Fall of Manuara

The Fall of Manuara was a cataclysmic event that destroyed much of the Shardscape realm known as Shatterspear, effectively ending the reign of the God-Emperor Matanea and all but obliterating his empire of Manuara over the course of a few days.
Before the Fall, God-Emperor Matanea and his consort, the Blind Magician Merano'a, had constructed a large-scale magical array that spanned the entire breadth and length of the Shatterspear peninsula. With this array, they contained, stabilized, and rerouted the ley of fire that flowed through the middle of the peninsula, redirecting it to the empire's capital of Manaroa, where the god-emperor used its incredible energies to extend his divine influence and empower a magical realm-wide restriction that forbade travel to Shatterspear by planeshifting, teleportation, the use of rifts and unauthorized portals, or most other means of unsanctioned translocation.
The ley of Shatterspear is an enormous river of fire elemental energies that flows through the peninsula. In ancient times, its tremendous energies influenced the landscape where it flowed, creating a volcanic ridge through the middle of the Shatterspear that is known to its people as the Spine or the Cinderscar Ridge among other epithets. It is the result of an overlap between Shatterspear and Signr's Sprawl, the elemental realm of fire. While not the only such overlap in Shatterspear, the one that formed the ley is by far the largest.
The grand array of Manuara was instrumental in the prosperity of the empire. It provided a nigh-limitless font of energy for the empire and ensured the geological stability of the region as without the ley to fuel them, the volcanoes of the Spine went dormant, ceasing all of the geological activity that would have been commensurate with an active volcanic ridge. This prosperity and stability did not come without a price, however, as the energies of the ley were by nature temperamental, in constant flux, and prone to flaring—much like a raging blaze. The grand array forced the ley into cooperation, constricting it to a predictable course by necessity while the ley resisted its confinement, leading to an incredible buildup of pressure in the system.
It was precisely this pressure that led to the cataclysmic events of the Fall of Manuara. At the behest of the exiled oracle of Manuara, Lan H'Kea, who had foreseen that the God-Emperor would enter into a nihilistic alliance with the Galbad of Yesterday and thus use Shatterspear as a stepping stone for the Unkent invasion of the Material Realm, the Wardens of the Wayward sought to "sink the tip of the spear beneath the waves," as the oracle had predicted that this was the only way to ensure that Shattespear would not fall into the hands of the Galbadians.
To this end, the Wardens mounted an assault on the imperial palace in Manaroa and managed to find their way into the chamber that housed the core of the grand array. When they destroyed the core and subsequently broke the grand array, the constraints on the ley were released and it snapped back to its natural course, setting off a geological disturbance that was cataclysmic enough on its own, but would only serve as a sign of things to come.
Shortly after the Wardens escaped, the Fall began in earnest. The backlash from the release of all the built-up pressure in the ley caused the Cinderscar Ridge to roar to life with a ferocity unheard of in the history of Shatterspear. Enormous columns of ash were belched from the bowels of the earth, blotting out the sun. Accounts from survivors tell of the line of darkness that crept across the landscape as the ash clouds spread high above.
Pyroclastic flows surged down the slopes of the Spine, obliterating villages and cities close enough to the volcanoes. Fire elementals that had been dormant during the absence of the ley were roused from their slumber and added to the havoc. Most settlements that survived the first hours of the Fall were buried in ash and pumice during the days that followed, and then later drowned in waves of lava. Only the most seaward of settlements in the peninsula's widest parts, such as Tauavea, were spared. Even then, they were not untouched. Tauavea, for instance, was nevertheless half-buried in lava, with all but the sturdiest of its buildings collapsed under the weight of ash and pumice.

Type

Metaphysical, Elemental