House Orien: History and Structure

Over the course of this year I’m delving deeper into the Dragonmarked House. Each month I’m writing an article for my Patreon supporters that explores the dragonmark, history, structure, and families of each house, along with story hooks for players and DMs to use. You can find my article about the Mark of Passage here, and if you’re a Patreon supporter, you can find the full article here—and read about the Mark of Detection on Patreon!

THE HISTORY OF HOUSE ORIEN

Most people of the present day know the names of the nations that preceded Galifar—Daskara, Metrol, Thaliost, Wroat, and of course Karrnath. But these names give the deceptive impression that the basic structure of the present day—the cultural dominance of five nations—has always been the case. When the Mark of Passage first appeared, the northwest was a patchwork of lords and leagues. People prospered based on their ability to harness the supernatural resources of the land, and on the bargains they made with fey and other forces. There were a host of freeholds, farm lords, and self-declared kings, and all of them needed something. And in this age, there were those who realized that their path to prosperity lay not in standing still—in tilling the soil or mining for ore—but rather in travel, carrying goods and news between communities. Nineteen hundred years ago, the Mark of Passage bloomed along the roads of this region, taking root in those families that traveled for a living. By this time, people knew what dragonmarks were; the deeds of the House of Cannith and the Sentinel Lords of the north were known far and wide. The new bearers of the Mark of Passage celebrated their good fortune and carried on with their work. Over the course of the next two centuries, most of the marked coalesced around three forces. The Thorn Post was the most reliable system of communication in the region. The Baynes were the most successful merchants in the northwest, while Cordamar caravans were renowned for their reach and safety. While these forces prospered on their own, the example of the House of Cannith inspired Orien Bayne to build something similar. He found a valuable ally in the Nhuli, a family known both for its missionaries and bards; Afki Nhuli declared that Orien was the vessel of Kol Korran, and the Nhuli used their persuasive voices to promote Bayne’s cause. With both gold and his golden tongue, Orien Bayne wooed the Thorns and the Cordamars to his endeavor, promising prosperity for all. It says something of talent that the alliance came to carry his name—not that of Bayne, for no one family was to be placed above another, but of Orien, whose vision paved the way. 

The Orien Alliance grew and prospered over the next two centuries. Soon the Unicorn Post was known across Khorvaire, and Orien caravans pressed further east with every year. While Hadran Vown Cannith and Lyosa Lyrriman Sivis devised the concept of the Twelve, it was unicorn riders who spread the word of it far and wide, and the Orien Alliance embraced the proposed traditions and became House Orien. Five hundred years later, House Orien supported Galifar Wynarn, providing invaluable logistical support to his campaign of unification. And as that united kingdom took shape, Baron Agate Bayne d’Orien presented the grateful Galifar I with a vision of a system of roads that would help to maintain communication and commerce throughout the new kingdom. So Orien established the great trade roads with the blessing and financial support of Galifar. These roads were indeed a boon for Galifar, and even moreso for House Orien. As noted in Frontiers of Eberron: 

The even, well-maintained surface of the road helps travelers maintain a swift pace—while traveling exclusively on Orien trade roads, travelers gain a 10% bonus to their travel pace. A vehicle or mount carrying a passenger with the Dragonmark of Passage can add an additional 10% to its pace; the passive enchantments worked into the road are triggered by the Mark of Passage, enhancing the momentum of the Orien heir and their mount. 

Throughout the history of Galifar, House Orien has been a reliable part of everyday life. Every house and nation relies on Orien shipping, and the Unicorn Post allowed people across Khorvaire to stay in touch even during the worst days of the Last War. The Passage Ring provided the invaluable (albeit very limited) service of teleportation to the rulers of Galifar. The greatest leap in the history of the house came in the Ninth Century, when Cannith and Orien unveiled the Lightning Rail. Over the course of the next century, Orien’s star grew ever brighter. And then the Last War came and shook the house to its core. On the one hand, every nation depended on House Orien to help maintain supply lines—and recognizing this invaluable service, leaders initially pledged not to target Orien infrastructure in the war. But a century of war knows no promises. Some roads and rails were intentionally targeted; others were unintended collateral damage. The rise of Darguun devastated Orien’s operations in the region, but this was merely a precursor to the horror of the Mourning. Orien is still reeling from the loss of its Cyran routes. The house is negotiating with Thrane and Karrnath in the hopes of rebuilding the White Arch Bridge. For now it is relying on temporary solutions—but the humiliating truth is that Orien usually has to rely on Lyrandar services to cross from east to west. This tension is exacerbated by the emergence of the Lyrandar airship, a development that threatens to completely upend travel and shipping. For a thousand years, Orien has been a stable foundation of life in Khorvaire. But this last decade has left it shaken, and leadership is desperately searching for a path forward. 

What Happens Next? House Orien continues to play a crucial role in the daily life of the Five Nations. Thunder coaches and the Unicorn Post rumble along the trade roads. Orien crews work at all hours repairing the damage that lingers from the Last War. But this isn’t enough. Orien leadership believes they need something to counter the rise of House Lyrandar. These are a few of their prominent projects.

• The Passage Ring. House Orien believes that teleportation is the future of the house. Who needs to fly if you can get to your destination in the blink of an eye? However, as discussed earlier in this article this is limited by the number of heirs with the Greater Mark of Passage and the fact that most such heirs can only cast Teleportation Circle once per day. The Passage Ring is working to develop a more affordable form of the Helm of Teleportation; to find a way to maintain a Teleportation Circle for an extended period of time, so more passengers could cross in a single casting; and to create a form of Teleportation Circle that draws from an independent power source. This work is dangerous. Orien heirs could easily be lost in this research; in a serious mishap a chunk of Passage itself could be teleported across the world. Adventurers could be assigned to “test drive” experimental gates, or to help acquire exotic components that could be the key to an extended gate.  
• Shortcuts. Khyber demiplanes often have entry points at multiple locations in Eberron, but the space within the demiplane itself doesn’t match the geography of the Material Plane. You can enter the Ironlands in the Demon Wastes, walk three miles, and emerge in Darguun. Baron Kwanti is fascinated by this phenomenon and dreams of finding a way to take advantage of it for commercial purposes—to bore passages into a demiplane, run a lightning rail through it, and be able to cross Khorvaire in under an hour. The nature of an adventure depends on how far along Orien is with their work. If they’re brought in early, adventurers could be scouts hired to investigate a newly discovered demiplane entrance—entering the demiplane, identifying its dangers, trying to locate other exits, and determining their locations in the Material Plane. Alternately, adventurers could be hired as guardians to protect the Orien team that’s establishing transit operations within a demiplane—fighting fiends or aberrations as workers place a warded line of conductor stones. Or, it could be that adventurers are brought in after the maiden voyage of the first demiplane train—because someone needs to enter the train and wipe out whatever’s now on board before it reaches Sharn. 
• The Mourning Rail. Baron Kwanti yearns to establish a rail line across the Mournland. He believes that if the conductor stones were laid, the coaches’ speed would protect them from the effects of the Mourning. The consensus of the Twelve is that this is a foolish idea; even if the train itself wasn’t destroyed by the Mourning, odds are good that the new conductor stones would be corrupted or destroyed. Despite these expert opinions, Kwanti is determined to proceed with this project. Adventurers could be tasked with protecting the team laying the conductor stones as they move deeper into the Mournland; with recovering resources within the Mournland that could be repurposed for this cause (notably, wrecks of lightning rails caught in the Mourning itself). Another possibility is that they could be sent to investigate rumors of ANOTHER ’Mourning Rail” that has been sited traveling across ruined rails: Cyre 1313. 

THE SHAPE OF THE HOUSE

House Orien is the most widespread of all of the Dragonmarked Houses. It has outposts in virtually every significant town in the Five Nations, as well as most of the Thronehold nations. However, most of these outposts are extremely small—they are designed to support the Unicorn Post and to offer relief or maintenance to Thunder Coaches and caravans passing through the area. Such a post might have a single bunk, a space for storing goods and sorting mail, and a trunk of holding with supplies needed to repair damaged vehicles. The most basic outposts are typically maintained by local, unmarked employees. The Mark of Passage helps people move between towns; in a small town, they don’t need an actual heir to deliver the mail to the door. Larger outposts will have a marked courier ready to run goods to their final destination as soon as they come off the coach. A large outpost will often incorporate a Sivis Speaking Stone, with a courier ready to deliver messages to their intended recipients; they may also have a Vadalis farrier in residence to care for the beasts used by the coaches and caravans. 

So House Orien has small outposts all across Khorvaire. It has major enclaves in Sharn, Wroat, Varna, Flamekeep, Korth, Trolanport, Fairhaven, and Krona Peak. The Baron’s seat is the enclave of Journey’s End in the Aundairian town of Passage; House Orien employs nearly half the adult population of Passage. In addition, House Orien has three mobile enclaves—custom lighting rails coaches—that travel along the conductor stones, allowing the house to focus its resources on critical projects (usually, negotiations involving the expansion of the lightning rail). While Journey’s End is the heart of the house, Baron Kwanti d’Orien has the wanderlust that drives everyone who carries the Mark of Passage, and he spends much of his time on his own enclave-train—the Free Passage. Luxuriously appointed, Free Passage contains a Speaking Stone (with a Sivis operator) that allows Kwanti to conduct business wherever he may be. Recently he’s installed a Teleportation Circle in the train itself. Some house artificers fear that invoking the circle while the train is in motion carries risks, but it’s functioning normally… so far. 

The Courier’s Guild

Before the Mark of Passage appeared, the Thorn Post served people in what is now Aundair, Thrane, and northern Breland. The Thorn Post was the most reliable delivery service of its age. Its riders were renowned for their determination and their honesty, and they overcame brigands, weather, and countless other challenges in the course of their duties. The Courier’s Guild grew from this seed. While initially there was tension when House Sivis developed the Speaking Stone, today Orien and Sivis are strong allies that work closely together. When you send a message with a Speaking Stone you pay by the word, and even though Sivis has earned broad trust for keeping the contents of its messages confidential, the sender still has to dictate their message and be willing to have it be read by the clerks on both ends. Which means that it’s not the ideal medium for a 25 page love letter or the details of a plan to blow up the Brelish parliament. Beyond this, you can only send messages from one stone to another. If you’re in Clifftop in Sharn, you can use a Speaking Stone to send a message to Ardev, but you can’t send a message to Quickstone; the town doesn’t have a working stone. Beyond that, you can send a message to Ardev, but unless your intended recipient knows to go to the station to pick up the message, how will it get to them? This is where the Sivis-Orien alliance comes in. The Courier’s Guild maintains corps of runners who handle local deliveries within towns; add one gold piece to the cost and your message will be carried from the stone station to its final destination.

With this in mind, the Courier’s Guild has two distinct divisions. The Unicorn Post is the largest component of the guild. This is the postal service of Khorvaire, delivering messages and packages to any community on its service map. While the popular image is of a unicorn rider racing along the road with a bag of mail, guild operations use many different systems to move massive quantities of mail. The enclaves mentioned earlier are major hubs with ties to the Kundarak Vault Network. This allows bags of mail to be passed from one hub to another. From these hubs, bags of mail will be transferred to a lightning rail or Thunder Coach; street runners or unicorn riders will carry the mail to its final destination. While unicorn riders are always marked, street runners usually aren’t. What’s most important for a street runner is knowledge of the town and reliability. As such, Orien prefers to work with families that have proven themselves to be trustworthy and reliable; in many towns, there’s a family or two that has no blood connection to the house, but has worked with the Courier’s Guild for generations. 

The Unicorn Post is the main business of the Courier’s Guild, but there is a second branch: the Outriders. These rugged individuals are House Orien’s answer to the Sentinel Marshals. They are the most capable and respected scions of the house, trusted to deliver messages or packages of utmost importance. The Unicorn Post only delivers to Thronehold Nations and only to relatively civilized areas. The Post runs to the Rukhaan Draal, but if you need to deliver a message to a dangerous part of Darguun, or to Blood Crescent in the Demon Wastes, or to someone last seen in Stormreach, you need an Outrider. Outriders will subcontract with scions of other houses as necessary to accomplish their missions; notably, if the target of the delivery is in motion, an Outrider will hire a Tharashk tracker to help locate them, and if the region is dangerous they may employ a Denieth bodyguard. This can be an interesting option for a one shot or even a campaign: the player characters are an Outrider team tasked to deliver messages to some of the most dangerous places across Khorvaire. There is no standard rate for an Outrider delivery; the costs will be set on a case by case basis, reflecting the supplies, staff, and dangers of the mission. 

The Transportation Guild

While the Unicorn Post is an iconic aspect of House Orien, the Transportation Guild is far larger and more crucial to the ongoing stability of the house. The guild has a number of major branches; ask a Scion what they do and they’ll say “I work for the Road.” These are the most important branches of the Transportation Guild. 

• The ROAD runs the caravans and Thunder Coaches, managing the transportation of goods along roads. 
• The RAIL operates the Lightning Rail. Agents of the Rail like to cast themselves as the heart of the house; they see the Road as outdated and the Portal as too small to be relevant. 
• The PORTAL oversees the teleportation circles. It is the smallest arm of the Guild, but because the house charges such a high price for its services, the Portal is quite profitable, and many believe it is the future of Orien. The Passage Ring is a separate entity focused on research and development; it works with the Portal, but the Portal deals with the practical business of teleportation services. 
• CONTINUANCE maintains the infrastructure that makes transportation possible. The Road and Rail repair their own vehicles, but it is Continuance that maintains the roads, rails, and circles themselves. This requires close interaction with the nations through which the services run, though negotiations are typically handled by the Purse.  
• The INITIATIVE develops new rail lines and expands and improves roads. As with Continuance, the Initiative works with local authorities to improve infrastructure and split costs.
• The PURSE manages negotiation and finance. House Orien transports freight for other people, but through the Purse it also engages in simple speculation, buying bulk goods it can resell at a profit elsewhere in Khorvaire. In addition to overseeing these operations, the Purse handles negotiations on behalf of the other branches of the Guild—working with Continuance and the Initiative to secure the rights to build and convince the resident nation to fund the construction (as Orien’s roads and other infrastructure benefit the citizens of the nations). Orien had a long-standing relationship with the united Galifar that covered this, but now the house is having to renegotiate these agreements. Darguun and Valenar have proven especially difficult to negotiate with. While the Five Nations haven’t recognized Droaam, House Orien has been working with the Daughters of Sora Kell—an agreement whose fruits can be seen in the trade road that runs to Graywall and the lightning rail line heading in that direction. 

Guild Employees

As the most widespread of the dragonmarked houses, it’s no surprise that House Orien has one of the largest workforces of the houses. However, the vast majority of Orien employees aren’t part of the house or bloodline. The House needs its dragonmarked scions to move things; it needs them on the roads and rails. But this requires a massive support staff—the people who work the warehouses, sort the mail, lay conductor stones, and much more—and these people don’t have to have dragonmarks to do their jobs. As noted earlier, in cities with Orien enclaves there are many families that have served with one of the Orien guilds for generations. While they aren’t part of the dragonmarked bloodlines, these are effectively a secondary layer of the house; as they work closely with the scions, it’s not unusual for members of these families to marry into the house itself. Unmarked Orien heirs often serve in leadership positions in the Guild arms, especially the Purse. But if the task doesn’t require movement, talent and motivation are more important than a dragonmarked bloodline. You need a dragonmark to pilot a lightning rail, but the regional director who makes sure the trains are on schedule could be a shifter or a dwarf with no blood tie to the house. There’s even some outer families that have gained special recognition within the house itself. Here’s a few examples. 

• The Roof Runners. The Grigoras are a family of shifters in Sharn that have long served as street runners for the Courier’s Guild, delivering messages and packages within the city. Most Grigora shifters have Swiftstride traits, and they are experts in swift and acrobatic movement, leaping across roofs and bridges. 
• The Khaar’paal. While expanding the lightning rail into western Breland, House Orien formed an alliance with a clan of kobolds who dwell in the Graywall Mountains. These Khaar’paal (Spellblood) kobolds have an affinity for electrical energy that helps them set and activate conductor stones. Currently, Orien is employing the Khaar’paal as it extends the lightning rail into Breland, but the House is seeking to hire more Khaar’paal to work across Khorvaire. 
• Orlo Matayne. The Mataynes are a family of Aundairan dwarves with deep ties to the Transportation Guild. In particular, Orlo Matayne has been serving with the Initiative for over two hundred years. Tunnels are his specialty. He has helped the house drive passages through hill and mountain, and he has overseen the construction of subterranean facilities such as the supposed location of Shadowstep (see below!). When Orien needs to shift a lot of earth, you can bet they’ll get Orlo Matayne on the next train. 

The Baron’s Council

In principle, the Baron is the ultimate authority within a dragonmarked house. Within House Orien, leaders have always sought consensus. The Baron’s Council is composed of nine people: three from the Courier’s Guild, three from the Transportation Guild, and three chosen by the Baron to represent the interests of the house itself—traditionally one from each of the three great families aside from that of the Baron. While in theory this is an advisory council, in practice Kwanti won’t move forward on a project without the support of two-thirds of the members of the council. While the three Councilors appointed by the Baron are always members of the dragonmarked bloodlines, the other six councilors are appointed from within the Guilds themselves; at the moment, there are two councilors who aren’t directly tied to a house bloodline. 

That’s all for now, and it’s my final post on House Orien. If you want to know about families, customs, and story hooks you can find the full article here, and you can read about the Mark of Detection on Patreon! Patron support is what determines how much time I can spend on articles like this, so if you want to see more, check it ou.