Aundair intersperses pastoral farmlands between densely populated cities, the landscape shifting between the vast vineyards of Bluevine and the glittering towers of its urban centers. Magic permeates Aundairian life more thoroughly than in any other nation — cleansing stones in common households, animated farming equipment in the fields, cosmetic transmutation shops where a beautician can change your hair to metallic gold for a week's wages. The locations below represent the most significant sites in the kingdom, though every Aundairian village has its own quiet magic and its own conviction that it does things better than the village next door.
Fairhaven is one of the most beautiful cities in Eberron and the undisputed cultural heart of Aundair — a capital that earned the name the City of Lights for the stunning displays of magical illumination that enhance its exquisite stonework throughout every district and season. Most buildings are brick or worked stone with wood used selectively, everything tending toward a light, airy appearance with ornamentation that suggests the nation's soaring self-regard. Even by Aundairian standards, Fairhaven's architecture is deliberate: this is a city designed to make visitors feel that they have arrived somewhere that takes beauty seriously and expects them to notice.
The University of Wynarn is the oldest university established in the Five Nations and remains Fairhaven's most prestigious institution. Its rivalry with Morgrave University in Sharn is legendary — Wynarn administrators have been known to refer to Morgrave as an "institute of learning, relic hunting, and grave robbing," a barb that stings all the more because Morgrave is somehow more famous despite being less respected. The University's Museum of Antiquities houses treasures from across Khorvaire's history, and its faculty include some of the continent's leading scholars in history, law, and arcane theory.
Fairhold, the royal palace, is Queen Aurala's seat of power and the center of Aundair's ceremonial and diplomatic life. The queen hosts foreign envoys, noble councils, and Arcane Congress deliberations from here. The Royal Eyes of Aundair — the kingdom's divination-specialist intelligence service — maintain their base of operations within the palace complex, extending Aurala's reach across Khorvaire through arcane espionage.
Aundairian culture is sharpened by rivalry and ambition in ways that make Fairhaven a politically charged environment even in peacetime. Nobles engage in quiet competition for court position; bureaucrats wield influence as precisely as spells; and nothing is ever quite as transparent as it appears. Accomplished spellcasters append their school and circle to their titles — a noble might be introduced as "Alara ir'Lain, Countess of Askelios, Diviner of the Fourth Circle" — and social gatherings often double as demonstrations of arcane sophistication.
No Cyran ambassador currently maintains an embassy in Fairhaven — the ambassador and her family reside in the House Cannith enclave in Passage while questions of legitimacy among surviving Cyran nobility remain unresolved.
The floating towers of Arcanix rise above Lake Galifar, adjacent to a farming village that provides food for the scholars in the sky — a combination of pastoral simplicity and arcane grandeur that captures something essential about Aundair. The towers serve as home to the Arcane Congress, a cutting-edge research facility and the finest school of magic in Khorvaire. Its members oversee magical research, advise the queen on arcane matters, and confer with visiting scholars from other nations. Apprentices come from across the continent to train here; if you're a wizard, sage, or artificer, you might have learned your craft at Arcanix.
The Congress's sages primarily specialize in ritual magic and abstract theory rather than practical combat applications — the distinction that separates Arcanix from the military orientation of Rekkenmark Academy. Most of these sages don't have the full powers of wizards; they are scholars and researchers, not battlemages, and many are limited to casting their spells as rituals. Queen Aurala's Arcane Initiative has directed significant crown investment into the Congress in the postwar period, pushing it toward more advanced battle magic research while preserving its broader scholarly mandate — a development that has not gone unnoticed by Aundair's neighbors.
Some Aundairian noble lines are bound by arcane pacts handed down through generations, many with Archfey patrons. Only remarkable heirs — the kind who become player characters — develop into full warlocks. For most, the pact is a family tradition that manifests as a sensitivity to the Feywild rather than raw power. The concentration of such bloodlines around Arcanix and its Thelanian resonances is not coincidental.
The floating nature of the towers, the weather patterns of Lake Galifar, and the sheer density of arcane energy within the facility make Arcanix a place of genuine wonder and occasional danger. Access is restricted. Its influence is everywhere.
Passage sits on the shores of Lake Galifar and functions as Aundair's logistical heart — the headquarters of House Orien, Khorvaire's master of land transportation. The city contains production and maintenance facilities for the lightning rail and the Orien caravan networks. Baron Kwanti d'Orien's leadership is formally headquartered here, though he spends most of his time away from Passage working to secure funding for the lightning rail reconstruction around the Mournland — the severing of the central rail lines by the Day of Mourning being the most significant logistical catastrophe of the postwar period. House Orien's problems are compounded by the expanding role of Lyrandar airships, which are steadily eroding the house's dominant position in continental transit. The house is pursuing joint research with House Cannith to develop more accessible long-distance teleportation capacity — a technology that, if perfected, would reshape commerce across the continent.
Passage carries strategic importance beyond logistics. The city is a major crossroads for postwar Khorvaire, and intelligence agencies of every nation have established footholds here. The Cyran ambassador to Aundair currently resides in the House Cannith enclave in Passage rather than maintaining an embassy in Fairhaven — a diplomatic limbo reflecting the unresolved status of Cyran sovereignty. For anyone passing through Aundair by rail or road, Passage is the point where routes converge and information changes hands.
Stormhome is an island city and the seat of House Lyrandar — technically within Aundair's borders, but governed by the house under terms that give it near-sovereign autonomy. Aurala grants Lyrandar free rein in governing the isle in exchange for the commercial and transportation advantages the house provides. Lyrandar wizards use magic to continuously alter Stormhome's weather, transforming what would otherwise be a bleak, storm-blasted location into the finest resort and vacation destination in Khorvaire — a temperate island paradise maintained by constant arcane intervention.
Beneath the leisure surface, Stormhome is a hotbed of clandestine activity. Spies, charlatans, sailors, diplomats, and house agents of every affiliation pass through; the combination of luxury, discretion, and genuine jurisdictional ambiguity makes it ideal for meetings and transactions that cannot occur in the official capitals. The Windwrights Guild operates from here, coordinating Lyrandar's maritime and airship operations across the continent. The house treats Stormhome as sovereign ground. The crown treats that status delicately.
Though the island escaped the physical devastation wrought during the Last War, it did not escape the war's political residue. Every major power in Khorvaire maintains some form of presence here, and the resort's genteel atmosphere conceals more active intelligence operations than any comparable venue on the continent.
Thaliost was once a jewel of Aundair's eastern territories — an ancient city with ties to Aundairian identity stretching back to the founding of the kingdom, when Galifar I renamed the old nation of Thaliost as Aundair after his daughter. Thrane seized it during the Last War; the Treaty of Thronehold ratified the occupation. Aundairian maps still refuse to reassign its borders. Queen Aurala continues to describe it as occupied Aundairian territory. Most Aundairians share her fury.
Thrane placed Archbishop Solgar Dariznu — an Aundairian and a leader of the Pure Flame sect — in charge of the city. The Pure Flame is the extremist branch of the Silver Flame that rose in the aftermath of the Silver Crusade: a faith born in battle against lycanthropy, it advocates violent punishment over compassionate guidance, sees no room for mercy toward the wicked, and treats shifters and changelings with particular suspicion. Dariznu's appointment by the Council of Cardinals was a political calculation — the cardinals could not suppress the Pure Flame, which had grown powerful in Aundair during the Last War, so they incorporated it into the hierarchy through Thaliost's governance rather than confront it directly. Dariznu has taken brutal action to suppress Aundairian opposition to Thrane's occupation, reinforcing both his authority and the city's reputation as a place where the Silver Flame's harshest face is the only one on display.
Inside the city, two factions coexist under constant tension: Aundairian loyalists who consider themselves occupied subjects and agitate for liberation, and Aundairian followers of the Pure Flame who chose Thaliost precisely because Dariznu governs it. Violence regularly breaks out between them. A movement within the Pure Flame advocates for Dariznu to seize Flamekeep itself to "liberate the Keeper" from what they consider corrupt cardinal influence — the sect lacks the military capacity to execute such a plan, but the ambition illustrates how far outside conventional Church doctrine Thaliost's governing faction has traveled.
Keeper Jaela Daran is deeply troubled by the Pure Flame and is considering how to address it. Whether she acts — and what it would mean for Thaliost, for Aundair, and for the Church's internal politics — remains one of the most volatile open questions in postwar Khorvaire.
The Crying Fields are a region of farmlands along Aundair's border with Thrane, permanently scarred by war magic and haunted by restless spirits. Extensive use of magic has repaired most of Aundair's cities in the postwar period, but the countryside between the two nations remains marked by what happened there. The fields will not grow normally; the soil is saturated with arcane residue; and spirits of the fallen have not faded. They are a source of ongoing agricultural loss and a site of pilgrimage for those seeking to understand what the Last War cost — and a practical reminder that the Aundairian countryside, for all its pastoral beauty, still carries the scars of a century of conflict.
Most Aundairians regard the Crying Fields as evidence of Thrane's aggression and moral failure. Thrane regards the same landscape as evidence of the necessity of its defense. The fields sit between the two nations, administered by neither, serving primarily as a warning and a wound that neither side has shown interest in healing.