Situated halfway between Flamekeep and Lathleer, the city of Danthaven is the largest city in the Thranish heartland. Built upon Dhakaani ruins, the city is home to not just one, but two manifest zones—one to Dolurrh, the other to Fernia. In addition to its magical properties, the city is a central hub for the Thranish military.
Despite thousands and thousands of years of habitation, little of the city’s history is visible even to an attentive eye—one must dig into the foundations to find remnants of even the late goblins, let alone the ancient Dhakaani. Much of the city was destroyed during the Year of Blood and Fire, giving the nascent Church of the Silver Flame a tremendous opportunity to shape its reconstruction. The city’s patron saint is Saint Cassia, a gnome monk who was one of Tira’s traveling companions and credited with cleansing the city during the Year of Blood and Fire using a magical bell. Bells have become symbols of the saint, and the city is proud of its enormous, central bell that tolls the hours of the day.
It’s perhaps no surprise that Danthaven was the subject of mass possessions during the Year of Blood and Fire, as the city’s Dolurrhi manifest zone imparts a certain sensitivity to spirits. Before the Year of Blood and Fire, mediums in the city used the connection to conduct seances that replicated the effects of speak with dead even without access to the body of the deceased. After the Year of Blood and Fire, students following in Cassia’s footsteps began combining her unarmed fighting style with the psionic, ghostly power of Dolurrh.
As for Fernia, the renewing power of the plane imbues the land around Danthaven with nutrient-rich volcanic ash. This has maintained Danthaven as an agricultural power throughout the millennia, an unusual contrast to the industrial boost that is typical of Fernian manifest zones.
While Flamekeep holds the actual headquarters of the Knights Templar, Danthaven hosts many of the actual military academies for the various orders. Historically these academies have focused almost exclusively on fighting inhuman forces of darkness—fiends, undead, and for the Order of the Silver Seal, aberrations—but the Silver Crusade in the ninth century created new demand for fighting more humanoid foes. This paid off when the Last War broke out, leaving Thrane’s military perhaps the best prepared for actual hostilities. Today, many templars graduate from basic training straight into Thrane’s military, with the only supernatural foe they worry about being whatever Aundairian conjurers or Karrnathi necromancers might deploy in the next war.
Source: Cultures of Thrane