Near the midpoint of the Last War, Aundair was forced to pull its defenses from the Eldeen Reaches’ rich farmland and verdant forests to protect its cities. In doing so, Aundair effectively left the folk of the west to defend themselves against the forces of Breland and the bandit armies funded by Karrnath and the Lhazaar Principalities.
Faced with bloodshed and the threat of annexation, the Wardens of the Wood raised an army of druids, rangers, and fey from the Towering Wood. With each victory, the Wardens rallied the Reachers, who quickly declared their independence. The Thronehold Accords recognized the Reaches as a nation, ensuring its independence and its place in the new balance of power.
The connection between the Reaches and Aundair is one of more than mere geography. Before Aundair abandoned these lands, the druids of the Wardens were close to the ir’Wynarn line. Even today, many Wardens have family connections across the border.
Before the Reaches’ independence, these lands were the site of a dark crusade by the Church of the Silver Flame. Half a century before the start of the Last War, an unknown evil infected the lycanthropes of the Towering Wood, stirring them to violence and driving them east to wreak chaos in settled lands. When the druids of the Reaches could not stem the bloodshed caused by the afflicted (as they were known), the Church of the Silver Flame swept across the Thrane border, invading Aundair with the intent of containing and destroying this evil. However, the Flame’s followers made no distinction between afflicted and nonafflicted lycanthropes, even going so far as to slay innocent shifters in their zeal.
The Eldeen Reaches were first settled by orcs during the height of the goblin empire of Dhakaan, and the original druidic traditions can be traced to the orcs’ attempts to live in harmony with the beauty and primal power of their land. In the aftermath of the war against the daelkyr, the ranks of the orc druids were decimated.
The effect of that ancient conflict can be seen in the Eldeen Reaches today, with aberrant creatures, demons, and other hideous abominations still stalking the darkest parts of the wood. The surviving druids named themselves the Gatekeepers and withdrew into the deep forest, taking it upon themselves to protect the powerful seals by which the daelkyr were banished from Eberron. It took the coming of humans to Khorvaire to repopulate the Reaches once more.
The humans who first settled the land east of Aundair came in search of opportunity, but more than a few found themselves drawn past the fertile farms and into the shadows of the Towering Wood. Deep within the forest, these folk heard the call of the Great Druid Oalian—a sentient greatpine who had watched over these woods for millennia. Teaching the druidic traditions to this new race, Oalian established himself as the spiritual center of this land and the leader of its guardians—the Wardens of the Wood.
Politics of the Eldeen Reaches
The Church of the Silver Flame has long served Khorvaire as a protector against supernatural forces of darkness. Amongst these is the curse of lycanthropy, which doesn't just transform the afflicted into animals - their alignment is irrevocably twisted to reflect the dark image of the wilds. A werewolf isn't just a half dog, but the embodiment of the fear of the predator stalking the night. A wererat is the bringer of plague that tears communities apart.
In the early parts of the 9th century, a templar was dispatched to the western wilds of Aundair to follow up on reports of increased lycanthrope activity. What she found was worse than she could have imagined. Villages lived in constant fear of attack by werewolves, while towns were undermined from within by wererats. Weretigers stalked the roads, picking off travelers. The nobles who owned these lands ignored the problems, happy to enjoy the court in Fairhaven while profiting off the labor of the masses.
Ieleen's report was widely distributed within the Church, scholars debating, researching, and divining what was happening. They found a change had occured sometime in the past 30 years that allowed those afflicted rather than born with the curse to also spread it. Furthermore, rather than simply devouring all of their victims, only spreading the curse to those that managed to escape, lycanthropes would intentionally capture and infect new victims to transform them. This meant rather than a lone threat in a region, one could become two, two become four, until a whole pack threatens to slaughter an entire town.
Seeing the evidence, Keeper Jolan Sol declared that lycanthropy utterly corrupted the soul, and that the afflicted could only be put to the sword and arrow. The Silver Crusade took up eager arms against the the threat in 832 YK. The fighting was hard, as even though the Church had enough knowledge to equip their templars with swords of silver, the material was still expensive and limited how many properly equipped soldiers they could deploy. While some templar commanders had studied at Rekkenmark, the relative peace of Galifar left them ill-equipped to face off against whatever dark power was responsible for this lycanthropic surge.
For the average party of templars or adventurers, the raw power of a wereboar is something to behold. However, those primitive beasts were not the true threat came from wererats. Spoiling and poisoning supplies was only the most elementary method of sabotage. Propaganda and misinformation were significantly more effective. The biggest coup from the wererats was planting evidence that shifters were being spontaneously transformed into lycanthropes by the spreading curse, and that their communities were harboring fugitive lycanthropes. The mistrust and hatred planted then linger to today, over a century later.
The conflict raged for decades, the tides of battle constantly shifting throughout. During the worst years, the lycanthropes threatened to spill out and infest all of Western khorvaire. Other, uneasy years had the templars press them back to the Towering Wood, uncertain if the victory would last. Eventually though, something changed - the curse could no longer be passed by afflicted lycanthropes.
With this, the tides shifted, leading to the final, bloodiest years. Eager for revenge, the communities of Western Aundair pressed into the Towering Woods to "eradicate the threat once and for all". They left nothing to chance, slaughtering entire villages of shifters they suspected were still harboring lycanthropes or might transform into them.
Eventually, the Church declared victory in 882 YK, fifty years after the Silver Crusade began. Many of the Knights Militant stayed behind, fulfilling their mission of protecting against the lycanthropic threat. The dwarven founder of this new order, Halagrad Doomhammer, returned to Flamekeep to take up a position on the Council of Cardinals, a position he holds to this day. Also left behind was the Pure Flame, a sect that followed Jolan Sol's original declaration to refuse the toleration of evil, bringing absolutist resistance.