After the Cataclysm shattered the continent and wiped out the serpentfolk, the remaining species on the continent began to spread out and take the continent for their own.
The Alborian Empire's attempt at colonizing The Grassy Sea was the brainchild of Guillemot Gavreau, a minor nobleman. Gavreau, the somewhat sarcastically named 'Marquis de Cheveaux', funded the expedition with the majority of his families wealth and would go on to die ignobly under the hooves of the centaur tribes who call the region home. The remnants of the expedition returned home in defeat, bringing with them a message for the emperor and his court from The Tribes of The Grassy Sea; that their homeland was not a place for foreigners to discover, explore, own, or become masters of, it had a people and they stood ready and able to defend it.
After the Alborians humiliating failure of a colonization attempt in the 'Marquis des Cheveaux' debacle, The Kingdom of Bommbergonia launched their own expedition in an effort to show up their northern rivals. Expecting resistance from the local 'primitive tribes', this expedition had a major military element to it with the intent of taming the locals and showing up the alborians.
The Crater Sea Trading Co. is founded as a cooperative effort between a number of independant traders in order to help them share the costs of purchasing dock and warehouse space at various ports. They will eventually become one of the most powerful political and economic entities on the Shattered Continent.
The Tyranny of Emperor Pierre De Austeron plunged Alboria into a civil war which would last until his ouster in 1665