The Discovery of Houses Ghallanda, Jorasco and Lyrandar

Founding

Three other houses come to light.

Karrnathi soldiers first explored the Talenta Plains at this time when Karrn the Conqueror sent his troops in all directions to carry out his plan for the conquest of the Five Nations. The Talenta halflings, who had never before contacted humans, were at first puzzled by the appearance of these large and unwieldy creatures, but the dragonmarked Ghallanda tribe had vowed to help all in need. Karrnathi soldiers returned to their capital of Korth with tales of little people using magical marks to conjure food and castles from the air. These tales intrigued the other dragonmarked families of this time and so House Cannith and House Sivis organized a joint expedition to the Talenta Plains that led them to discover both the Ghallanda and Jorasco tribes of dragonmarked heirs.   Despite their altruistic traditions, the elders of the Ghallanda were no fools. Even those who desired to leave the Plains and explore foreign lands did not intend to do so as servants to the humans. They agreed to work with the other dragonmarked houses, provided those houses would help them find a foothold in their lands. After much negotiating, House Ghallanda was born. It took some time for Ghallanda to spread its roots. Many humans considered the halflings to be cousins to the goblins, who were a largely oppressed and enslaved race at the time. The Ghallanda halflings had often served as tribal mediators in their homeland and they used their skill and charm at every level of society as they carved out a niche in the young Five Nations. During the War of the Mark, the Ghallanda halflings proved their worth by supplying and supporting the other dragonmarked houses’ military forces in the field. This effort gained them the support of the other houses—particularly the crucial votes of House Deneith and House Cannith—and eventually secured their place among the Twelve. Over the next thousand years, House Ghallanda spread across Khorvaire and became one of the most trusted of the dragonmarked houses—at least as long as the ale kept flowing.   When the Jorasco tribe became a dragonmarked house, its traditional role of exchanging its healing services for in-kind contributions from its fellow halfling tribes changed. In founding the house and establishing its headquarters in Karrnath, Jorasco soon found itself in debt to House Cannith and House Sivis—a debt that called for Jorasco’s services to be repaid in hard coinage, not in-kind. In time, the healers of Jorasco were operating on a set schedule of fees and asking for payment in advance. This initial fee schedule was designed to support the healers of Jorasco in return for the time they spent caring for others. As the house became more successful, however, payment became less about survival and more about profit. The Korth Edicts imposed after the foundation of the Kingdom of Galifar (see below) codified this situation in a way and forced the Jorasco to focus their fortunes in gold alone. Since that time, Jorasco’s mission of healing has always been balanced by the house’s passion for profit, a reality that often angers those most in need of Jorasco’s extraordinary healing gifts. Unlike their Ghallanda counterparts, House Jorasco would shift its focus from the tribal ways of life prevalent on the Talenta Plains to the cosmopolitan traditions of central Khorvaire. In the present age, Jorasco halflings have little or no connection to the culture of their nomadic ancestors and are firmly entrenched in the lifestyle of the human-dominated Five Nations.   At the same time that Karrn was initiating his war of conquest, the Mark of Storm appeared among the half-elves (Khoravar) of the human kingdom that became Thrane. Though the origins of what became House Lyrandar remain largely shrouded in myth, a few solid facts are known. Six hundred years before the appearance of the Mark of Storm, a significant number of Aereni elves had migrated to Khorvaire in the wake of the civil war in Aerenal that destroyed the dragonmarked House of Vol. Where elven and human settlements came into close proximity in central Khorvaire, intermarriage between the two races became common. However, when the earliest generations of half-elves were born, a good number of the Khorvarien elf settlers rejected them, leaving a population of half-breed children spread across the human lands. Over the following six hundred years, this population of half-elves only grew as they began to marry each other and the new race proved it could breed true.   According to the house’s own doctrine, the founders of Lyrandar were chosen by the gods of the Sovereign Host themselves. The half-elves Lyran and Selavash were the first to manifest the Mark of Storm, both claiming to have received their marks accompanied by visions of the Sovereign lords Arawai and Kol Korran. The Sovereigns hailed the duo as the true children of Khorvaire since the half-elven race was one truly unique to that continent. The half-elves were a race made strong through their hybrid blood and would wield great power over both nature and commerce.   In the decades that followed, Lyran and Selavash traveled across Khorvaire, preaching their vision to others of their kind. Tales of miracles performed by the pair were common, but all that can be said for sure is that both possessed an almost supernatural ability to inspire others of their race. The charismatic duo encouraged half-elves to form their own separate communities and to recognize themselves as a unique race—the Khoravar, or “Children of Khorvaire” in Elven. Their followers began to call Selavash and Lyran the Firstborn, naming themselves the “children of Lyran,” or the Lyrandar. As proscribed marriage within the Khoravar community began to make the Lyrandar a line of related families, the Mark of Storm spread through those families with great speed. Those blessed by this magic soon formed themselves into House Lyrandar, operating a small fleet of swift ships, bound-elemental galleons, and providing fair weather to farmers in need. Within centuries, the Lyrandar controlled almost all of the sea trade conducted by the Khorvarien nations and was also indispensable for the farmers of the Five Nations. Long after Selavash and Lyran had passed away, legends of the Firstborn continued to spread, including one of the most influential among other Khoravar that the Firstborn did not actually die but instead became immortal krakens and that this is a state that any Lyrandar heir can achieve. According to this tale, the Kraken lords remain in the depths of the sea, guiding Lyrandar heirs by way of dreams and visions as they help their descendants achieve true dominance over the waves. To this day, a good number of Lyrandar believe the spirits of their founders still guide the house and a Kraken surrounded by four lightning bolts is the great seal of House Lyrandar.   It is often assumed in the present that each dragonmarked house had a single founder or founders like Lyrandar: that some ancient Master Cannith was the first person to develop the Mark of Making, with House Cannith born from his children and their descendants. The truth is not so simple. Each dragonmark first appeared within multiple families, although the marks were bound to specific races and regions of Khorvaire and Aerenal. The Mark of Sentinel appeared among the humans who had settled along Khorvaire’s northern coast, while the Mark of Making was found among the human settlers in the Metrol region that would eventually become Cyre. It took generations for these first dragonmarked to realize the significance and power of their marks. During this time, aberrant dragonmarks were as common as those that would come to be seen as true marks, in part because there was as yet no taboo against mingling the bloodlines of two different dragonmarked families.   Each dragonmarked family would pass on stories of the exploits of its ancestors from this long-ago time, although these were often contradictory. The Lyrriman family of gnomes of House Sivis claim that their forebears were the first to identify and unify the dragonmarked families, while members of the Vown family of House Cannith make similar claims. Seven dragonmarks were known by the time Karrn the Conqueror sought to bring all of Khorvaire under his rule, though the families that held them were often not yet fully unified into one house. The Sivis League, the Tinkers Guild of Cannith, and the Phiarlans of Aerenal had all laid the groundwork for the birth of their future houses, but the Mark of Sentinel families of the north at this time were still divided. Some Sentinel heirs fought alongside Karrn the Conqueror during his time as a mercenary and warlord, while others were among his strongest foes.   Though Karrn ultimately failed in his attempt to conquer all of civilized Khorvaire, his wars helped to raise awareness of the dragonmarked as his soldiers traveled to distant lands. Over the next few centuries, the families began to communicate with one another, with the leaders of Houses Sivis and Cannith taking the greatest initiative. However, it would take a second war, the War of the Mark, to truly bring the dragonmarked families together and forge the foundation of the present-day system of twelve dragonmarked houses that control all of the nonagricultural trade and commerce of Khorvaire.