The Sundering
The Sundering was an event so cataclysmic, reshaping the entire world, that it became a common calendar event world-wide. All dates became Pre-Sundering and After Sundering.
Human spellcasters of the time developed a procedure to gain power and extend their lifespans. They captured fae creatures to drain and consume their life essences, becoming the first elves. The process spread, and more and more individuals were changed until the entire race of elves had been created. The fae fled between worlds, but the elves pursued, harvesting more and more creatures.
Hungry for more power, elven spellcasters created a ritual, the details lost to time. It was intended to harvest the power of multiple ley lines and several titanic fae beasts that had been captured and brought back to the world. The ritual site was in the centre of the continent at a ley line convergence, and hundreds of spellcasters were involved in the ritual while thousands of elven nobles formed concentric rings around it, eager to share in the power they expected to be released.
Few details are known of what happened during the ritual, but the great work ran out of the casters' control, or possibly there was interference from outside; some scholars suspect that there may have been an attack by the Fae Lords and their warriors at the ritual's height, as the results were so unexpected. Whatever the cause, there was a massive cataclysm and a staggering amount of magical power was released. The centre of the continent was shattered into rubble and the elven civilisation smashed out of existence, as the ocean poured in to form the inland sea which would become known as the Wyrmsea.
The magical blast shook the entire planet like a bell, and hundreds of thousands of spellcasters and psychics died simply from the psychic shock. Millions of tonnes of earth and rock were hurled away to form the Wyrmsea's crater, and the crumbled edge of the continent formed the network of islands which would become known as the Wyrm Straits.
The ley lines roared with energy, and the magical rivers whipped around all over the planet, not settling down for years before they eventually formed into entirely new configurations . The only stable point was the ritual site, where the magic was calcified into a wild magic zone. Huge quantities of the erupting rock which had been thrown aloft were locked in mid-air as if it were entirely natural, forming a pillar of floating islands which would become known as the Mountains of the Sky.
The elven civilisation had been the largest and most powerful across most of the planet, with others coexisting uneasily with it. When it was destroyed, along with most of the inhabitable centre of the largest continent, there was a power vacuum alongside the enormous loss of life. It took years for all the socio-economic after-effects to be discovered, and the survivors were reduced to desperation tactics to survive for almost a century.
Eventually the environmental, weather, economic and social upheavals settled into a new stability, but suspicion of incautious magical experimentation remains high even a millennium later. Smaller kingdoms have arisen from the ruins of the elven empire, but elves are almost universally viewed with distrust.
The people of the continent came to call their shattered home "the Sundered Lands," and the cataclysm itself, "The Sundering". It became Year Zero in the new calendar.
Human spellcasters of the time developed a procedure to gain power and extend their lifespans. They captured fae creatures to drain and consume their life essences, becoming the first elves. The process spread, and more and more individuals were changed until the entire race of elves had been created. The fae fled between worlds, but the elves pursued, harvesting more and more creatures.
Hungry for more power, elven spellcasters created a ritual, the details lost to time. It was intended to harvest the power of multiple ley lines and several titanic fae beasts that had been captured and brought back to the world. The ritual site was in the centre of the continent at a ley line convergence, and hundreds of spellcasters were involved in the ritual while thousands of elven nobles formed concentric rings around it, eager to share in the power they expected to be released.
Few details are known of what happened during the ritual, but the great work ran out of the casters' control, or possibly there was interference from outside; some scholars suspect that there may have been an attack by the Fae Lords and their warriors at the ritual's height, as the results were so unexpected. Whatever the cause, there was a massive cataclysm and a staggering amount of magical power was released. The centre of the continent was shattered into rubble and the elven civilisation smashed out of existence, as the ocean poured in to form the inland sea which would become known as the Wyrmsea.
The magical blast shook the entire planet like a bell, and hundreds of thousands of spellcasters and psychics died simply from the psychic shock. Millions of tonnes of earth and rock were hurled away to form the Wyrmsea's crater, and the crumbled edge of the continent formed the network of islands which would become known as the Wyrm Straits.
The ley lines roared with energy, and the magical rivers whipped around all over the planet, not settling down for years before they eventually formed into entirely new configurations . The only stable point was the ritual site, where the magic was calcified into a wild magic zone. Huge quantities of the erupting rock which had been thrown aloft were locked in mid-air as if it were entirely natural, forming a pillar of floating islands which would become known as the Mountains of the Sky.
The elven civilisation had been the largest and most powerful across most of the planet, with others coexisting uneasily with it. When it was destroyed, along with most of the inhabitable centre of the largest continent, there was a power vacuum alongside the enormous loss of life. It took years for all the socio-economic after-effects to be discovered, and the survivors were reduced to desperation tactics to survive for almost a century.
Eventually the environmental, weather, economic and social upheavals settled into a new stability, but suspicion of incautious magical experimentation remains high even a millennium later. Smaller kingdoms have arisen from the ruins of the elven empire, but elves are almost universally viewed with distrust.
The people of the continent came to call their shattered home "the Sundered Lands," and the cataclysm itself, "The Sundering". It became Year Zero in the new calendar.
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