First Unmaking

As the dragon kingdoms ran out of space during the First Age, the dragons began fighting among themselves fighting over resources and territory. The dragons began drawing tribal lines along physiological, religious, and cultural differences. As the wars grew more intense, a powerful dragon sorceress tried to harness the elemental power of the world in order to gain an edge on her rivals. This spell went awry and unleashed over a million elementals who engaged in a four-way war of their own. The clash of elemental forces created huge supernatural disasters which decimated the dragon nations’ structures and treasure hoards and killed the vast majority of the of the world’s mortals.
Elementals of all types ran amok and fought each other. The main battles were between water and earth elementals. Many centuries later, the ebb and flow of the tides still passively mimics the ancient clashes of water and earth elementals. Fighting between earth and water elementals split the single mega continent in Scarterra into smaller pieces.
Where the earth elementals advanced most strongly created new mountain ranges and chains of islands. Where water elementals pushed on to the and in great numbers, they created underground rivers and aquifers.
Where fire and water elementals clashed, hot springs and geysers linger today.
Where fire and earth elementals clashed, volcanoes linger today.
Air elementals left a smaller mark on the world that followed, but in one place where they clashed with fire elementals, fire periodically rains from the sky in the appropriately named Fire Plains. Where they clashed with water elementals created phenomenon known as Eternal Rains. Small areas where the rain never stops. Least common was where air and earth elementals cashed creating floating islands, most of which have stopped floating and crashed into the grand by the Third Age.