Like much of Khorvaire, Karrnath’s ancient history is still the subject of active archaeological investigation. The nation’s known history begins with a clash between the Dhakaani Empire and the dwarves of Sol Udar, with the goblinoids of Dhakaan proving victorious and claiming all the land west of the Ironroot Mountains. Prior settlements and civilizations are largely unknown, more the subject of rumor and theory than strong historical evidence; roll on the Ancient Legends table for option. Some scholars have taken interest in the oral traditions of the Talentan halflings, but few appreciate the accuracy of these nomadic groups’ historic knowledge.
Ancient Legends
d4 Rumor
- Scions Sound isn’t a natural feature but was carved during the ancient battles between dragons and demons.
- The Ashen Spires mark the spot of a titanic battle in Khyber; the force of the battle echoed upwards to raise the mountains on the surface.
- The Dhakaani angered the Forest Queen with their forges, so she tore down their civilization in retribution.
- Humans lived in Khorvaire before the goblins and built the foundations of the cities that the goblins only expanded on. They fled to Sarlona to escape some ancient disaster.
The Founding
Humanity arrived through the mouth of Scions Sound a few hundred years after Lhazaar’s arrival in the east in -2000 YK. These early years were defined by bloody conflicts with the goblins who already lived on the lands, with humans winning successive conflicts and carving space for themselves. As time went on, these human settlements grew into kingdoms of their own, warring against each other for territory and pride. This changed with the coming of Karrn in -1000 YK. Born in Karrlakton, Karrn led his kingdom’s forces to conquer Korth then the rest of the human kingdoms of the region, a unifying force that founded the modern nation of Karrnath.
Karrn, however, was not sated, and set his eyes on his neighbor to the southwest—the Kingdom of Metrol. Floating his army down the Cyre River, he successfully captured the capital and laid claim to the entire kingdom. This aggression united the kingdoms of Daskara, Thaliost, and Wroat against him. Karrn’s defeat freed the Kingdom of Metrol, but the nation he forged—Karrnath—kept its feudal bonds of loyalty to Korth, the new capital. These lands extended south through the modern Talenta Plains, with the Blade Desert forming its southern border.
Karrn’s attempts to conquer the continent would go on to inspire many future kings to do the same, although none succeeded until Galifar united the Five Nations a thousand years later. Karrnathi border skirmishes with Thaliost and Metrol were common, and even today the Karrnathi countryside is littered with the remains of this ancient warfare, with archaic battlements designed long before the advent of everyday magic and its strategic implications.
The War of the Mark
When Karrn attempted to conquer the continent, the dragonmarked families had not yet united into great houses. His assault not only unified individual nations, but the dragonmarked families also bound themselves together in grand alliances. During that same period, the presence of aberrant dragonmarks grew. In Karrnath, both House Deneith and House Jorasco sounded the alarm about the danger of these aberrant marks and convened a summit of the ten existing dragonmarked houses—the Mark of Warding was not yet known to the rest of Khorvaire, and the Mark of Finding had not yet manifested in the Shadow Marches.
Whether through genuine fear or the self-serving need of a scapegoat to distinguish between the “good” and “bad” marks, this summit launched the bloody purge of aberrant-marked individuals from the five nations that is now known as the War of the Mark. Deneith enforcers rounded up aberrant-marked individuals and passed them along to House Jorasco to remove their marks. When this proved impossible, the prisoners were put to death. The houses were largely united in their purge, with Vadalis tracking hounds supplementing Medani inquisitives and Deneith soldiers; among the houses only House Ghallanda had a substantive number of dissenters, many of whom were exiled or worse when they saved aberrant-marked individuals from execution.
While the aberrant-marked eventually rallied and made a stand in Sharn, there was no such organized armed resistance in Karrnath; while most Karrnathi today know only the propagandized version of the houses valiantly defending the common people from a marauding army of aberrant-marked monsters, the dragonmarked of Karrnath were the first and most ruthless in their efforts to slaughter people with aberrant marks.
At the conclusion of the war, Baron Hadran d’Cannith proposed that the houses should unify and found a research institute in Korth. The architect and artificer Alder d’Cannith, whose inventions had played a critical role in the war, proposed that the organization be named the Twelve, as while only ten marks were known at the time, he believed that a total of twelve true dragonmarks would flow through living blood. This belief was vindicated a millennium later when House Tharashk was finally inducted into the Twelve in the year 498 YK.
Galifar
Galifar ir’Wynarn was born a thousand years after Karrn in the same city of Karrlakton. He rose to be the King of Karrnath not through raw force, but through political guile as he navigated the politicking warlords. One of his key diplomatic insights was to offer exclusive status to the Dragonmarked Houses, negotiating directly with the Twelve and establishing the Korth edicts; the houses would have favored economic status within his new kingdom so long as they supported it.
Galifar’s second key diplomatic insight was to offer liberation to the goblinoid peoples of Khorvaire. While Karrn had eradicated the goblinoid population within his own nation’s borders, goblinoids lived on in the rest of the continent as slaves and slum-dwellers. Galifar pledged to free the enslaved peoples of any nation he conquered and coordinated with the descendants of successful uprisings over the past millennia that various goblinoid populations had staged. Whether Galifar’s actions were taken out of genuine concern for liberty or raw political interest is still a matter of scholarly debate; the king did little to ensure freed peoples could economically succeed in his new empire, sowing the seeds of the modern state of goblinoid marginalization across Khorvaire.
THE KINGDOM OF GALIFAR
Upon ascending to the throne, Galifar ir’Wynarn appointed each of his five children to govern a different nation. Karrn, the third of the King’s children, was given his homeland of Karrnath and instructed to found a premier school to train the new kingdom’s military officers. Karrn and his new spouse, the Archduke of Karrlakton, founded Rekkenmark Academy, an effort which was later supported and expanded upon by Galifar’s heir, King Cyre.
The first true challenge for the fresh officers of Rekkenmark and Prince Karrn was to conquer the Mror Holds. Through both military might and diplomacy, Karrn split the Mroran clans and successfully annexed the land between the Ironroot and Hoarfrost mountain ranges. The dwarves were incorporated into Karrnath as a grand duchy and were left to self-rule so long as they paid their tribute and taxes.
The intermediate period of Karrnathi history was filled with minor squabbles, uprisings, and other political and sociological events; perhaps the most significant of these was the terror sown by the necromancers of the Talons of Ice led by the reclusive elvish necromancer, Lady Illmarrow, in the middle of the 6th century. Prior to this, only the foremost scholars and diplomats of Khorvaire knew of Lady Illmarrow, but the horrors the Talons unleashed entered her into household legends. The combined forces of the knights of Dol Arrah, templars of the Silver Flame, and the Karrnathi military defeated the Talons of Ice, but the terrors unleashed by the Talons set the stage for Lady Illmarrow’s later intervention into Karrnathi life.
The 9th century brought significant disruptions to Khorvaire’s economy, as a young King Jarot presided over the construction of the lightning rail lines that now crisscross Karrnath. These lines transformed rural Karrnath in unprecedented ways—both trade and information could traverse the continent in weeks rather than months. The Korranberg Chronicle established itself as the continental paper of record during this time, expanding from its traditional big-city markets into rural communities, while those rural communities could now sell their cheese and ale to the wider kingdom. These changes also launched the first true middle class in Khorvaire, as independent merchants made money facilitating these newfound connections.
The Last War
Kaius I, the third of Jarot’s five children, spent his formative years as prince of Karrnath implementing his father’s visions for a secure Galifar; he solidified his rule over the warlords, bolstered the army, and tended to the overall integrity of the realm. As his father grew late in years, he conspired with his older brother Thalin, the governor-prince of Thrane, to usurp the throne of Galifar’s line of succession from their eldest sister, Mishann, who ruled over Cyre; while he never admitted it publicly, Khorvairian scholars today generally agree that Kaius I supported Thalin’s claim insofar as it was the only path for Kaius himself to claim the Galifaran throne.
Alongside declaring Karrnath’s independence and himself King, Kaius instituted a new system of laws known as the Code of Kaius. Mandatory military service rapidly filled the ranks of Karrnath’s armies, which immediately marched on both Aundair and Cyre. The alliance with Thrane and Breland held at first, in part due to their geographic distance; no need to antagonize countries too far away to make war against anyways.
Unfortunately, the early years of the war were disastrous for Kaius’s war machine; for all his work strengthening the armies of Karrnath, chronic plagues and famine ensured they could not simply march through Aundair and Cyre as the self-appointed king had envisioned. Unbeknownst to the public at the time, Lady Illmarrow of Farlnen approached Kaius with a deal—she would bring an end to the famines and plagues so long as Kaius made the Blood of Vol the state religion and established the Order of the Emerald Claw as a knightly order. Kaius took the deal in 896 YK, but when he attempted to institute his own controls on the Order, Lady Illmarrow murdered his wife in retribution. Kaius I died in 910 YK from a mysterious illness, which was later alleged to be another consequence of his resistance to Lady Illmarrow.
In 914 YK, just four years into Kaius II’s rule, the dwarven clans united under the Iron Council and declared independence from Karrnath. Wracked by famine and plague, the Karrnathi army could not regain control of the region, and the crown was ultimately forced to diplomatically recognize the dwarven government. This humiliation also struck a blow to the nation’s war coffers, as Karrnath had long profited from dwarven taxes and the mountain’s riches.
Towards the end of Kaius II’s reign, in 956 YK, Valenar declared its independence from Cyre. While Tairnadal mercenaries had long fought Karrnath under Cyre’s banner, their new role as an independent state intensified this conflict. Battles between Karrnath and Valenar scarred the Talenta Plains, where the halflings began to realize that the tribes could not ensure peace on their lands while acting separately. Years later, Jaron, the successor to and son of Kaius II, was able to make some diplomatic inroads with High King Shaeras Vadallia of Valenar and buy off the raiders on his southern border to redirect them at Aundair and Cyre.
Jaron’s sudden death in 972 YK elevated his sister Moranna to the status of regent, as none of his heirs were of age. In 976 YK, a few years into her rule, Moranna revealed the duplicity of the Order of the Emerald Claw—that they secretly served Lady Illmarrow as their true master—and reinstated the Sovereign Host as the state religion of Karrnath. Lady Illmarrow was declared an enemy of the state, her crimes and conspiracies exposed in special editions of Karrnath’s newspapers. The various Seeker chivalric orders were disbanded, but the Order of the Emerald claw—the oldest and most powerful of them—adapted and survived as a terrorist organization, turning its talents against Moranna and her allies.
The tail end of Moranna’s reign was troubled, with the nation increasingly finding itself on the backfoot. No event represents that more than the 989 sacking of Narath, when the Aundairians razed the city to the ground. Other setbacks, both diplomatically and militarily, left Karrnath isolated and conceding territorial gains made within Cyre.
Kaius III came of age in 991 YK, assuming the throne from his aunt. His primary challenge as a new, young king was uniting a country in turmoil. Traditionally, young monarchs would secure an alliance by marrying the scion of a duke, binding that duchy to the throne; Kaius, after courting several possible pairings, instead chose to marry Etrigani, an Aereni diplomat. Despite the initial whispers amongst the nobility, Kaius and Etrigani are now considered to have been a love match, rather than some purely political ploy.
Despite the nation’s martial culture, Karrnath was a key proponent of the Treaty of Thronehold. Many of his warlords groaned and dissented, but King Kaius pushed on nonetheless, working with King Boranel and the six-year-old Keeper Jaela to persuade Queen Aurala to come to the negotiating table; once the remaining claimants to the throne of Galifar began negotiations, the other nations were plenty willing to join in. Of course, the elves of Valenar seem to have little respect for the papers they signed, with warbands continuing to attack southern Karrnath with the thinnest deniability.
Broadly speaking, how one views the territorial concessions of the treaty strongly influences one’s opinion of King Kaius III; the Mror Holds, Talenta Plains, Lhazaar Principalities, and Q’barra were all technically Karrnathi territory prior to the war, so if one views their independence as a temporary blip, then Kaius displayed weakness by formally recognizing them as nations. If those nations’ independence is seen as a true reflection of their people and history, then Kaius was recognizing objective political history rather than wish casting for the glory of an imperial past.
Source: Cultures of Karrnath
Known as the “birthplace of kings,” the nation of Karrnath was born in war. The art of war remains the birthright of every true son and daughter of the land, and it sings in their blood and their dreams. The first humans to settle the region were Lhazaar marauders. They built outposts along the barren coastline and raided the softer lands to the south. Slowly, these outposts developed into towns and cities, and the people that remained in the land were tempered by the long, harsh winters.
As the descendants of the Lhazaar raiders continued to spread out and eventually divide into five distinct nations, Karrn the Conqueror rose to power. He transformed the pirates and pillagers of his northeastern realm into a deadly army. Under his leadership, the Karrnathi forces swept the remnants of the goblinoids out of the land and made war upon the other human settlements. Karrn dreamed of ruling a vast kingdom, and in his zeal he conquered two-fifths of the human lands. In the end, no single foe defeated Karrn. Rather, he was overcome by the sheer size of Khorvaire and his own penchant for cruelty.
Karrn’s legacy remains, and most people tend to forget the atrocities and prefer to remember the accomplishments. He cleared the heartland of the human nations of the remnants of the goblinoid empire. He galvanized the people and kick-started the march to civilization. He built the greatest army of his age. And he died in a kingdom that bore his name. Centuries later, his descendant Galifar, a true son of Karrnath, would pick up Karrn’s dream and unite the Five Nations.
Galifar utilized the military power of Karrnath to forge his kingdom, and no force could stand against him. Of course, he tempered war with hope and a dream of a better society, and thus succeeded where Karrn had failed. After the Kingdom of Galifar was established, military officers from across the land trained at the Rekkenmark Academy. Military traditions and training were disseminated to the rest of the kingdom, but as a people the Karrns continued to be more dedicated to and proficient in the art of war. To this day, every citizen of Karrnath serves a term in the military, and every citizen of Karrnath practices with the local militia.
Life in Karrnath can be cold and hard, but the Karrnathi people are colder and harder. When the Last War began, the people of the land rallied behind their king. It seemed unthinkable that the other parts of the collapsing kingdom could stand against the military might of Karrnath. Better equipment and training could take the Karrns only so far, however. They underestimated the arcane weaponry of Aundair and Cyre. They underestimated the divine power of the Silver Flame that bolstered Thrane. And they failed to account for the sheer heart and determination of the Brelish people, perhaps the most underrated nation at the start of the war.
Karrnath suffered a series of embarrassing and potentially destructive setbacks, forcing King Kaius I to accept aid from the Blood of Vol. Using the necromantic arts at their disposal, the Vol priests called Karrnath’s fallen warriors back from the grave, setting the stage for the rest of the long, long war. The tireless undead troops bolstered the nation’s living soldiers and brought a sense of otherworldly terror to the battlefields. The Karrnathi undead were some of the most unusual troops deployed in battle until the creation of the warforged.
Source: Five Nations
In 894 YK, King Kaius I,
ruler of Karrnath, joined with his siblings in rejecting
Mishann of Cyre’s claim to the crown. Food shortages
and plagues quickly undermined Karrnath’s military
prowess, however, forcing the nation to use necromancy to raise undead soldiers from those fallen in
battle. These dark reinforcements came at a terrible
price, and Karrnath’s reputation suffered greatly as
a result.
Even with undead soldiers,
Karrnath continued to suffer during the war. The
perils of disease and hunger constantly loomed
over the nation, and warfare’s wreckage littered
its borders and ruined its cities. In an attempt to
reassert the power of the monarchy late in the war,
Regent Moranna and King Kaius III ended the state’s
sponsorship of the Blood of Vol religion, exiled the
extremist Order of the Emerald Claw, and reined in
wayward Karrnathi warlords. After the Mourning,
King Kaius III became one of the greatest proponents
for peace. He withdrew his undead armies, called
for ceasefires, and was instrumental in brokering the
historic Treaty of Thronehold.
Once the Five Nations reached an accord, the
king spent the following months securing the
peace. He agreed to
the exchange of royal
family members with
foreign courts as a show
of commitment. He
pressed for trade agreements with Aundair
and the Eldeen Reaches
to bring much-needed
food to his people, and
negotiated with Breland
and Thrane to form
bonds of friendship and
trade.
The Karrnathi people
take pride in their
heritage, and most social
aspects of their culture
reflect their military
traditions. Each citizen
serves for two years in
either the nation’s army
or its navy. Most soldiers
muster out, but some
go on to distinguished careers as lifelong members of Karrnath’s armed
services.
Karrnath is one of the oldest
human nations on the continent. Long before Galifar succeeded in founding his kingdom, Karrn the
Conqueror launched his own attempt at building
an empire on these lands. Karrn did not succeed,
undone by his greed, but he did father the line of the
one who would.
What freedoms the Karrnathi enjoyed before
the Last War ended with its outbreak. By necessity, King Kaius I took absolute control over the
state, consolidating power in his hands. Martial
law reigned, and the people bent their knees to the
king’s will on fear of death. The Karrnathi royal
family retains its strength with the support of the
warlords, the household heads of the nation’s nobility. The warlords raise armies and give a portion of
their revenues to the crown; these restless nobles
have been kept in line by the ruthless reputation of
their monarchs.
King Kaius III came to power
on his twentieth birthday, taking the throne from his
aunt, Lady Moranna, who ruled as regent until he
came of age. Not one to discard useful allies, Kaius
appointed Moranna chief advisor to the crown and
minister of foreign affairs. Kaius then courted and
married an elf noble named Etrigani. The queen supports the crown by acting as an emissary to foreign
lands, since Kaius rarely travels and almost never
goes beyond his kingdom’s borders
Source: Eberron Campaign Guide