House Lyrandar: Structure (Patreon)

Lyrandar is spread across Khorvaire. Almost every city or town with a port has a Windwright outpost, where people can book passage or freight transport. Raincaller outposts are found in the hub cities in agricultural regions. While its guild outposts are everywhere, Lyrandar only has a few major enclaves where heirs are raised and live… Although one of these is the largest territory held by any Dragonmarked House within the Five Nations. These are the most notable outposts of the house. 

Stormhome (Aundair). Over the course of centuries, Stormhome has become a flourishing city and a hub for commerce. Due to its neutrality it was a nest of intrigue during the Last War; it is also celebrated as a vacation destination, and House Ghallanda maintains a number of resorts for wealthy patrons. Lyrandar heirs live throughout the city of Stormhome, and there are a number of important sites. Slate Keep is the trade school that trains Lyrandar sailors. Dolmaen Yard is a shipyard that maintains Lyrandar vessels and builds Elemental Galleons. The Tower of the Firstborn is a glorious shrine dedicated to Arawai and Kol Korran, as well as to the founders of the House. Kraken Keep is the seat of the Matriarch. The latest addition to the skyline of Stormhome is The Pole—the largest airship docking tower in Khorvaire, which incorporates an arcane workshop where the Raincallers plumb the potential of the Mark of Storm.

The Old Harbor (Daskaran, Thrane). This was Lyrandar’s stronghold from its earliest days, and its shipyards specialize in the construction and maintenance of river boats and barges. The Old Harbor predates the rise of the Church of the Silver Flame (and of Thrane itself!), and while there’s always a handful of Lyrandar heirs drawn to the Church, most remain true to their traditions—celebrating the blessings of the Sovereigns and the wisdom of the Firstborn. 

Lyrandar Tower (Sharn, Breland). As the gateway to Xen’drik and a center for commerce, Sharn is an important hub for House Lyrandar. The Windwright’s Guild has extensive holdings along the river, but the House itself has an enclave in Highest Towers in Upper Central… and Lyrandar Tower is indeed one of the highest towers in the city. For centuries, Lyrandar tower housed heirs of the house and was a seat for diplomacy and business dealings. Over the course of the last ten years, it has undergone dramatic changes. Lyrandar Tower is Sharn’s airship dock, and the top levels of the tower have been repurposed to support the traffic this brings; Lyrandar has brought in a variety of outside businesses. House Deneith has an outpost in the tower, providing visitors with immediate access to bodyguards while also providing security for the tower itself. The Silverstreak Skycoach Company is now based in the tower. Dining options include The Noble Wyvern (luxurious and expensive), The Royal Brelish (a tribex steakhouse), The Hideaway (a classy tavern that might have connections to the Boromar Clan) and of course the ubiquitous Gold Dragon Inn. 

Falconer’s Spire (Stormreach). While House Lyrandar has always done business in Stormreach, for much of the city’s history the Harbor Lords prevented the House from establishing a strong foothold. That’s changed over the last 30 years. Falconer’s Spire is both an enclave of the house and an airship docking tower, and Lyrandar is currently building a shipyard. It’s said that Calynden d’Lyrandar, the head of the enclave, hopes to wrest new secrets of elemental binding from the depths of Xen’drik, reducing Lyrandar’s dependence on Zilargo. 

Valenar Holdings. Lyrandar has been entwined with Valenar since the founding of the nation. While Lyrandar has a significant outpost in Taer Valaestas, that city celebrates its identity as the seat of the High King and is dedicated to supporting the Tairnadal. Lyrandar heirs serves as administrators, magistrates, stewards and more, but the city is focused on the Tairnadal. This is the hub for the roving warbands, and smiths, farriers, and magewrights support the needs of the elves. Pylas Maradal is another story. Located on the southwestern coast of Valenar, this city has long been a crucial port of trade between Aerenal and Khorvaire. After seizing control, the Tairnadal have largely ceded the city to House Lyrandar. There is always a warclan in residence, but the Tairnadal care nothing for the sea or commerce. Today, Pylas Maradal has two functions. Over the last few decades the House has been expanding the shipyards, and Maradal is the primary facility for the construction of Elemental Airships. Airships require soarwood from Aerenal, so the proximity to the island is useful. Beyond this, the relative isolation of the port—far from the heart of the Five Nations—was useful as Lyrandar was conducting its early work. Raincallers have established Storm Spires around Pylas Maradal and brought rain to the desert; the lands around the city are now the breadbasket of Valenar. Finally, Pylas Maradal is home to Sela’s Doctrine, a school that trains Lyrandar heirs (largely unmarked) in diplomacy, mediation, and the skills required to serve as stewards and administrators elsewhere in Valenar. Pylas Maradal isn’t as grand as Stormhome, but it is where Lyrandar is laying the groundwork for a Khoravar nation. Beyond just the heirs of the house, Pylas Maradal welcomes all Khoravar immigrants, and has programs supporting Khoravar artists and artisans; the Senseschal Haela d’Lyrandar wants Maradal to become a center for Khoravar culture.   

Lyrandar culture is built around the Windwright’s Guild and the Raincaller’s Guild, and most heirs of the house grow up dreaming of joining one or the other. However, the house maintains a number of institutions that exist independently of the guilds, including Sela’s Path, Lyran’s Gift, the Stormwalkers, and more. This section explores each of those institutions.   

The Windwright’s Guild

The Windwright’s Guild has managed shipping across Khorvaire since before the rise of Galifar. This includes passenger ships and dedicated cargo vessels. To get a proper picture of the Windwright’s Guild, it’s important to understand the different levels of guild membership. 

Licensed captains own their own ships and choose their own course. Their ships are regularly inspected to ensure that they meet guild standards, and they are monitored to ensure that they are reliable. Hire a vessel with the Kraken silhouette and you know the captain will charge a fair price and do their best to complete the journey as promised. In exchange, a licensed captain gives 5% of any profits made from their vessel to the Windwright’s Guild. The guild is always happy to broker the services of a licensed ship if the captain is looking for passengers or cargo, but it makes no demands. 

Bound captains sail ships that have been provided by the Windwright’s Guild, and they follow the course and schedule set for them by the guild. This is an opportunity for young captains who didn’t inherit a ship, but the house takes 10% of all proceeds, sets the path the ship must follow, and can reclaim the vessel at any time. Bound vessels display the Kraken seal in silver. As servants of the house, bound captains are kept on a tighter leash; the house won’t condone smuggling or any other questionable activity. 

In most Dragonmarked Guilds, it’s possible to find bound businesses that aren’t run by house heirs. Not so with Lyrandar. Any would-be captain can obtain a Lyrandar license, provided they have a sound ship and prove themselves reliable. But every bound vessel has a Lyrandar crew—because it’s the gifts of the Dragonmark that give the guild its unbeatable edge. Elemental Galleons and Airships are require a Lyrandar captain, and smaller vessels rely on a pilot using a Windwright’s Anchor to fill the sails with wind, or conjuring an elemental to directly propel a ship. The crew of a bound vessel is usually a blend of young marked Lyrandar heirs and seasoned unmarked heirs whose experience and expertise are almost as valuable as the Mark of Storm. Licensed vessels have no restrictions on captain or crew. Many Lyrandar heirs prefer the independence of owning their own ships, even if they spend most of their time working for the guild. Licensed captains often pass their ships on to one of their children when they retired; there are a handful of Elemental Galleons that have been in service for over a century. 

Sailors in the Windwright’s Guild are assigned to one of three paths—River, Sea, or Air. While it’s possible to shift paths, most heirs have a preference and hold to that. Air travel is still in its infancy, and Air sailors like to present themselves as the stars of the guild, carrying the House into the future. Each branch of the guild has a distinct symbol, as seen within this article; so when meeting a Lyrandar captain, as long as you know what to look for, it’s easy to spot. While sailors on bound vessels are typically Lyrandar heirs (marked or otherwise), the Windwright’s Guild also employs countless dockworkers, shipwrights, carpenters, and more. While these people don’t have to be Lyrandar heirs, the house strives to hire Khoravar whenever possible.

The Bounty Division is the final branch of the Windwright’s Guild. Air, Sea, and River work on the wind and water. The Bounty Division manages logistics, shipping schedules, and deals with ship construction and maintenance. Beyond this, it handles the house’s investments—always looking for what it can transport in pursuit of profit. 

SIDEBAR: RIVERS AND TOWNS

The canon maps of Eberron are high level maps intended to convey the basic shape of things and to highlight the most important cities and a handful of interesting destinations for adventurers. This prevents the maps from having an overwhelming level of detail. But the fact is that the Five Nations should have hundreds of villages and towns, and that there should be more rivers and roads connecting them. When I wrote Frontiers of Eberron: Quickstone—zooming in on a smaller region—I added more detail to the region. I decided that the reason Ardev was the largest town was because it was on a waterway and by a lake. And given this, you can be sure that Lyrandar runs boats along the river from Ardev to Castle Arakhain, and supplies the villages along Chalice Lake. You should feel free to do the same. We’ve always said that you should make Eberron your own. Don’t be afraid to add more detail to the map when you zoom in on an area! Frontiers of Eberron includes a set of tables for generating random villages, to help with this process. The reason this matters here is because running the rivers is an important part of Lyrandar’s business—because there are more rivers and towns than shown on the basic map. 

The Raincaller’s Guild 

House Lyrandar is celebrated for its ability to control the weather. Lyrandar Raincallers employ this gift for profit—ending droughts, dissipating hurricanes, and ensuring the weather meets the needs of its clients. Individual traveling Raincallers can offer a temporary shift to a community, but the house can make permanent, wider changes to regional weather by employing Storm Spires and similar tools. However, controlling the weather is only one of the services provided by the guild. Raincallers seek to harness the forces of nature for the good of the people, and they do this through means both mundane and magical. Irrigation systems, waste management, dams, canals, reservoirs—the engineers of the Raincaller’s Guild can advise and assist on the construction of all of these things. Livestock and animal husbandry are the domains of House Vadalis, but when it comes to harnessing the potential of sky and soil, the Raincallers are ready to help… for a healthy profit, of course. It’s worth noting that Lyrandar techniques are quite different from those employed by the people of the Eldeen Reaches and Towering Wood. Much like House Vadalis, the philosophy of the Raincallers is that the Mark of Storm grants them dominion over nature. While some gain the ability to cast Druid spells through their Dragonmarks, the overall outlook of the Raincallers is more Industrial than Primal. The Wardens of the Wood say that Lyrandar’s long-term manipulation of weather patterns will eventually have disastrous consequences, and that some of the most dramatic natural disasters in the history of the Five Nations may have been unintentionally set in motion by Lyrandar meddling. The upshot of this is that farmers in the Five Nations often employ Raincaller services, but that there is no love lost between Lyrandar and the people of the Eldeen Reaches. Ashbound druids have been known to be especially hostile to Lyrandar raincallers. For their part, the Raincallers assert that their techniques work and dismiss the notion of any sort of “butterfly effect” resulting from their manipulations. 

Overall, the Raincallers are trusted service providers. However, there have long been rumors of “weather extortion.” A Raincaller arrives and tells the mayor of a town that the power of the Devourer is building, and that a massive storm will threaten the town in a few days; the Raincaller could stop it, but it will take time and energy, and he’ll have to be compensated for both. Perhaps—as the Raincaller’s Guild insists—such warnings are entirely legitimate and sincere. Or perhaps there is no danger of a storm… unless the Raincaller is sent away angry, at which point they will cause the threatened storm. The DM will have to decide if there’s any truth to this, or if these are just scurrilous rumors. 

The Raincaller’s Guild is a profitable business for House Lyrandar, but doesn’t catch the public eye in the same way as Elemental Galleons and Airships. The guild is smaller than the Windwright’s Guild, and when people think of Lyrandar, they think of its ships. Nonetheless, the guild Raincallers shift weather, but they typically don’t strike enemies with bolts of lightning. As such, Raincallers were rarely present on the battlefields of the Five Nations… but they were often adjacent to them. Raincallers could ensure a traveling army would have perfect weather for a journey, create fog to conceal forces, and a host of other useful effects. 

Sela’s Path 

House Lyrandar has its own religious tradition, grounded in the Pyrinean interpretation of the Sovereign Host but with its own unique customs and rituals. Sela’s Path maintains that the Mark of Storm is a blessing from the Sovereigns Arawai and Kol Korran. Beyond this, Sela’s Path maintains that the Firstborn—Lyran and Selavash, the founders of the house—continue to serve as spiritual intermediaries between the Khoravar and the Sovereigns, just as Tira Miron is said to be the Voice of the Flame. While priests of Sela’s Path work to guide and assist House Lyrandar, they are also devoted to the Khoravar as a whole. Over the last few decades Sela’s Path has sent many of its priests to Valenar, working to entrench their shrines into the foundation of the evolving nation and to support Khoravar immigrants. If you want to play a Cleric of Sela’s Path, the Tempest and Nature Domains are both logical if you are using legacy content; otherwise the Life Domain fits the generally benevolent direction of the Path. When playing such a Cleric, consider if you believe you receive visions from one of the Firstborn. Have you been given a specific mission, or are you simply working for the greater good of your House and your people? 

Lyran’s Gift

Lyran’s Gift is the arcane research division of House Lyrandar, devoted to finding new ways to channel the power of the Mark of Storm. While the Elemental Airship is a product of cooperation within the Twelve and with Zilargo, the artificers of Lyran’s Gift have been working on modifying airships—experimenting with lightning turrets and stronger wind wards. They are exploring ways to increase the power of Storm Spires, but also developing techniques for individual heirs to channel the power of the Mark—techniques that might be employed by a Lyrandar Storm Sorcerer. Throughout its history, collaboration with the Twelve has been vital to House Lyrandar… but there are always those in Lyran’s Gift who dream of breaking Lyrandar’s dependance on Cannith and Zilargo. As a Lyrandar Artificer, Sorcerer, or Wizard you could be a roving member of Lyran’s Gift. Are you searching for something in particular on your adventures? Are your spellcasting abilities experimental techniques for channeling the power of your Dragonmark? Or were you politely sent out into the field after causing a terrible tempest in Lyrandar Tower? 

The Stormwalkers

The Stormwalkers are a small corps of elite operatives that serve House Lyrandar. Members are drawn from all of the branches and guilds, and they typically maintain cover identities; a Stormwalker might be a licensed Sea captain, a wandering Raincaller, or a missionary of Sela’s Path. Stormwalkers are employed when the House has objectives that violate the laws of Galifar or the neutrality of House Lyrandar; if they are exposed during these missions, they will be disavowed and condemned by the Matriarch. During the Last War, the Stormwalkers often engaged in smuggling missions—taking arms shipments past blockades, helping fugitives and spies escape from enemy territory, and similar actions. Lyrandar maintains a small fleet of submersible elemental vessels, and these are often assigned to Stormwalker missions. As a Lyrandar adventurer, you could be a former Stormwalker—perhaps disavowed by the House when your mission went terribly wrong! Or you could be a current Stormwalker, pursuing the life of the adventurer as a cover while you wait to be assigned your next mission. 

The Hurricane Harvest

There is a malevolent force within House Lyrandar, a sect that celebrates the Mark of Storm as a tool of destruction. It has had many names, and time and again it has been rooted out and eradicated by Sela’s Path and destroyed… but time and again it has rebuilt itself in the shadows. Today this sect is known as the Hurricane Harvest. Its devotees say that the Firstborn weren’t blessed by Arawai and Kol Korran; they were chosen by the Devourer and charged to unleash the fury of the storm upon the world. The Hurricane Harvest claims that Lyran and Selavash are still alive—that they transformed into krakens when they leapt into the sea, and that they guide the sect from the depths. Members believe that if they can master the destructive powers of their dragonmarks, they too can one day become immortal kraken lords. Devotees of the Hurricane Harvest believe that House Lyrandar should rise to dominate all of Eberron. On a small scale, they believe in using the destructive powers of the Mark of Storm to sacrifice victims to the Devourer; any act of destruction is thought to earn his favor. So a cult of the Hurricane Harvest could be encountered hunting Wind Whisperer pirates or taking some other action that serves the good of the house and seems reasonable enough; but they might then turn around and launch a tsunami at Blackrock, or even try to bring down the towers of Sharn. Ultimately, their goal is to revel in the destructive powers of nature… dreaming of a day when Khorvaire is in glorious ruins, the waters rise, and the krakens reach up and seize the sun. 

LYRANDAR CUSTOMS

Lyrandar love whirling movement and dramatic action. Thunder and lightning are in their blood. When Orien are move in order to reach a destination, Lyrandar move for the sheer joy of it, loving to spin and leap. Dance is an important part of any Lyrandar gathering. The Thaedira (“Wind Dance”) is a dance for two that is equal parts celebration and duel. While it is wilder in its motions, the rules for the Cyran Tago can be used to resolve dancing the Thaedira. Duels are likewise a common part of Lyrandar life. Any duel begins with the thunder: the dramatic proclamation of grievances, playing to whatever crowd there might be. This is followed by the lightning, the clash of blades. Lyrandar appreciate finesse over force, and love to see shows of skill. While duels are common, they are typically only fought to first blood; the show of the duel is as important as the outcome. 

The Unity Meal is a tradition that began among the Khoravar of Wroat. It has been adopted by the Khoravar of House Lyrandar, but with a few twists. In Medani communities, Khoravar are encouraged to bring friends to a Unity gathering, regardless of whether or not they are Khoravar. Lyrandar meals are more exclusive. Any Khoravar is welcome to attend… but only Khoravar are welcome to attend. Lyrandar Unity Meals also tend to be more boisterous than their Medani counterparts. Rather than just sharing news, guests are expected to tells stories and to trumpet their recent triumphs. And we may be celebrating our unity, but would it really be a meal without at least one duel? 

Another notable fact is that Lyrandar love to talk about the weather. Dragonmarked heirs can feel the currents of the wind in ways that others can’t. While one might think a Raincaller who can control the weather might have literal interest in discussing it, for a Raincaller weather patterns are like fine wines. 

That's all for now! Next up: Lyrandar Families and Notable Lyrandar! And then on to House Vadalis in July!