Lightning Rail Service Between the Cities of the Five Kingdoms Begins

Technological achievement

Orien took on a lucrative royal commission that seemed like little more than a dream at the time: to connect Galifar’s cities with high-speed transport that would allow people and cargo to travel across the kingdom in a matter of days.

The creation of a united Kingdom of Galifar had been very good for House Orien. Even as Orien’s mundane caravans and couriers connected the Khorvaire of the common folk and even held a royal monopoly on the delivery of mail and parcels throughout Galifar, the Mark of Passage allowed the house to offer services so exclusive—and so expensive—that few but kings and queens could afford them. In a united Galifar, nobles who might once have fought each other were forced to curry diplomatic favor and entertain their peers at court in the Five Nations’ capitals and at the national capital ofThronehold. However, the vastness of Khorvaire (not to mention the continent’s many dangers) made mundane travel for a royal retinue impractical at best when the monarch of Galifar wanted to travel across the breadth of his continental empire. As such, the teleport ability of the greater Mark of Passage quickly became House Orien’s most requested (and most profitable) service. Effortless and instantaneous travel between the noble courts of Galifar’s provinces helped establish the foundation of communication and trust among its diverse nobility that allowed the new kingdom to thrive.   As its caravan routes stabilized and Galifar grew in the millennium after its founding, Orien took on a lucrative royal commission that seemed like little more than a dream at the time: to connect Galifar’s cities with high-speed transport that would allow people and cargo to travel across the kingdom in a matter of days. In 811 YK, with the help of House Cannith’s forgeholds, the first lightning rail line was established between Fairhaven, the capital of Aundair, and Flamekeep, the capital of Thrane. In 845 YK, King Jarot announced his intention to see the lightning rail connect every corner of Galifar, a task that House Orien completed in less than twenty years when lines connected all of the major settlements of the Five Nations, Zilargo, the Mror Holds, and the Talenta Plains.   House Cannith created conductor stones—wondrous magical items that, when arranged along a route in pairs, formed a magical conduit through which a coach could travel at great speed, hovering above the ground and the track laid down by the arcane stones. For propulsion, Cannith turned to the gnomes of Zilargo for the creation of a vehicle that was powered by a bound elemental—in this case, an air elemental to propel the coach through the conduit. When the stones mounted on a coach pass over the stones arranged on the ground, a sparking effect is produced, giving the lightning rail its name. Today,conductor stone paths connect the nations of Aundair, Breland, Thrane, and Zilargo in the west, and Karrnath, the Talenta Plains, and the Mror Holds in the east. The lightning rail travels at a speed of 30 miles per hour.   With lines of Cannith-forged conductor stones spanning the Five Nations, Orien controlled three Crown-subsidized lightning rail routes, all running through the heart of the nation of Cyre’s capital, Metrol. From its humble origins on the caravan trails and trade routes of Aundair, Orien had grown into the dragonmarked house that held an empire together.   Soon after the lightning rail entered active service, providing rapid transport for large numbers of people from one part of Galifar to another, it became common practice for the local Galifaran authorities in each of the Five Nations to require travelers to carry some form of legal identification—an internal passport of a kind. As a result, most people of the middle and upper classes, at least in the civilized areas of Khorvaire (Aundair, Breland, Karrnath, Cyre, Thrane, Zilargo, and the Mror Holds) began to carry identification papers with them at all times. Issued by national governments (first by Galifar, now by the various nations) and notarized by House Sivis, these papers present a detailed physical description of a person (the wealthy sometimes commission small portraits of themselves), the person’s name and residence, and in some cases additional information about the person’s affiliations (particularly including any connection to a dragonmarked house, the landed nobility, a government, or another large institution).   Anyone who travels across national borders in Khorvaire is usually required to carry the traveling papers identifying them, their residence, their destination, and their reason for travel. Traveling papers consist of a parchment sheet with the appropriate information and an arcane watermark, carried in a small leather folder or wallet. House Sivis, House Orien, House Deneith, and House Lyrandar all offer traveling papers, for a fee, that are recognized throughout central Khorvaire.   The development of rapid, long-distance transportation and communication also allowed House Kundarak, the dwarven dragonmarked house whose heirs bore the Mark of Warding, to operate banks throughout central Khorvaire. A person who deposited funds in a Kundarak bank could request from that bank a letter of credit, which allowed him to withdraw funds from a different Kundarak bank branch anywhere in Khorvaire.   For many middle and upper-class people, this system was a convenient alternative to carrying wealth around in the form of precious gems, jewelry, or coins. Letters of credit were always notarized with arcane watermarks (usually created by gnome heirs from House Sivis), making them practically impossible to forge. House Kundarak did not charge a fee for issuing these letters of credit, since their banks were already drawing on individuals’ deposits to make loans to businesses and governments across the Five Nations. This financial system contributed greatly to the rapid development of Galifar’s commercial economy in the century before the outbreak of the Last War and the development of a strong middle class that was not as dependent upon the landed nobility as in previous centuries.