Upheaval in the East

The 1670^th year was looking to be a good one for the communities along the east coast of Vistilia. Despite the hardships inflicted upon them by Mare Rancidore decimating the oily fish schools, things were beginning to look hopeful.
On the 14^th of Pentember, this light of hope and optimism was snuffed out. Overnight, a tremendous earthquake ripped up and down the coastline, ripping apart piers and jetties, and toppling dockside cranes into the harbors they served. Although there was surprisingly little damage to most of the buildings themselves, the villagers awoke to find their fishing communities high and dry atop cliffs more than three hundred feet tall, and all of their boats smashed to pieces on the rocks below.
Already facing economic hardship, from the depletion of one valuable fish stock, the loss of access to the rest was too much for many of the communities. While some stubbornly held on to their homes and adapted to the new landscape, others were not able to so easily adapt and were forced to move away.
Named the "Upheaval in the East", the long term consequences of the event are still being felt across the Vistilian states. Entire industries vanished from the eastern coast overnight. Although there was a healthy demand for many of these workers' skills on Vistilia's western coast, it was a long way to get there and many who arrived in the inland cities did so penniless and destitute. Fish had been a significant part of the diet of most people on the coast, and the loss of this led to intense hunger in many places, and near famine conditions in others. The rivers that had once drained into the seas off the eastern coast now found their way blocked by land that slanted upwards and were forced to divert, spreading sideways and forming a gigantic lake that now stretches for most of the length of eastern Vistilia, further isolating the communities that remained on the cliffs and flooding out others in the water's path.