The Return of Divine Magic and Incursions from the Abyss

“The world is young. The world is ancient. Time is circular, but not repetitive. As we move forward in time, we ascend a spiral; this is how it’s always been, and time and space are one field.” --Yedo, High Priest of Idoru
The earliest harbinger of the Great Shift was the return of divine magic to the world of Gheas. In the Rumorring Region, the first indication of the Shift was the emergence of a haphazard scattering of druids, collectively known as the Children of the Flowering Dawn. Over decades, that scattering of druids has evolved into many self-organized circles that are seeded throughout Rumorring and beyond, forming an interdependent network of druidic intention and magic. As the druids and their revivified faith sprouted in the feral forests of the Region, a cataclysm concurrently unfolded in the eastern reaches of Rumorring. At the southern end of the Red Desert, the land used to gently climb in dry steppes, rolling hills, and stretches of prairie. This was the homeland of many nomadic tribes of lightfoot heen, or halflings, and their more settled and sedentary kin, the stoutheart heen, who resided in many idyllic shires nestled within the now-obliterated Tookine Hills. Whether due to the demonic incantations of the fallen beings known as sablekeen, who live in cavernous realms below the hills, or due to the depredations of fervent gnolls that plague the edges of the Red Desert, or perhaps brought on by the hateful, covetous cravings of some mad wizard, the end began for these innocent groups of heen.
The Shattering occurred. In an instant, the steppes at the edge of the Glamour Mountains erupted in flames. An enormous wildfire raged for weeks, razing the Tookine Hills and turning prairies and steppes to char and ash. The conflagration eventually succumbed to the seasonal rains moving north over the land; however, where grasslands and hills once stretched, lakes of lava and molten bubbles of hellfire hissed and rapidly cooled under the downpours. After the rainy season, the extinction and environmental collapse revealed itself in stark fields of obsidian and pumice.
The Sea of Glass and Shard Lands stretched for many miles, hissing and cooling for years, venting steam and belching lava. And Mount Kruss rapidly formed where the Tookine Hills once rolled. Geysers of lava and ichor issued from the ravaged land. Mount Kruss climbed skyward, forming in hot, wet layers over seven years, cooled and flattened annually by storms. At the end of those seven years, a behemoth mountain ascended like a dark, terraced pyramid over the land, alternately steaming or seething with unclean fluids and molten lava. And so the mountain has stood for one hundred years, a source of demonic incursions and baleful events, which relentlessly pour forth to populate the Sea of Glass and Shard Lands, and slowly gain territories that become tainted and renamed as they fall: Harrow Valley, Darkfingers, the Abyssal Wall.