Politics of Breland

“Anything but politics!” - King Boranel

In the world of Eberron®, many campaigns will spend most of their time in the nation of Breland as players adventure through Sharn. Players who wish to venture outside of the city, covered in depth in Sharn: City of Towers, may wonder about the governing forces of the country in which Sharn resides. Covered lightly in Five Nations, the Eberron Campaign Setting and Eberron Campaign Guide, this document seeks to expand upon existing lore and provide some guidance to DMs who wish to use these politics in their games at home.

The Mace of Parliament

Mace, Legendary, Major

Forged over 600 years ago, the Mace of Parliament is one of the oldest symbols of the power of parliament. Tradition holds that the speaker of the upper chamber retains possession of the Mace, carrying it to its designated space at the front of the room behind the Speaker's podium to begin each session of parliament.

The Mace of Parliament is a +1 Mace with 7 charges. While holding it, you can use an action amplify your voice to five times its volume. In addition, you can use an action and expend a charge to cast Command, two charges for Zone of Truth or Hold Person, or three charges for Tongues. The save DC for spells cast from the Mace is 15, and the mace counts for any material components for the spell.

The mace regains 1d6+1 expended charges daily at dawn. If it has no charges at the start of the day, it instead only regains a single charge.

The Heirs

King Boranel is widely respected and loved in Breland. Unfortunately for him, his heirs are not. None have displayed the bravery, conviction, or leadership to match Boranel, encouraging the parliamentarians that now is the time. Some might argue that this is due to Boranel’s difficulties with his marriages - after the assassination of his first wife Chaseva, Boranel became a distant father. Despite remarrying three more times, none of his wives since have held his affections the same way.

The third son of King Boranex, Boranel came to the throne after a tragic month where both older brothers were slain on the battlefield and King Boranex took his own life in grief. Boranel has eight surviving members of his generation, with three younger brothers and four younger sisters. Each of these siblings holds prestigious places in his court, but his brother Kor has secured the position of Boranel’s most trusted advisor and commander of the King’s Citadel.

Boranel bore four sons with his first wife, one son and four daughters with his second, and one son and one daughter with his third. His oldest son, Bortan, holds the position of royal steward and has been delegated many of the financial decisions of the nation. The fourth son of Chaseva, Aejar, has grown distant since being mauled by Boranel’s pet magebred ghost tigers and losing his left arm. He lost his daughter Borann on the Day of Mourning, and her body has not yet been recovered from the Field of Ruin. His youngest two children, his son Halix and his daughter Borina, have been exchanged with Kaius III’s sister Haydith as part of a program to ensure the continued peace of the continent. Haydith has won over the Brelish court and parliament in Wroat with her charm and wit, frequently accompanying Boranel on his official business.

Military

The Royal Army forms the majority of the Brelish military. While the majority of the rank and file have gone home to their families since the Treaty of Thronehold, the officers remain engaged and planning for the next war - whether that’s a local conflict with Droaam or a full-scale resumption of hostilities.

The Royal Navy saw significantly less combat during the Last War but still retains an important purpose. While isolated from the brunt of the naval engagements in the Scion’s Sound, the southwestern coast of Breland was important to protect for trading purposes, especially with the government of Riedra. The Royal Navy is furthermore tasked with controlling the waters between Sharn and Xen’drik, as any ship that doesn’t make it back to Sharn is a ship who’s goods are not being taxed by Breland and the Sharn port authorities. While the Sahuagin have signed a treaty not to attack ships passing through their territory, they're not the only threat that lurks beneath the waves.

More paramilitary than military, the King’s Citadel takes direct orders from Boranel himself. Furthermore, while the King’s Swords and Wands are not covert organizations like the King’s Dark Lanterns, they still conduct missions abroad on behalf of Boranel. As such, they can make excellent allies or antagonists in any kind of adventure. Inside the borders of Breland the King’s Citadel primarily serves as law enforcemnt, handling issues that the local constabulary is unable or unwilling to.

Industry

Of the five nations, Breland has the largest number of industrial centers. Sharn, Wroat, Galethspyre, and Starilaskur buy raw materials (wood and ore) from around the continent and sometimes beyond to process into finished materials. With the war over the forges and craftsmen have traded swords and shields for hoes and pickaxes.

While House Cannith owns some of these shops, most are simply licensed by Cannith, passing inspections to earn the gorgon's seal of quality. Furthermore almost every artisan in the city buys their looms, anvils, and other tools of production from the Fabricator's guild, broadening the house's reach. The profits from the post-war boom have helped both rebuild the House post-Mourning while funding Merrix's experiments and other speculative ventures.

Unfortunately for the laborers, the rising profits have not made their ways into the hands of the commoners. Nobles and wealthy merchants who own the means of production have grown fat on their newfound wealth, many of them happy new members of the Aurum's copper and silver conchords. Further exacerbating tensions are the warforged soldiers returning from war and more than happy to work for a fraction of the human laborers, their tireless bodies making them ideal manual laborers.

The growing resentment amongst the working class has thus far spun in two directions. One blames the warforged who directly compete for jobs, arguing that Boranel's provisioning of alleged freedom has only created a new population of constructs to displace the flesh and blood Brelanders. The other line of argument places the blame squarely at the feet of the greedy merchants and nobility who absorb the profits and enjoy the lack of governmental controls on industry. As of now these sentiments are rudderless, lacking in leaders who can unite the working people around their vision. However, a sufficiently charismatic figure could create a political movement that could transform government. Whether that leader embraces violence or not may be the key to their success.

As an Adventure

Political adventures can be as simple as a politically motivated NPC providing a quest that advances their ends - clearing out a local goblin tribe to free up land for local farmers, as an example. Politics come into play when the PCs recognize that the goblins too have a right to the land and aren't doing anything wrong, despite the accusations of the questgiving mayor.

While it is possible to do simple good versus evil stories with political adventures, like defeating the evil vizier who's corrupting the good king, most people think political adventures should involve shades of gray. Giving the actors in a political adventure well-considered motives usually creates at least some shades of gray, even if one group is the clear "good" and the other is the clear "evil". Terrorists are evil, but developing that they're not just randomly killing people but attempting to overturn the political order gives the players a chance to understand why they're doing what they do.

Political stories generally fall into the broad category of adventures that are "person versus person", stories of competing interests, rather than say "person versus nature" or "person versus self". As such, the core of an adventure is deciding what the competing interest is. Two fundamental types of political conflicts are resource rights or a position of power and privilege. Resource rights cover a broad range of issues, from mining to agriculture, but all come down to who ought to profit from the usage of a resource.

Alternatively, fights over positions of power and privilege cover a broad array of topics, whether it's testing the extent of power of an existing position, the ascension of someone to an existing position, or the creation of a new position with new powers. Integral to this is the distinction between authority and power - Authority is the formal ability to accomplish something, while power is the actual ability to accomplish something. The tension between authority and power is core to many political stories, as political players are either trying to expand their power beyond their authority or to reclaim the power that ought to be vested in their authority.

Core to all political stories is the concept of stakeholders - who gains or loses based on the political result. The easiest stories are ones with two opposing sides to a conflict, as that allows the player characters to just pick a side. More complex political stories involve many stakeholders who may have similar but slightly different interests. Say the Children of Winter want to shut down a mine - the workers may, like the noble, want it back open, but the workers may also want to take the opportunity to negotiate for lower taxes or better working conditions. This kind of multi-faction politics can rapidly complicate what should be a simple problem, splitting up what would be a united force into factions for the player characters to unite and lead.

Reigniting the Last War

If a DM does choose to pursue the plotline of reigniting the Last War, an excellent starting question is how will the war be reignited. Breland and Karrnath have both set the seeds for a possible civil war, which could lead any of their neighbors to decide to take the opportunity to invade or simply support one side of the split in hopes of forming a durable political alliance. Aundair and Breland both have reasons they may want to invade one of their neighbors that seceded (Eldeen and Droaam respectively), creating an opportunity to "defend" the invaded country by counter-invading the initiator of hostilities. Alternatively, the blame could very easily be placed upon Darguun for attacking Breland or Valenar for attacking Karrnath. For the former a new leader would probably be necessary, while the latter would only require that Kaius decides he needs his army to blow off some steam because they're getting restless waiting for the big war to start up.

The next step is deciding what major secrets each country is hiding. In the various sourcebooks many adventure hooks relate to new magic items that could give a country a leg up whe the war started. These matter because it will contextualize how countries look at opportunities - if a country has successfully recovered an ancient Giant artifact capable of leveling armies, that matters.

Once you know how it starts and any important secrets countries are hiding, the initial set of alliances will serve as a blueprint for the conflict. In any kind of large war with many independent parties, alliances will resolve to two or maybe three sides in total, as nations band together out of common interest. Alliances need a few elements. First, some common interest. This doesn't need to be complicated - if they share a border, that interest could be reducing the number of fronts they're fighting on. If they don't share a border, it could be mutual recognition that they can't actively fight each other and so they may as well trade with each other. A third way for basic common interest is that they each have a mutual ally with no strong reason to fight each other, thus avoiding the risk of the mutual ally picking a different side. The second major element of an alliance is trust - while plenty of historical alliances have existed without trust (famously Germany and Russia at the start of World War II), an alliance without trust is liable to quickly collapse.