Your character isn't walking into session one with an encyclopedia in their head. They know what any ordinary person absorbs by growing up in Khorvaire — things picked up from school, broadsheets, temple sermons, tavern talk, and the simple experience of living in a postwar society held together by magic, commerce, and mutual distrust.
This section covers the broad strokes. Each topic below has its own detailed write-up elsewhere in this guide — think of what follows as the mental furniture your character already has before play begins.
A Note on Backgrounds: This assumes a standard Five Nations upbringing. If your character is from somewhere more culturally distinct — the Talenta Plains, Droaam, Aerenal, Sarlona — talk to your GM about what they'd know instead.
A century-long civil war that ended two years ago. It started because the heirs of Galifar's last king couldn't agree on succession, and it ended because something worse than any army wiped Cyre off the map. The Treaty of Thronehold stopped the fighting in 996 YK. No side won. Everyone has opinions about it — the kind that start fistfights in taverns and end friendships at dinner tables.
Your character lived through this, or their parents did. It's not history. It's yesterday.
In 994 YK, the nation of Cyre was destroyed in a single day. A wall of dead-gray mist consumed everything inside — cities, armies, millions of people. What remains is called the Mournland: a blighted wasteland where the dead don't decay, healing magic fails, and nothing behaves the way it should. Nobody knows what caused it. Theories are everywhere. Proof is nowhere. Cyran refugees are scattered across the continent, reliant on the generosity of their former enemies.
Your character knows this happened the way you know about a national tragedy. Fear is universal. Everything else — grief, guilt, suspicion — depends on who they are.
Thirteen bloodlines carry dragonmarks — magical sigils that grant abilities tied to a specific domain of magic. Over centuries, these families organized into Houses that dominate key industries: healing, transportation, communication, banking, entertainment, manufacturing, mercenary services. They operate across national borders with an independence that makes governments nervous.
Your character interacts with dragonmarked services the way you interact with utility companies. You don't need to understand House Orien's corporate structure to buy a lightning rail ticket.
If you need to send a message, you go to Sivis. Need to travel, you book with Orien or Lyrandar. Need someone found, you talk to Tharashk. The Houses are part of daily life.
Two faiths dominate the Five Nations:
The Sovereign Host — a pantheon of nine gods woven into everyday culture. People invoke Olladra when they gamble, mutter Onatar's name over a forge, swear by Aureon in court. It's the cultural default — present in holidays, idioms, and architecture even for people who aren't particularly devout.
The Church of the Silver Flame — an organized religion headquartered in Thrane, devoted to protecting the innocent from supernatural evil. The Flame is real and its templars channel it to fight genuine threats. The Church also runs Thrane's government, which colors how other nations view it.
Other faiths exist and your character has at least heard of them, but probably doesn't know much: the Blood of Vol, the Path of Light, the Dark Six.
Your character doesn't need to be a theologian. They might need to know what temples they'd pass on the street and what names they'd hear invoked in conversation.
Three primordial dragons shaped reality. Siberys (the Dragon Above) was slain by Khyber (the Dragon Below). Eberron (the Dragon Between) imprisoned Khyber by wrapping herself around him and becoming the world. Nobody worships the Progenitors, but the model works — Siberys dragonshards fall from the sky, Eberron dragonshards grow in the earth, Khyber dragonshards are found in the deep places, often near things you wish you hadn't disturbed.
Even hardened skeptics use the terminology, because it maps cleanly onto what people actually encounter.
Places where one of Eberron's cosmological planes presses close to the material world, letting that plane's nature bleed through. Most manifest zones are stable, well-documented, and treated as local features. Sharn's impossible towers only stand because the city sits on a manifest zone tied to Syrania, the Azure Sky — that's not a secret, that's civic infrastructure.
Your character understands manifest zones the way you understand weather patterns: you know the general shape, you know which areas are affected, and you know to dress accordingly.
Magic in Khorvaire is public, commercialized, and mundane. Your character grew up with it.
Magewrights are working-class spellcasters with narrow, practical skills — the person who enchants street lanterns or maintains a speaking stone network. They're tradespeople, not adventurers.
Lightning rail carriages connect major cities on a published schedule. Your character has probably ridden one.
Elemental airships are more expensive and less common, but widely known. Everyone looks up when one passes overhead.
Warforged are sentient constructs built to serve as soldiers during the Last War. The Treaty of Thronehold granted them legal personhood and banned further creation. Attitudes vary — some people treat them as equals, others as property that got above its station.
Khorvaire runs on gossip. Your character might have heard any of the following. None of it is confirmed. All of it circulates.
"The Mourning was a Cannith weapon test gone wrong."
"King Kaius of Karrnath is a vampire."
"Droaam is building an army to invade Breland."
"The Lord of Blades is raising a warforged nation in the Mournland."
"House Medani sees everything."
Your character can believe any, all, or none of these. They're the background noise of postwar Khorvaire.
Not every character has the same mental library. A cleric knows the doctrinal specifics of their faith. A wizard understands manifest zones at a technical level. A noble knows the Korth Edicts by chapter and verse. An outlander from the Talenta Plains might be able to track a fastieth across open grassland and have absolutely no idea how to hail a skycoach.
Your class, background, and upbringing shape what's familiar and what's foreign. Lean into that.
Some things are genuinely obscure, actively hidden, or so far outside common experience that knowing them requires specialized study or direct encounter. A few examples:
The Draconic Prophecy — most people have heard the phrase, almost nobody understands what it actually is.
The inner workings of the Twelve — everyone knows it exists, almost nobody knows what it's doing.
Aberrant dragonmarks — vaguely heard of, like a rare disease. The actual history is not common knowledge.
Distant continents — Argonnessen, Xen'drik, Sarlona. Real, distant, almost entirely abstract unless your background ties you there.
The true nature of the Mourning — nobody knows. Anyone who claims to have the answer is selling something.
Yes, they grew up with it: Airships, the Silver Flame, Cyran refugees, lightning rail, dragonmarked services, the Last War, warforged.
Maybe, depending on background: House politics, arcane theory, planar cosmology, specific treaty provisions, foreign cultures.
Almost certainly not: The quori, the daelkyr, the Draconic Prophecy, the inner workings of Argonnessen, anything actively hidden by powerful forces.
That last category isn't a limitation — it's a mystery waiting to be discovered in play.