The first day of Ashandri

Era beginning/end

Chaos and despair erupted in the newborn world. Magic transforms the land and its inhabits, and ghostly hauntings terrify the survivors.

After what they experienced, few people believed they would survive. It was clear that this was the end. When things turned out differently, chaos and confusion erupted. At many border regions, the survivors attacked each other - simply because they were still in survival mode, and "unknown" equalled "dangerous". Others had given in to the thought of dying to an extent they couldn't endure living. As people were plagued by loss and the memories of the apocalypse, a wave of death started hours after the creation of Ashandri, and it lasted for weeks.   Some also considered the events as an opportunity - marauders and pillagers, in particular. A few individuals seized power when others were vulnerable, like the Night Queen Agrutha in Hag's Rest. Just twelve hours after the world's rebirth, Agrutha was crowned queen.   Servants of the gods experienced another shock as they realized they had no connection to their deities anymore. Clerics were incapable of casting spells, paladins didn't feel the holy bond to their god anymore. Even those who revered concepts and forces of nature felt cut off from them. The only exception were the Shadowblood Elves, their clerics still being at their full capabilities and connected to the divine source of their power. A fact they used by outright attacking neighboring settlements.   At nightfall, those who died in the reborn world appeared as spirits, ghosts caught in a world that was cut off from the afterlife. Even though the majority of these lost souls turned out to be harmless or even benign, it wasn't true for all of them. Some survivors experienced a night of haunting terrors, and some ended up dead and turned into incorporeal spirits themselves.   Aside from all this, the magical forces of creation still swept over the lands until the dawn of the new day. Violet lights and strange sounds filled the air and soaked the ground. The magic rearranged or outright transformed the terrain, and also touched and changed living creatures. Already harvested crops became ripe again, meadows and forests grew as if they had been untouched for years. Sometimes, the magic seemed to be out of control. Individual beings close to each other fused into one, creating hybrid races. New animals, plants and even plant-animal-hybrids came into existence. A few sentient individuals were also affected. This fusing magic seems to have been particularly strong in the Spirit Fields, in Carivar and in the Bleeding Jungles. The altering magic also swept over some areas in particular, transforming some of the local inhabitants into something new. Not fusing with other beings, but changing their very nature, transforming them - like the now-amphibic Slumberpool Halflings of Delvaroth. For many of them, this was a confusing, or even terrifying experience.   Only at the dawn of the next day, the first dawn of Ashandri, the world slowly became stable - physically and magically. For its inhabitants, the turmoil was far from over.