The battlefields of the catastrophic showdowns of the Calamity were scattered across Exandria, but it was Wynandir that suffered the full destructive powers of the
gods. Divided by the
Ashkeeper Peaks, the fields of Wynandir were once home to several powerful ruling houses, squabbling over their own goals before being drawn into either side of the conflict of the gods, or abstaining for their own reasons. The immensity of power wielded by the Prime Deities and Betrayer Gods was enough to wound the landscape for eons, and the irresponsible use of arcane knowledge developed by the mortals ensured the ruin of their own legacy.
Little record remains of the terrible war, but its effects are still felt today. The sheer magnitude of the energies unleashed in the ensuing battles by gods and mortals alike was enough to fray the boundaries holding back the elemental chaos, spilling unbridled destruction into the world. It completely rearranged the known flow of magical ley energy across Exandria. The dark kingdom of
Ghor Dranas was reduced to ash, but the conflict devastated Exandria’s peoples, razing entire cities and inspiring in many a desire to flee from this plane of existence entirely. So great was the loss of life during the war that historians believe no more than a third of Exandria’s population survived, leaving only one remaining bastion of civilization: the Dawn City,
Vasselheim.
The world entered a long, dark period of regrowth. The Betrayer Gods were banished once more to their realms of deception and hate, but the threat of their return weighed heavily on the world. The Prime Deities felt that their involvement in mortal conflict was to blame for the cataclysmic damage inflicted on Exandria. They knew that while the divine gateways were left open, the prison planes that held the banished Betrayers would remain imperfect and temporary.
Thus, hoping to ensure that such ruin would not befall Exandria again, they left their children to fend for themselves. The Creators returned to their own realms, dragging both Betrayer and abomination with them and sealing the pathways to the mortal realm behind them with the Divine Gate. Only in this way could they prevent their corrupted brethren from physically returning to the material plane. Sadly, for the Prime Deities, this action also carried with it a self-imposed sentence of exile. The Creators would henceforth never be allowed to visit their creation.
The disappearance of the gods is known by many names: the Second Spark for those who study the arcane, and the Penance for those who seek closeness to their gods. The most common name for this time of warfare and divine separation is the
Divergence, and it marked the end of the
Age of Arcanum.
Much time has passed since, and the world has been reborn once again. The gods still influence and guide from beyond the Divine Gate, bestowing knowledge and power on their worshipers, but the path of mortals is now their own to make. New cities, kingdoms, and cultures have retaken the world, building over the ashes of the old. New songs fill the air, and the hope of a brighter future drives people day after day, while buried ruins and ancient relics remind all people of a darker time of mistakes that should never be repeated.
Wildemount After the Calamity
In the wake of the vast destruction of the Calamity and the exile of the pantheon in the Divergence, the survivors began to emerge from the ash and shadows to reclaim and rebuild Exandria. Across the continents, many took the pieces of their cultures and sought a place to forge a new age. In Wildemount, the site of the most terrible conflicts of the Calamity, the echoes of those deadly battles linger to this day.
In the Wake of the Gods
After the Calamity, the lands of Wildemount became wild and perilous, filled with monstrosities and beasts that prowled its broken fields and shattered mountains. The land’s new denizens reclaimed the newly untamed realm, hunting any mortals not clever enough to hide. The masterless creations of the Betrayer Gods ruled their own territories, establishing themselves as a new pantheon.
As the dust settled, surviving mortals grasped at what they could from their bygone lives and hid away in fear of what would come next. Those of faith dealt with their sense of failure and abandonment, while enlightened scribes mourned the loss of their research and the great magical secrets that had enabled the previous age to rise to such prominence.
Others picked up what they could from the ruins and chose to start anew, hoping that their descendants would learn from their mistakes. Over those early centuries, the scattered survivors fought back the terrors that stalked the abandoned lands of Wildemount, continuing to endure and build new societies, civilizations that eventually reclaimed Wildemount and brought the continent to this modern age.
Tal'Dorei After the Calamity
Following the creation and subsequent razing of Exandria, a post-Divergence world was now left to rise from the ashes and begin a new era. Though the modern nation-state of Tal'Dorei did not emerge for some time after year 0 P.D., the history of Tal'Dorei truly began with the founding of Gwessar.
Gwessar
At the dawning of modern history, what is now known as the continent of Tal'Dorei housed the germinating seeds of civilization. It was the hardy, dependable dwarves who best weathered the war between gods and mortals, beneath the
Cliffkeep Mountains. For many years, dwarves lived in the tunnels beneath the Cliffkeep Mountains, leaderless and chaotic, until the various clans unified to form the subterranean city of
Kraghammer.
Meanwhile, as they busied themselves excavating the world below, a group of elves appeared suddenly in the south. At the outset of the Calamity, a society of elves used a powerful, obscure ritual to transport many of their people to safety on another plane: the
Feywild. They returned at the turning of the ages under the guidance of an elven sorceress named Yenlara Alderwreath. Overwhelmed by the beauty of the restored world, the syn'alfen—known in the Common tongue as wood elves—called their new land Gwessar, the Fields of Joy, a name by which elves and those enamored with elven culture still call the continent to this day.
The dwarves and elves are long-lived people, and when they struggled to rebuild their civilizations, there were those among them who still remembered the world that was. Humanity was not so fortunate. Human histories, written by wasteland warlords in fading ink on waterlogged parchment and vellum, did not survive the years. Yet, somehow, humanity endured. Several centuries after the dwarves began this period of renewal, a clan of humans braved the angry Ozmit Sea and sailed to Gwessar's western coast from the continent
Issylra. The ruins of their first settlement, the port city of
O'Noa, still stand today. They began to explore, and as they explored they built—but they did not know their city would become the heart of a great empire. They did not know the glory and sorrow that would surround the city of
Emon.
After centuries of war, political upheaval, and cataclysmic events, the people of Gwessar settled into an era of relative peace under the rule of Kraghammer,
Syngorn, and the
Republic of Tal'Dorei. That peace shattered when a collection of chromatic dragons calling themselves the
Chroma Conclave assaulted Emon, reducing the massive city to rubble within a day and declaring themselves the new kings and queen of the land. It took great courage, powerful magic, and ancient secrets to eventually bring the Conclave down, and the people have spent the last two decades rebuilding, mourning, and struggling to fill the power vacuum with leaders they can trust.
Marquet After the Calamity
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Issylra After the Calamity
Vasselheim alone survived the Calamity,
Religious Tension in the Heartland
Because Vasselheim, long considered the religious and cultural center of the world, was so dedicated to serving the Prime Deities, the influence of the gods spread across most of the continent. However, the pantheon was not the only supernatural power at play. The eidolons, considered by many to be children of the Primordial Titans, hid from divine judgement during the Calamity and slowly re-emerged after the Divergence. In regions like the Demithore Valley, eidolons came to be worshipped instead of the gods. The organized religions of the Dawn City have evangelized to these worshippers in vain, accomplishing little more than frustrating both sides of the argument and drawing pushback from those they wish to convert.
Nevertheless, Issylra has rebuilt. From the small towns scattered throughout the Demithore Valley to the great nations of
Othanzia and its neighboring republics, the reborn civilizations have grown strong in the face of countless challenges. With Vasselheim at its head, this continent stands firm against attacks from beyond—but it is the conflict at the heart of the land that threatens to bring everything collapsing into dust.
The Shattered Teeth After the Calamity
After Domunas was sundered at the beginning of the Calamity, all that remained was a scattered handful of islands consumed by elemental chaos. Many believed there could be no survivors, but even if the nations of Exandria had wanted to seek them out, they suddenly had their own—god-sized—problems to deal with. So it was that the
Wildmother's mist crept in, unnoticed by the wider world until its true form was complete. Known as the Fool's Curtain, this dense, disorienting fog bank sheltered the newly-formed archipelago from the much of the war, though the effects of such a long and cataclysmic conflict could never truly be ignored. The few dozen survivors hid in caves for a time, but the elemental earth and fire that suffused the landscape eventually drove them to the sea. Only in the wake of the Divergence could the people find one another and truly begin to rebuild.
The Night Sea
The Shattering took place the day Avalir fell from the sky, utterly destroying Cathmoíra and cracking Mount Ygora open like a nut. The release of the King of Fire and the Queen of Earth from their age-long prison set the elemental energies of Domunas into a flurry of raging chaos that lasted all through the war, but it was their sudden, forced redirection into the
Astral Sea that opened the Astral Nadir. After the Divergence, the tattered remains of the
Gau Drashari, now known as the Drashari, established a settlement from which to guard this unstable portal to the astral plane. However, about a century after they began their work, an oni barreled through their defenses and tore open the rift until it consumed the whole sky. After his defeat, the Drashari did not have the strength to close such a massive portal, so instead they erected a barrier: an aetheric film that covered the rift, effectively transforming it into a window through which no being could pass. To this day, the Night Sea hangs over the islands day and night, influencing the dreams of all who slumber beneath its gaze.
The centuries were kind to the people of Dvona's Necklace—as the locals call it—but the island's residents knew better than to push their luck. They established small, isolated settlements with only the loosest connections for trade and protection. Eventually, these connections strengthened into a proper government known as the
Ossended Host, but even the Host had no interest in expanding their influence beyond what was needed. As a result, when Marquesian merchants crashed through the Curtain and washed up on their shores, the Host generously allowed them to build their own nation in the hopes that such independence would lead the merchants to leave them alone. Instead, intrigued by the magics of the Night Sea, the newly formed
Wanderman Assembly has begun pushing not only for strong intercontinental trade but for investigation into mysteries long left untouched.
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