The Starfall
Summary
Once the land was whole, before it was smashed to pieces by a falling star and the wrath of the gods. The old empires of Drej and Duhn were obliterated as a ball of fire descended upon them, and the oceans poured forth and great tidal waves rose and roared across the land, drowning the world in a matter of days.
Cities sank and kingdoms were washed away as the oceans poured into the basin of the starfall. Even those that did not drown faced grave peril. Volcanoes rose and erupted across the world, turning entire cities to ash, and all that did not drown, burnt. In the wake of the great cataclysm the remaining land had been reshaped into two continents, stricken with great storms, floods, and shortages of every major resource.
Wars erupted between the surviving petty kingdoms and lords all across Althea, the northern continent, and Outland, the southern continent; wars that forged the black throne of Acheron and the united kingdom of Althea, as well as the deaths of entire kingdoms and cultures.
At the breaking of dawn and the end of an age, the skies unleashed their fury and the stars fell like tears into the sea, or so it is said befell the old realms of Drej and Duhn; two great realms engulfed in red flame and drowned beneath black sands.
When a star fell from the sky, striking the ground and splitting mountains, great fires raged and all the world was covered in flame and ash. As the ground collapsed, the seas were unleashed, called forth by the gods to wipe clean the sundering land.
In a day and a night the world was sank beneath raging waves, until all that remained of the west was a splintered land seperated by a new and vast sea.
Historical Basis
Although seemingly impossible, historical documents and accounts from across the Two Lands confirm that the Starfall Sea was seemingly created by some kind of cataclysmic event around one thousand years ago. Literature, religion, and historians rarely disagree as to the cause: a massive ball of fire and smoke fell from the sky, obliterating not only the Drej Empire, but destroying vast swathes of land.
Hundreds of years of historical texts reference rampant wilfires and flooding plaguing the lands for generations, and the effects of these disasters can still be seen and felt throughout the Two Lands in the form of the star-worshipping Estari and the massive and impossibly ancient fortresses dotting the lands.
In Literature
Although Estari doctrine holds sway over the depiction of the Starfall across Althea as the righteous punishment of wrathful gods, literature from across the Two Lands casts the disastrous event in a very different light. The Starfall is most often depicted as a truly apocalyptic event, one that destroyed the previous world and created the new one.
In Art
The Starfall is often depicted by Estari-influenced artists as a white ball of fire, or as a flaming chariot carrying the gods down from the sky to deliver divine judgement. In the south, the Starfall can be seen represented as a red daemon, or a swarm of dragons burning and purifying the world of sin.
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