This is a Summer Camp article written AT GREAT SPEED! It has not yet been edited, so apologies for the copious typos and small text issues.
The Underdark Collapse (known also as the Great Underdark Collapse, the Great Collapse, and the Birth of Monsters) was a natural disaster that occurred thousands of years ago in the northern continent (now called the
Lost Continent). It is most associated with the beginning of the fall of the civilisation of the Ancients, and also as the rise of the dark age and monsters within the world.
The Old Underdark
Not much as known for certain of the underdark of old. Certainly, the ancients explored the region beneath their own lands, both from curiosity and from a desire to better understand this region that seemed to birth monsters into their own world above. According to their records, it could be accessed through tunnels from the surface, through underground rivers, and sometimes accidentally come accross at the base of mine shafts.
The underdark lands were certainly dark and deadly - the few fragments that survive from the Ancients describe the horrors of the underdark in literature from the ancients, and it is often used as a comparison for hell within songs and poems. However, some authors describe the intangible mystery and beauty of the region - the many, varied species that dwelled there, and the astonishingly carved palaces of stalagmite and crystal.
The collapse of the underdark
Not even the Ancients, with their advanced knowledge of magic and The World, new for certain why the underdark collapsed. However, speculations abounded even in that period, rangeing from the natural to the ludicrous. The most mundane – and seemingly reasonable – explanations of the era included an earthquake, or underground rock formations crumbling due to the shifting of the earth, or perhaps a volcanic eruption unfelt on the surface. An InterPlanar shift was also positied, although even at the time this was unpopular. The less likely and more far-fetched explanations include the shifting of huge dragons or other subterranean creatures in their sleep, the growth of a vast underground tree, or even the accidental explosion of a vast forge buried deep at the heart of the underdark.
The birth of monsters
Regardless of the causes of the underdark collapse, the effects were unequivocal. The ancients in the northern continent were suddenly inundated by darkness, disease, and hordes - of monsters and also the denizens of the underdark - fleeing the destruction of their home.
The Shattering
Over the next years, the Northern continent slowly shattered. What had once been a vast stretch of land, large swatches of it below sea level, gradually began to crack and crumble. When whole sections of the coast crumbled into the sea, the flood waters swept over the lowlands, covering them entirely. The extended continental Empire of the Ancients become nothing more than a series of islands.
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