Brightflame Hour

Would you stop with this nonsense, Vendrik? I thought you didn't believe in gods?
I know! I know! I don't! I never did! But look at this! How could this be caused by anything else? Half of this damned continent is gone!

— Vendrik Hegaren and Alleus Kermakis

Final Report on the Catastrophe in Anidara

...After over a year of research and inquiry, we have finally been able to form a comprehensive report on the damages, resulting from the catastrophe dubbed the Brightflame Hour. Take note that the following list is vague in certain places, as most sources are either lost or too old to accurately depict the situation, before the cataclysm.
Based on available sources we can conclude that the Brightflame Hour resulted in:

• the death of over 900.000 individuals (median value as sources on the population numbers in affected areas vary widely)

• the loss of tens of thousands of square kilometres of land in western Anidara

• the loss of hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of arable land due to contamination by ashfall

• the loss of nearly all Rodite producing areas in the known world

• the loss of half of all Kerin, Oranak and Meltil producing areas

• the loss of one-third of lands used for Para and Bitterleaf farming

The kingdoms (Shadoms in the local language) of Akria, Hamara and Pujarat have been either completely or mostly annihilated. Furthermore, the event has made the entire region known as the Western Highlands unstable. Earthquakes have repeatedly shaken the region, sinkholes and ravines can open up without warning, other parts have been flooded or turned into swamps. The Sassanian Empire has finally collapsed as a result. Refugees, concrete numbers are unavailable but we estimate several hundred thousand, are flooding east unto the Onadaran Reach. Reports of violence and conflict are already reaching our agents there. If the states of the region can deal with the matter is yet to be seen.
For Anidara we predict a large scale famine, as most of its arable land is contaminated. Deaths resulting from Rodite and Meltil poisoning will rise drastically in the next few years. The political situation will remain unstable in the foreseeable future. Trade with Anidara will decrease severely over the next few years. Import of chemicals, medicine, textiles, spices and luxury crops will become increasingly expensive, in turn weakening Vardanian trade cities and straining the Hegemony's economy. Exports toward Anidara will largely cease and we can expect a loss of several million denar a year...

Are you people blind? The gods have spoken! The decadent nations and cities of the south, these people that whored themselves to the Scetians and Vardanians. They are gone! Annihilated by the divine hammer of justice! Ahzaris has spoken! She the five-faced god, has punished us, yes. But those that remain are offered a choice. Repent ignorant fools! Repent and escape the wrath of the Starborn Maiden!

— Priest of the Ahzari Faith

Read the Document

Brightflame Hour

Official Report of Servitor Kermakis on the Events in Anidara

01.04.3200 - Tojara

About two weeks after setting sail from Siris, our expedition finally arrived in Tojara, the northernmost city of western Anidara. Already, the results of last years event were visible. The far horizon darkened by a moving shape. Ash clouds of titanic size, if early reports were to be believed. It seemed to have cleared somewhat as it was not the shroud of all-consuming black described in the earliest messages.
The city itself had not escaped unscathed either it seemed. Many houses and streets showed cracks and rifts, some of the oldest structures had collapsed. To think that even here, hundreds of kilometres away, the earth still shook with such violence.

---

07.04.3200 - Mira

After half a day of resting and restocking of supplies, we continued. South toward Mira. Every day the shroud on the horizon gets a bit darker. Passing small towns and fishing villages, we can see increasing signs of the event. Stretches of coast that have sunken slightly, enabling the ocean to reach them. Cliffs with broken edges, fallen trees. Still somewhat rare but noticeable.
When we sailed into Mira's harbour, we could see the first great sign of the devastation that had washed over this land. The great lighthouse of Mira, a tower that once pierced the skies. Now it's tip had broken off and large cracks had opened in the reddish tinted stone. Like fungi, various wooden constructions were scaling its flanks, workers scrambling like ants trying to fix and close any crack they could.
We also met the first refugees here. Dirty and ragged, they lined the market of the city, many begging for supplies or money. Once a day, the place erupted into utter mayhem when the city distributed donated food and clothing. People scrambled to gain even the tiniest scrap. I am kinda glad that we moved on a few hours later.
Always south toward that dark shroud.

---

07.04 - 16.04.3200 - Toward Cetara

Moving down the coast, our unease grew. The massive ash clouds that rose in the far south grew larger and darker by the day. Flashes of green light became visible, caused by the Rodite particles inside as my colleague from the Archive told me. At dawn and dusk, the clouds took on a shimmering quality, sometimes glowing in the most unreal of colours. Chemicals and minerals of various kinds, pulverized and taken to the heavens. Luckily for us, the wind had been blowing east for a few months now. All the ash and dust was blown inland, a poisonous rain for the fields of Anidara.
The damage grew worse the further south we got. Entire sections of the coast had broken into the ocean. More and more damaged or destroyed towns and villages. And streams of refugees moving along the mostly intact roads. Hundreds at first, then thousands. Many with barely their clothes left to them. Many try to move on the water in fishing boats and makeshift rafts.
Our journey by boat came to an unexpected end. A day north of Cetara, where the cloud had grown into a solid black wall to our left, we were stopped by warships. Cetara and the surrounding lands were under lockdown. The city was in anarchy. Something about a cult rampaging in the streets. That's all I could gain from the Cetaran Captain. They forced us to land as no one was allowed to near the city. After a day of gathering and reorganising ourselves, we moved into the interior.

---

16.04 - 18.04.3200 - Into the Wasteland

The further we went inland, the more we realized that the scars we had surveyed until now had only been the beginning. An hour inland, we found ourself navigate around massive cracks in the earth. Scores of trees ripped from the earth or burned to blackened stumps. The air grew heavier and even putrid at points. Periodically, when the winds shifted slightly, we faced ash storms bearing down on us. After a few hours, the landscape changed completely into a deserted, ashen wasteland, the ruins of towns strewn about, grey corpses under a black sky.

---

19.04.3200 - Ground Zero

We are here. In the centre of the storm, where the air is putrid, any water left had turned into black sludge. Inside a wall of grey and black, our eyes barely able to see a few meters. Slowly we moved onwards, taking hours for a few dozen meters, carefully avoiding cracks and holes that could have engulfed entire houses with ease. The ground grew steeper as we moved on. Eventually, we were almost climbing a small slope. Finally, in what I believed to be the final hours of daylight, we reached the edge. A sharp cliff that stretched endlessly in both directions and whose bottom was hidden by the putrid clouds of dust and ash.
We remained on this edge for over an hour before our group agreed to turn around. I remained a minute longer. Then, as if moved by deities hand the clouds parted. A small window but it was enough for me to see. And in the dying light of this day, I could glance into the burned-out heart of the cataclysm.
A caldera of titanic size. The jagged edges so far apart that I couldn't even imagine them. It was as if a god had smashed their titanic fist into the earth and torn a region the size of a country from it. On the ground an inferno of molten rock and strangely coloured fire. Spikes or broken rock rose into the sky. Like the titanic blackened fingers of some fallen giant, desperately grasping into the ashen air.
I was mesmerised, and only the harsh grasp of one of my companions took me back to reality. We needed to move back. Shook, I followed him down the slope again.

---

20.04. - 25.06.3200 - North toward Tojara

What should have been a simple two-day track back toward the coast turned into a month-long journey. We got surprised by an ash storm shortly after we had broken our camp near the caldera. It took us a few days to escape it, and when we emerged, we found ourselves deep within the great expanse that is the Anidaran Highlands. Thankfully the winds turned again and blew the ash storms east again. We were able to navigate our way back north thanks to the sun and stars.
Over the weeks, we came across many more signs of the destruction. Canyons, wider than a galley and hundreds of meters long cut through the landscape. Sinkholes, bigger than entire cities, lay open under the skies. Broken and abandoned villages and towns, collapsed mines, dried up rivers and withered trees as far as the eyes could see. On some days we could make out smaller smoke clouds on the horizon, forest fires as we would later learn.
About a month after setting out from the caldera, we came upon humans once again. A little village, swollen to the brim with refugees. Still, the natives were generous enough to share some water with us. While the others rested, I moved through the makeshift tents that housed the refugees. I spoke to many of them, inquiring if any had seen the disaster. Many didn't want to answer. But a few did. And I learned what had happened.
I had thought that something had come from the skies, we have known, for a long time that there are rocks floating in the skies that rain down from time to time. But I was wrong. The force of destruction had come from within the earth. One morning, completely without warning, the air had been torn apart, by a massive thunder and the rising sun had been burned away by an enormous, bright green flame, shooting out of the earth. A sick, eerie lance of poison tore the heavens apart and then the world simply collapsed. Ravines had opened up, entire provinces, swallowed whole. Storms of noxious ash had washed over the surrounding lands.
Bright green flames erupting from the earth. I remembered the flashes in the ash, the fire burning on the ground of that hellish place. I knew of the mines, that burrowed deep into the earth. The many minerals they brought from there. I know that this is not gonna appear within the official report, but I can't help but write it down. This thought gnawing at the back of my mind. Maybe this was not caused by gods wrath...but by man...

Close

by Darkseid

Type

Report, Incident

Medium

Paper

Location

Anidara

Authors

• Servitor Alleus Kermakis

Signatories (Characters)

• Primes Ministrator Gaius Iulius Adrena

Signatories (Organizations)

• Economic Ministry of the Fourth Tarquinnian Hegemony

The Rhodine Reach
From the city of Cetara in the west to the citadel of Bastor in the east, the Rodine Reach stretches. A region rich in minerals and fertile earth. Endless veins of some of the most valuable ores in the known world run underground and the soil above is perfect for all manner of spices and cash crops.
The region has been rather underdeveloped and poor for most of its history. Rather than attempt the complex and costly mining operations themselves, the rulers of the area sold digging and farming rights to various foreign merchant guilds and leagues. The kingdoms provided needed manpower, the leagues mined and paid monthly or yearly fees as well as taxes.
A profitable arrangement that lasted until the last day of 3199 DA.