chronicle, special edition