Naval and Aerial Warfare
RECOVERED LOGBOOK — KNS Stormbreaker, Karrnathi icebreaker, Karrn Bay, winter 987 YK: "Fourth day locked in. Aundairian raiders hit the supply convoy off Narath last night — three galleons sunk, one captured. The bay is clear for now but we cannot get the transports out until the icebergs shift south. Every day we sit here is a day the western front does not eat. Lieutenant Hask says we are the war's most important vessel. We are carrying grain."
The Last War was fought primarily on land, but it was shaped by water and air. Control of rivers dictated the pace of campaigns. Control of the Bitter Sea determined who could resupply their northern forces through winter. And when the elemental airship finally appeared in the war's last years, it promised a dimension of mobility that ground-bound generals had never had to account for — though it arrived too late to redraw the war's outcome.
What made naval and aerial warfare distinctive in the Last War was not battlefield spectacle but logistics. The decisive moments at sea and in the sky were rarely fleet engagements. They were supply runs protected or cut off, shipyards burned or defended, and strategic corridors held by whichever nation could put forces on the water when it mattered. The sailors of Karrnath's navy often served dual purposes, transporting material as well as engaging Aundairian or Lhazaarite forces — because in the frozen north, the ship that carried the grain was the ship that decided whether the army fought or starved.
The Waterways
Rivers were not incidental features of the Last War's geography. They were its skeleton.
The Cyre River formed the primary contested border between Cyre and Karrnath, and both nations understood that controlling its crossings and transit lanes was as strategically significant as controlling any land formation. Cyre converted Dollen on the River — once one of the richest ports on Scions Sound, a city that had traded goods for inland Orien caravans for centuries — into a naval fortress specifically to secure this waterway. Shortly after the outbreak of war, the Karrnathi military sacked Dollen; when the Cyran army retook it, the crown claimed most of the city's infrastructure and transformed the entire settlement into a military installation, its vibrant commercial identity subordinated entirely to its defensive purpose.
From Dollen, the Cyran military could blockade ships heading downriver toward Karrlakton and intercept naval assaults probing south toward Metrol. The harbour's defences were built with House Cannith collaboration and represented some of the war's most creative military engineering: thundering arcane cannons that launched enormous blasts of lightning, warforged sentries stationed below the waterline to watch for Karrnathi undead infantry attempting to walk along the riverbed (a genuine tactical concern — tireless, breathless soldiers who could simply march along the bottom of a river were a Karrnathi innovation that terrified every nation with a river border), and small experimental watercraft leveraging mephits for rapid response. Castle Dollen, rebuilt several times after devastating Karrnathi raids punched holes in its defences, served less as a noble residence than as a bastion of war — its commanding position over the harbour made it too valuable to waste on comfort. The market district that had once made Dollen wealthy slowly emptied, its storefronts replaced by cheap alcohol, drugs, and the grim entertainments of soldiers far from home.
Cyre's navy — operating from Metrol's docks in Starmantle Bay, a surprisingly deep freshwater basin that sheltered the city's shipyards, including its flagship The Mishann — was a critical component of the nation's defence, because only Breland had reliable overland access into Cyre. The long river border with Karrnath was the other entry point, and Cyran artificers spent significant effort developing methods to move troops quickly across it in either direction. When the Mourning came, Dollen was one of the last cities consumed — many of its residents successfully fled across the river, only to be swiftly captured by the Karrnathi military and held as prisoners of war until the Treaty established them as refugees. Today, the harbour water has turned an unsettling shade of maroon, and the city's arcane defences — blast disks, constructs, living spells — still function in the twisted way that Mournland magic allows.
The Bitter Sea was the northern theatre, and its importance cannot be overstated. King Jarot had bolstered the armadas of both Aundair and Karrnath before his death, fearing some unknown terror might strike from the Frostfell across its waters, and those renewed navies were immediately turned on each other the moment the war began. Karrnath's primary naval infrastructure was concentrated in Narath, the duchy seat on the northwest corner of Karrnath at the mouth of Scions Sound. Narath's shipyards were the largest in the north, the product of centuries of investment stretching back to the Galifar-Lhazaar War of 28 YK — constantly processing lumber brought up from the Karrnwood into warships. Narath's people were the finest sailors in Karrnath: almost every job in the city was either at sea or in support of those who were, and the pride of being part of a unified naval effort defined the community's identity. House Cannith developed naval mines to protect Karrn Bay from Aundairian raids during the winter months, while shallow-hulled vessels ferried crew and cargo between anchored ships and the town of Ice when icebergs made open-water transit impossible. Adamantine-hulled icebreaker ships, developed during King Jarot's reign, could keep the seaways clear even in the worst winters.
In 989 YK, Aundair landed assault forces and razed Narath entirely. The Burning of Narath was not the war's most infamous atrocity — Karrnath's razing of Shadukar earlier that same year was fouler and struck a more populous city — but it was among the clearest demonstrations of how completely naval targets had become legitimate objectives of total war. The magically enhanced arcane fire from Aundair spread faster than the population could flee through the city's wooden buildings, burning military and civilian infrastructure without distinction and killing tens of thousands. A shipyard was not a military installation in the traditional sense. It was a production node, and destroying it was destroying years of future capacity.
Karrnath never fully recovered Narath. On the Day of Mourning, the city's Fernian manifest zone tore open, releasing salamanders — a free group led by a noble whose Ignan name roughly translates to Brightlance — who now occupy the scorched downtown and harbour. Karrnathi scholars blame the Aundairian war magic for weakening the ethereal veil that separated the city from the plane of fire, but whatever the cause, the port is currently unusable. Warlord Renn ir'Tanar gazes from Castle Narath at a harbour he cannot reclaim and a fire that will not go out, planning for the day when the Fernian rift closes and he can take his city back.
"I was twelve when the fire came. My father ran the chandlery on the harbour road. He told my mother to take me to the boats and he went back for the ledgers. Every chandler keeps their ledgers. He did not come back. The ledgers did not come back. The harbour road is not there anymore." — Narath survivor, now resident of Korth
House Lyrandar and the Politics of the Sea
Elemental galleons — water-elemental-powered vessels operated exclusively by Lyrandar pilots bearing the Mark of Storm — were the backbone of reliable sea transport throughout the war. Travelling at roughly ten miles per hour regardless of wind or current, they were faster and more consistent than conventional sailing ships. A dragonmarked heir of House Lyrandar piloted each vessel through the wheel of wind and water, the ornate carved wheel mounted at the helm that allowed a bearer of the Mark of Storm to telepathically command the bound elemental. Without such a pilot, controlling an elemental vessel was extremely difficult — requiring either a DC 20 Charisma check to cajole or intimidate the elemental into one minute of cooperation, or outright magical domination.
This dependence on dragonmarked pilots made elemental galleons simultaneously irreplaceable and politically complicated. Lyrandar's official position was neutrality; in practice, the house sold its logistical services to every nation that could pay. The loss of a single galleon — whether to enemy action, sabotage, or the political seizure of a house enclave — could cascade through an entire supply chain. Nations learned quickly that attacking Lyrandar vessels directly was inadvisable; the house had relationships with every belligerent and could simply withdraw services from any nation that made itself too costly to work with. This gave Lyrandar an unusual form of power: not military strength but logistical indispensability, the ability to threaten a nation not with force but with absence.
The Lhazaar Principalities occupied the other end of this maritime economy. The finest sailors in Khorvaire, the Lhazaar served all nations as privateers during the Last War and engaged in piracy on the side. Individual princes made their own arrangements with whichever nation offered the best terms; the confederacy's loose structure meant that two Lhazaar principalities might be on opposite sides of the same conflict. The Bloodsail Principality, under Prince Shaen Tasil, was an early and solid Karrnathi ally — acting under Lady Illmarrow's orders to ensure dominance in the Bitter Sea. When Regent Moranna exposed Illmarrow's influence and denounced her in 976 YK, the Bloodsails turned against Karrnath, contesting the northeastern channels that connected the Bitter Sea to the Lhazaar Sea. This shift opened those channels to other Lhazaar princes, many of whom found that warm relations with Kaius and his warlords were far more profitable than piracy — or at least, profitable in addition to piracy.
Karrnath also leveraged its sea capacity to sustain a strategic relationship that the war had created by accident. After the Eldeen Reaches seceded from Aundair in 958 YK, Karrnathi warships spent the latter decades of the war protecting food shipments across the Bitter Sea from the Reaches — grain and provisions that kept Karrnath fed through its famines — while in return providing arms that fuelled the secession effort that had crippled its Aundairian enemy. The Bitter Sea was not merely a theatre of war; it was the mechanism by which two politically misaligned nations — one a martial autocracy, the other a druidic federation — maintained a supply relationship that neither could do without. Today, the people of the Reaches are more interested in fine goods such as Karrnathi glass than arms, but the trade routes endure and both nations watch carefully for signs of Aundairian aggression.
House Cannith and House Lyrandar collaborated on at least one submersible prototype during the war. The project is believed lost in the Mourning, though Cyre's surviving Admiral Qasim — who now advises Prince Oargev in landlocked New Cyre, personally frustrated by her exile from the sea — disagrees and has been trying to fund recovery expeditions ever since.
FROM THE KORRANBERG CHRONICLE — Maritime Affairs, 996 YK: "House Lyrandar reminds all parties that attacks on elemental galleons bearing house colours constitute attacks on neutral commerce and will result in the immediate suspension of all Lyrandar logistical services to the offending nation. This policy remains in effect regardless of military circumstances. Lyrandar makes no exceptions."
Flying Mounts
Aerial cavalry preceded airships by the entire length of the war, and it never stopped being strategically important even after the first airships appeared. Most flying mounts were bred and trained by House Vadalis, which — like House Cannith with its weapons — supplied all sides.
Hippogriffs were the most common Vadalis flying mount, versatile enough to bear a single archer or wandslinger, and virtually every nation used them in some capacity. Griffons, tougher and larger, could carry a strike team into the middle of a fight and battle alongside their passengers. Pegasi were exceptional mounts, but rare and impossible to force into service; Breland maintained one of the only elite pegasi forces in Khorvaire, trained at the House Vadalis enclave in Sharn. The Mror Holds contributed manticore cavalry — many Mror clans had established relationships with the creatures, and House Kundarak was particularly known for its manticore riders. Countless other animals — glidewings, giant hawks, giant eagles, giant owls — saw service in various capacities, a diversity reflected today in Sharn's annual Race of Eight Winds.
The national specialisations mattered most. Thrane's nobles had kept wyvern stables since before Galifar, and wyvern cavalry was synonymous with Thrane's aerial presence throughout the war. A griffon or wyvern could carry several riders, and Thrane pioneered the use of bags of holding on flying mounts — a deceptively simple innovation that allowed a wyvern rider to carry far more blast disks, or simply far more large heavy objects, than was physically possible and to drop ordnance on positions below with devastating effect. A single wyvern rider with a bag of holding full of stone blocks could shatter an infantry formation as effectively as a siege staff, and with considerably less warning.
Aundair's dragonhawks — creatures similar to giant eagles, adopted as the national symbol generations before the war — formed the foundation of Aundairian aerial doctrine. Dragonhawk squadrons excelled at hit-and-withdraw attacks from altitude, and Aundair was infamous for dragonhawk squads equipped with cloudkill disks that could deny entire positions to the enemy with a single pass. Later in the conflict, Queen Aurala and her consort Sasik d'Vadalis established Project Dragonhawk, a cooperative venture between the Arcane Congress and House Vadalis that permanently transformed volunteers into aarakocra with dragonhawk features — a programme whose full potential was never realised before the war's end. Aundair was also the only nation to field actual squads of broom riders in battle; other nations duplicated this on a smaller scale for scouts and spies, but could not match Aundair's commitment to organised aerial deployment.
Gargoyles served as scouts and couriers across multiple nations. Harpies, whose disruptive effects on troop formations were documented early in the conflict, were never widely integrated into doctrine because House Tharashk only began brokering Droaam's monstrous services in 988 YK — too late for any nation to build operational practice around them, though several nations are still exploring how to exploit these capabilities.
Aerial cavalry excelled at reconnaissance, supply-line interdiction, command-post strikes, and harassment of formations in broken terrain. The wyvern raids that struck Rekkenmark — fragmentary references describe Thrane wyvern attacks that corroborate accounts of the White Arch Bridge's destruction by saboteurs — demonstrate how aerial units were used not just in pitched battle but to pressure strategic infrastructure far from the front lines, in ways that ground-based defenders could not easily answer.
THRANE WYVERN RIDER'S FIELD PRAYER — traditional, pre-sortie: "Silver arrow, silver wing — carry me above the reach of fear. If I must fall, let me fall like the arrow: aimed true, spent in service, and pointed at the dark."
The Airship
The elemental airship changed the conception of what aerial warfare could be, but it had almost no time to change how the war was actually fought.
The first airships emerged from Cannith and Zilargo workshops and entered House Lyrandar's service in 990 YK — only four years before the Mourning. They required a Lyrandar pilot channelling the Mark of Storm through a wheel of wind and water, the ornately carved helm that allowed telepathic communication with the bound elemental. A standard airship resembled an oceangoing vessel but was rigged with control fins and rudders rather than sails, with an air or fire elemental bound into a ring around the hull and suspended on four struts jutting outward. The soarwood hull provided buoyancy independent of the elemental, meaning a suppressed elemental left the vessel aloft but unable to move — the pilot always suppressed the elemental before docking, using ropes to manoeuvre into position. A typical airship could reach twenty miles per hour in clear skies carrying up to thirty tons of cargo. At least two pilots typically travelled on every journey, since controlling the vessel without the benefit of conductor stones required constant attention. Skilled pilots could execute acrobatic manoeuvres — airships could fly equally well on their sides or even inverted, though the risks to passengers and unsecured cargo made this inadvisable under most circumstances.
Airships could not land. The struts holding the elemental ring protruded ten feet below the hull, making ground contact impossible. Loading and unloading required docking towers in major cities or rope ladders in the field — a limitation that constrained their military utility and made every docking tower a strategic chokepoint.
Production was constrained by soarwood, a buoyant timber found only on Aerenal, harvested under strict limits set by the elves who controlled it. Demand vastly exceeded supply. Every nation wanted airships. Almost none could get enough of them. The discovery of a new supply of soarwood would change the shape of Khorvairian politics overnight — and convincing the Aereni to increase their harvest would be an achievement worth a handsome reward from House Lyrandar.
Lyrandar was initially reluctant to devote its vessels to purely military service. The commercial and political risks of losing an airship — each one effectively irreplaceable given the soarwood constraint — made the house cautious about combat deployments. It was only in 994 YK, the same year as the Mourning, that Lyrandar produced a small number of "stormships" specifically configured for military use. The war ended before this capability could be developed into doctrine.
What the airship promised — bypassing fortified terrain, extracting personnel from inaccessible positions, delivering strike forces behind enemy lines — was real. It was also never fully tested in the Last War. What nations are now doing is preparing for the next one: studying what airships could do, building docking towers, attempting to convince Aerenal to increase its soarwood harvest, and in at least one case — the Wind Whisperer Principality among the Lhazaar — pursuing airship acquisition by any means available.
"Eight years. Eight years since the first airship flew, and already every prince in Lhazaar with a boat and a dream is trying to get one. They can't build them — no soarwood. They can't steal them — Lyrandar won't sell to anyone who robs them. But somebody's going to figure it out. Somebody always does." — Lyrandar dockmaster, Stormhome
Floating Fortresses
Breland's contribution to aerial warfare was not the airship but something different in kind: the floating fortress.
The largest engines of war ever built — a product of House Cannith ingenuity and Brelish industrial capacity — floating fortresses were mobile platforms housing thousands of soldiers that could be deployed to any threatened border without the logistical preparation a conventional siege train required. They could not be out-manoeuvred the way a fixed fortification could. They arrived without warning. They brought their own garrison. Where an army marching overland needed weeks of supply preparation and left a trail of intelligence for enemy scouts to follow, a floating fortress simply appeared on the horizon — and by the time your scouts reported it, the fortress had already deployed its forces.
The floating fortresses demonstrated a principle that the airship would eventually extend: in a war where every nation had invested deeply in fixed defences, mobility was a strategic asymmetry that could not be answered by building taller walls. A force that could appear where it was not expected, strike, and reposition had an advantage that defensive preparation could never fully neutralise.
In the present day, Argonth — the last surviving floating fortress — patrols the edge of the Mournland. It is a relic of a kind of war that ended without a victor, keeping watch over a wasteland that no one is currently trying to cross and that everyone is trying to understand. If tensions with Droaam or Darguun escalate, the fortress can be redeployed within days. For now, it waits — a city of soldiers with nothing left to besiege, the most powerful weapon in Breland's arsenal pointed at a wound in the world that no weapon can close.
