Editing Eberron (section)

===The Last War===
The sad part is, the Last War started about 900 years after the Kingdom of Galifar was created.  When King Jarot died, three of his five kids rejected the ascension of Mishann, Jarot's eldest daughter and ruler of Cyre (which was basically the most magi-tek nation of that time).  They all fuck off back to their nations and start agitating for war, which lasts 100 years.  No, not constant actual battles that would have rightly ruined the landscape; it's more like they fought a major battle or two each year with different peoples, spend a couple of years recouping their losses, and do lots of espionage and diplomacy, but all while in a declared state of war against one another.

This is where things start getting really dicey with using magic as technology.  Karrnath suffers famine and starts using undead troops as a "temporary" measure that becomes permanent.  This triggers a religious uprising in one of their enemy nations that causes a theocratic nation to splinter off from one of the original Five Nations, while later on back home the halflings of the Talenta say fuck it and secede from Karrnath. Cyre gets it in the worst way. Big on magic but low on actual troops, starts hiring mercenaries from the elves and goblinoids. The elves end up turning stag and fucking over Cyre by creating a new elven nation and they get fucked over in the southwest by a resurging goblinoid nation trying to reclaim the glories of their ancestral empire.  The druids of the western Eldeen Reaches get pissed about Audair not giving a fuck about them getting raped and murder by roving armies of bandits, and splinter off as well into a new nation.  Breland gets it shitty too: A whole bunch of monsters led by three hags claim everything west of the greywall mountains (but thankfully barely anyone lived there), the aforementioned goblin country stole a chunk of their land for their border, and the gnomes decide to secede from Breland and form their own little country. (The gnomish bit wasn't too bad though, it was more of an official acknowledgement of the fact that the gnomes had been running their own affairs for centuries. The country is pretty much a vassal to Breland with very good relations in both directions.) Breland was so fuckhueg before the war though that it's still the biggest and well off country afterwards. Refugees sick of war from all five nations flee east to a colony.  And the original Lhazaar pirates and smugglers basically play everyone and everything off against each other.

During all of this, magic technology continues development.  The gnomes (who also splintered off from Breland, but under much more favorable conditions and terms to both sides) steal the secrets of elemental binding from the Sulatar drow in Xen'drik (and we're all sure that's never going to come back and bite them in the ass, no sir) and begin using those secrets to bind elementals to all kinds of shit.  Then some crafty nutjobs realize if they use soarwood from Aerenal and big fucking elementals, they can "push" a ship faster over water.  Then they realize they can do it right through the air as well, creating the Eberron airships which we all know and love for their fairly unique approach (in both design and concept; Forgotten Realms sort of copied the idea in the game Neverwinter during the Elemental Evil module when the air-elemental forces used dirigibles empowered by air elementals).  There's also levitating trains, self-powered sleds and wagons, etc.

But then, House Cannith, who are the artificers and craftsmen of the setting, did something even more interesting.  In Xen'drik, they find these huge creation forges used to make the ancient quori-made warforged.  They bring them back, tinker with them, and create the modern warforged as sentient living constructs (aka magi-tek droids).  They produce thousands for the war effort, and since they also already were making most of the weapons, armor, and other materials, they become war profiteers on a rather interesting scale.

Who was at war with who shifted repeatedly throughout the conflict. At the time it ended, the following were at war.

Aundair: Karrnath (Unfriendly, but non-hostile to Cyre)<br>
Breland: Cyre<br>
Cyre: Thrane, Breland, Karrnath<br>
Karrnath: Aundair, Thrane, Cyre<br>
Thrane:  Cyre, Karrnath