One night in Olarune of 299 YK, the settlers and farmers of Thrane saw dark clouds gathering over the Tamor Hills. A ruddy glow rose from a fissure in the hills. Those who explored the chasm did not return. As months passed, fiends and bloodthirsty beasts crawled out of the fissure and threatened the land. The Year of Blood and Fire was a time of great terror, but it was also a time of inspiration. The holy warrior Tira Miron gathered priests and soldiers to fight against the darkness. Armed with a singular vision, she ultimately confronted the evil forces within the Tamor Gap, binding their fiendish lord and transforming its dark fl ame to a font of silver light. Through her sacrifice, she became a spiritual vessel for the Silver Flame, a conduit through which it could touch the souls of others.
Many in Thrane see the Year of Blood and Fire as a turning point. Inspired by Tira’s sacrifice and guided by her spirit, Thranes destroyed or drove off the remaining fiends. The common folk turned to the new church in droves, and the citadel of Flamekeep was soon established. The Church of the Silver Flame spread across Khorvaire, but Thrane remained its heart. The good people of Thrane had seen the horror of unrestrained evil, and they were determined to stand against that darkness. At times, this missionary zeal spun out of control. Queen Joliana’s fervor for the Flame nearly shattered the kingdom of Galifar centuries before the death of Jarot. However, most of the followers of the Flame have shown tolerance toward those who pursue other faiths, saving their strength to battle inhuman and supernatural evil.
If the Year of Blood and Fire was the first major turning point in the history of Thrane, the second was surely the death of King Thalin. The Council of Cardinals had grown in power and infl uence, and Thalin’s heir, Prince Daslin, was seen as weak. Above all, the nation was at war. It took little effort on the part of the cardinals to convince the people to raise the church above the throne, and Daslin himself acceded to the demand without a struggle. In 914 YK, Thrane officially embraced the Church of the Silver Flame as its ruling body, becoming the first true theocracy in Khorvaire.
While a few archbishops and cardinals crave personal power, most believe that the rule of the Flame is best for Thrane and for Khorvaire. This uncompromising zeal made it difficult for Thrane to form lasting alliances during the Last War, but the resolve of its clerics and paladins allowed the nation to hold its own even when beset from all sides. The new Keeper of the Flame, Jaela Daran, does not believe that war within Khorvaire serves the goals of the Church. However, many knights and cardinals still yearn to see a new Galifar united under the Silver Flame. And in the shadows of the court, the symbolic queen, Diani ir’Wynarn, looks back on the history of her family and dreams of returning her line to the throne.
Royals of Thrane
For the better part of a thousand years, the scions of King Galifar I—all members of the royal Wynarn bloodline—ruled Thrane. The children of Galifar’s ruling sovereign were always first in line to govern the Five Nations. Occasionally, as happens when there are fewer suitable heirs, governorship of Thrane fell to trusted regents drawn from other parts of the family.
As with the other Five Nations, Thrane was administered by the governor-princes as part of the Kingdom of Galifar from the founding of the kingdom until 894 YK. In that year, as the struggle for the crown that caused the Last War escalated, Thrane broke from the kingdom and declared itself an independent monarchy under the rule of King Thalin. Thalin, like many of the Thrane-based ir’Wynarns, was a devoted follower of the Silver Flame. He broke with tradition in order to exercise what he saw as his divine right to the Galifar crown. With the kingdom under his control, he could elevate the Silver Flame to its proper position as the one true religion of the land and the people. In many ways, it was Thalin’s zealous faith that led to the next stage in Thrane’s history.
Thrane remained a monarchy until 914 YK, when it became a theocracy governed by the Church of the Silver Flame. At that time, temporal and spiritual power fell to the Council of Cardinals and the Keeper of the Flame. Although the Wynarn line in Thrane continues to appoint blood regents (eldest scions of the royal family), these scions are merely figureheads without any temporal power.
Source: Five Nations
The spirit of the Silver Flame took hold of the hearts and souls of the people of Thrane seven hundred years ago, and this religious fervor remains the driving force behind the nation. Thrane was one of the original Five Nations founded by the human settlers of Khorvaire; the culture and heritage of the region goes back millennia. It was absorbed into the Kingdom of Galifar and remained a pillar of that celebrated kingdom for almost a thousand years. While the rest of the Five Nations followed the tenets of the Sovereign Host, a new religion found life in Thrane before spreading far and wide across Khorvaire. In the wake of the Last War, Thrane stands as a theocracy devoted to the Silver Flame.
Thrane ir’Wynarn, third scion of King Galifar I, was appointed to oversee the nation that would eventually carry his name shortly after his father united the kingdom. As with the other nations, the name was changed to match that of its regent by popular decree in 32 YK. Thrane, and the greater kingdom to which it belonged, prospered as the decades grew into centuries.
In 299 YK, the event that started the religion of the Silver Flame took place. In that year, a terrible eruption split the ground and a great pillar of crimson fire emerged from the resulting chasm. No one understood the significance of the blazing column of flame, but most who dared approach it felt unrelenting malevolence in its radiating heat.
Tira Miron, a paladin dedicated to Dol Arrah, received a powerful vision about this strange fire while exploring the western reaches of the realm. In her vision, a great rainbow-winged serpent warned her that a terrible evil was emerging in the east, riding crimson fire from the depths of Khyber itself. Tira rallied the forces of Thrane and defeated the dark creatures that had come to venerate the crimson fire and help free the malevolent entity trapped within its flames. With her great sword Kloinjer, its pommel capped with a Khyber dragonshard, Tira turned to face the emerging demon just as the great serpent with the rainbow-feathered wings of her vision appeared and dove headfirst into the fire. Tira watched as the serpent and the demon struggled in the flames. The battle within the fire seemed to last for an eternity, and as she watched the demon began to overcome the serpent. Horrified, she saw the demon strike a crippling blow. The serpent, calling on its last reserves of power, encircled the demon and buried its fangs into the fiend’s fiery throat. At the same moment, it sent a mental plea to Tira, and the paladin didn’t hesitate. She leaped into the fire, plunging Kloinjer through the writhing serpent and deep into the demon’s flesh.
Then, the legend says, a powerful explosion rocked the entire kingdom of Galifar. The hot crimson fire became a cool silver flame. Tira remained within, now part of the divine fire that had replaced the evil conflagration. She became the Voice of the Silver Flame, and a new religion was born. Flamekeep, a simple stone castle, was erected around the everburning pillar of silver fire. Deep within the chasm, at the point where the fire erupts from the earth, it is said that mighty Kloinjer’s blade is buried almost to the hilt, binding demon, serpent, and paladin together forever.
In time, the castle became a cathedral, and a city grew around it. By 400 YK, the Church of the Silver Flame was the dominant religion in Thrane. The Sovereign Host, accepting of most faiths, saw the Silver Flame as just another expression of the divine pantheon on Eberron. The Silver Flame, on the other hand, tolerated the Host but had little love for faiths that didn’t accept the cleansing light of the Silver Flame.
Over the centuries, the kings and queens of Galifar, and their sons and daughters who governed the Thrane realm, have had a mixed relationship with the faith of the Silver Flame. As the Thrane people began to turn to this faith in droves, the royal family was forced to accept the Church of the Silver Flame as a force within the kingdom. Early on, they tried to restrict it to Thrane, but the faithful were zealous, and missionaries soon appeared to bring word of the Silver Flame to the rest of Khorvaire. More than one scion over the centuries, while governing in Thrane, adopted the faith. One particularly dark episode occurred in 558 YK, when Queen Joliana reached the throne after serving as Thrane’s regent. She was a devoted follower of the Silver Flame, and decided that under her rule all of Galifar would accept the Silver Flame as the one true religion. A few bloody clashes almost led to civil war before Joliana died suddenly and mysteriously before the second year of her reign had ended.
When Jarot died and the scions broke with tradition and started the Last War, Thalin of Thrane saw another opportunity to spread the Silver Flame to the entire kingdom. While the other scions had more personal or philosophical reasons for refusing to honor the traditional rights of succession, Thalin believed that he had a divine right to the crown. This tendency on the part of Thrane to place itself above the rest of the shattered kingdom led to some of the most terrible battles of the Last War.
In 914 YK, with the death of King Thalin, Thrane’s people rejected Thalin’s heir’s claim to the throne and turned to the Church of the Silver Flame for leadership. Thrane became a theocracy. The Keeper of the Flame, the head of the Church of the Silver Flame, took control of the temporal as well as the spiritual reins of the nation. This turn of events has led to tensions that go beyond the nation’s borders, as the leaders of the remaining Five Nations see the mingling of church with crown as unnatural and potentially dangerous to their own plans and ambitions.
Today, Jaela Daran serves as the Keeper of the Flame. She assumed power when she was six years old, identified by the Silver Flame as the successor to the church’s previous Keeper. Now eleven years old, Jaela helped guide Thrane through the peace talks and has developed into a caring and forceful leader despite her young age. It isn’t unusual for a Keeper so young to be selected, but it hasn’t happened since the nation became a theocracy.
War remains a primary preoccupation for the nation of Thrane. To Jaela’s advisors and the other leaders within the theocracy, the current peace presents a chance to rest and prepare for future conflict. Until all nations have accepted the Silver Flame, there will always be enemies at their borders waiting to exploit the first show of weakness or hesitation. Jaela believes that, with the exception of wiping out true evil, war is a futile endeavor. The Silver Flame doesn’t call for war; indeed, she believes that the Flame is saddened by the conflict that has pitted brother against brother. Her power within the theocracy isn’t as ironclad as some believe, however, and she has learned to negotiate her course carefully and with much deliberation. As long as most of the spiritual and secular leaders of Thrane want war, the best Jaela can hope to accomplish is to delay the start for another day, week, or year.
Source: ECS
That Thrane survived the Last War more or less intact is a testament to the power of the Church of the Silver Flame. Over twenty years after the war started, pious King Thalin’s death left Thrane at the center of a raging storm, with enemies to all sides. Faced with internal strife, Prince Daslin renounced his claim to the throne. The church was forced to step forward and guide the nation through the war. As a result, the people fought for more than just their homes and lands—they fought for faith. Their conviction gave them the strength to soldier on no matter the odds.
Divorcing the church’s history from the nation’s is impossible—their stories are too tightly bound. The province of Thrane, like its sister realms, came to be when Thrane ir’Wynarn, King Galifar I’s third son, assumed power as regent and ruler. For three centuries, Thrane grew in power and influence, benefiting from its proximity to Thronehold and its position as Galifar’s crossroads of culture and commerce.
At the close of the third century, an ancient lord of darkness called Bel Shalor broke free from his bonds and emerged from Khyber, spawning monstrous threats upon the land and spreading misery and death. As the church’s history recounts, the paladin Tira Miron heard the call of the ancient light that had long imprisoned the demons and responded to the challenge, leading a band of heroes to the site where Flamekeep now stands to battle the monstrous tide and face the burgeoning evil. Facing the fiendish overlord, Tira allowed herself to become a vessel for the Flame, sacrificing her own life to defeat the mighty fiend. A fountain of silver flame marks the site of her sacrifice and ascension, and her example inspired a new religion . . . perhaps the greatest religion ever formed on Khorvaire.
From these noble origins grew the Church of the Silver Flame. Word spread throughout Thrane and beyond, bringing the curious and the skeptical to behold its power. Those who witnessed the shining beacon were transformed, adding their numbers to the growing movement, until the church’s power and influence could not be ignored. Tira Miron lives on in spirit as the Voice of the Flame, revered by all who follow the faith.
As the church grew, so too did its hold on Thrane’s royal scions until the regents came to see themselves as the ultimate champions of the faith. When Galifar broke into disparate nations following King Jarot’s death, Thalin declared himself King of Thrane and seized the opportunity to extend the church throughout the dying kingdom, to become head of a grand empire devoted to the Silver Flame. His zealotry plunged Thrane into war and set the tone for its fanaticism throughout the Last War.
Upon Thalin’s death, the crown was to pass to his heir, Prince Daslin. The people rose up against the prince, whom most deemed weak and unworthy. At the urging of the masses, the church stepped forward, assuming both temporal and spiritual leadership of the state. Intimidated by the church’s authority and fearing a bloody civil war if he didn’t step aside, Daslin surrendered his claim to the crown, ceding all authority to the Keeper of the Flame, the mortal who serves as titular head of the church.
During the Last War, the royal heirs remained loyal but lost any vestige of power and became nothing more than symbols. The current blood regent is Diani ir’Wynarn, and she often appears alongside the Keeper of the Flame to show solidarity with the church.
Members of the old nobility retained their holdings as long as they supported the church. Those nobles who did so continued to rule as they had before the theocracy. Those who resisted lost everything, including, in some cases, their lives.
Thrane abides by the Thronehold Accords, and the church’s young Keeper of the Flame is not eager to see her people victimized in another war. Even so, extremist elements among the nation’s leaders seek to channel rebuilding resources to Thrane’s military, to establish a new Galifar with the church at its head.
Secret Knowledge: Queen Diani is a dutiful follower of the faith in the public, but secretly she covets the power she believes is hers by right. Diani stands at the center of a royalist conspiracy, forging bonds with likeminded citizens and brokering with foreign nations to gain their assistance in ousting the church from power
Source: ECG
Western Khorvaire’s known history begins with the Dhakaani Empire, which started in what is now modern Droaam but stretched north to the shores of the Bitter Sea. United by Jhazaal Dhakaan’s dream, the empire only fell after the Kapaa’vola—the Daelkyr’s curse—severed the dar’s connection to Dal Quor. Even after the fall of Dhakaan, goblinoid civilization persisted in Khorvaire, but this wasa chaotic time where cults and other supernatural forces conspired against imperial efforts. The ruins and records from this era are not nearly as well preserved as those from Dhakaan, and modern scholars are still working to understand the details of these cultures and governments.
Three thousand years ago, Lhazaar, an explorer from Sarlona, initiated a wave of human immigration to Khorvaire. Over the following two hundred years, humans explored the coastlines of Khorvaire, encountering goblin civilizations that were founded long after the fall of the Dhakaani Empire. These civilizations were manifold but not unified, vulnerable to conquest by human barbarians. Within five hundred years of Lhazaar’s arrival in Khorvaire, the human city-states of Thaliost, Daskara, and Korth were founded in close proximity to Scions Sound.
Over the next five hundred years (-1500 YK to -1000 YK), Daskara was able to expand southwards, asserting control over the human communities that had begun to till the rich fields they had seized in violent conflict. This preGalifaran kingdom of Daskara devoutly followed the Pyrinean creed, justifying their bloody bounty through their devotion to the Sovereign Host. Arawai tended the fields, while Dol Arrah guided righteous blades against the goblins that were constantly being pushed out of expanding human kingdoms.
The kingdom of Daskara’s relative stability as a loose kingdom that ultimately paid tribute to the northern capitol, Daskara was severely tested when the human Karrn the Conqueror pushed west after claiming the neighboring kingdom of Metrol. Recognizing a common interest, the kingdom of Daskara joined with its northern and southern neighbors to repel Karrn. However, when Galifar arrived a thousand years later, no such alliance formed to repel him, and the Kingdom of Galifar was formed with Daskara renamed to honor Galifar’s middle child, Thrane.
Thrane’s history was immediately marked by the rampage of the rogue red dragon Sarmondelaryx in 22 YK. She killed Prince Thrane and his army of Dol Arrah knights, razed the Shadukar peninsula (giving the forest that regrew there its current name—the Burnt Wood), then disappeared.
In the year 299 YK, the Year of Blood and Fire turned the religious institutions of Thrane against its people— paladins of Dol Arrah launched bloody inquisitions, Kol Korran’s merchants grew greedy, and the overall social order collapsed under the influence of the ancient overlord Bel Shalor. Fortunately, one brave and valiant paladin, the heroic Tira Miron, formed a party of champions and was able to renew the bindings upon Bel Shalor through her sacrifice. Her companion Maliah Sharavaci then founded the first Church of the Silver Flame at the site of Tira’s sacrifice, which eventually grew into the city of Flamekeep. The failure of the knights of Dol Arrah to stop Sarmondelaryx as well as Bel Shalor had shattered the people of Thrane’s faith in the sovereigns, leading to the mass adoption of the Church of the Silver Flame as the preferred religion—one that wielded real, manifest power for the explicit purpose of protecting the innocent from supernatural evil.
While not taking place within Thrane, the Silver Crusade of the ninth century prepared the nation for the Last War. Keeper Jolan Sol formally declared the crusade in response to the rising threat of werewolves and other lycanthropes out of the Towering Wood; while the attacks were never felt in Thrane, many Thranish templars gained valuable military experience in the conflict. It was this military experience that gave Prince Thalin and his advisors the confidence to challenge his father, King Jarot’s, wishes and ignite the succession crisis that became the Last War.
Thrane’s modern form didn’t truly come into being until early in the Last War, when King Thalin died in 914 YK. Thalin’s son, Daslin, was perceived to simply be a lesser version of his father, lacking the “true piety” necessary to lead the nation. Several Thranish generals rallied popular support against the prince, privately fearing that he did not want to continue the war his father had started. Daslin’s coronation was successfully delayed for several months by protests in Flamekeep, creating a broad question of who would next lead the nation if not wouldbe King Daslin. Keeper Kaith Serrain jumped on the opportunity, declaring that Daslin would be crowned as a “Blood Regent,” with the church assuming the powers of the state. Church leaders successfully shifted public opinion to see the nobility who governed the nation as compromising the mission of the church, allowing local ministers to supplant the counts and barons of Thrane. Keeper Serrain’s carefully executed, bloodless coup successfully gave the Church of the Silver Flame access to new resources and responsibilities without instigating a civil war that could’ve torn Thrane apart even as war between Galifar’s provinces tore the empire apart.
This decision was extraordinarily controversial outside of Thrane, triggering waves of suspicion and resentment against followers of the Church as their national loyalties were questioned. The church in Stormreach went so far as to formally denounce the theocracy, leading Keeper Serrain to excommunicate the Stormreach church in return. The Church of the Silver Flame’s sovereignty over Thrane has continued to the present day— it has fully replaced all governmental functions that used to be provided by the nobility.
Source: Cultures of Thrane