The Desolation

Written by Nestor Alren

The Desolation was a catastrophic, worldwide event that went on for years, as catastrophe triggered catastrophe, over and over again. It heralded the end of the Fifth Age, the Age of Greed. It was marked particularly by the violent and extreme movement of the land, which affected everything else.

Manifestation

The first sign of the Desolation was that normal weather patterns unraveled. The Weather was no longer predictable, and normally stable weather regions experienced record-breaking heatwaves, or even cold. It became humid and rained in the great deserts of the world, and huge lakes dried up into nothing but a puddle, leaving behind miles of dead aquatic life.
As this was happening, the groundshakes became more ubiquitous in both frequency and location. Whole land masses moved, causing mountains to crumble or explode, and new canyons and other geological formations would manifest.
The groundshakes themselves would kill and injure many, but the effect of the volcanoes was long-term devastation. Cities were burned, and the ash-filled sky covered the sun. Crops withered and died, and nothing new would grow in the darkness.
The survivors huddled together, and infectious disease rampaged through wherever they took refuge. Combined with starvation and dehydration, many more died in the early days. Then long term effects of breathing ash and other strains on the human body killed even more.
No one has been able to quantify the destruction or lives lost from the Desolation. But there is no doubt that billions of people perished from the catastrophic event.

Localization

The events of the Desolation occurred across the whole of Tellus. We have been unable to find an unaffected region, though much data was either lost, or never collected to begin with.
Such lack of data includes how the lunar cycles changed. We know that prior to the desolation, a lunar cycle was 28 days in length. They have expanded to 32. Also, records show that the seasons correlated fairly consistently with thirteen lunar cycles. That has also changed, to twelve.
Another worldwide change has been the relocation of magnetic north. We do not have the data necessary to tell precisely where it was prior to the desolation, but we do know that the general direction is what we now consider to be West of Nemea, so it has moved to what was once Southeast of it's prior location.

Staring at the small, ambient fire in the hearth, Cadone had begun. “Long ago, at the end of an age, called the Fifth Age by some, was the Desolation. It ended the age that was also known as the Age of Greed. War had spread across the land, sending the last of the Great Heroes to the Underworld. Humans were driven by greed to consume or control all they could. The war that had infested the Age of Greed was not that of neighbor-on-neighbor or group-on-group violence, but rather, organized, industrial war that existed on a grand scale, for grand purposes, to support massive organizations whose only purpose was the accumulation of wealth and power.”
Cadone looked up at Luke, who was enthralled by the story. They continued: “The people began to notice that things were changing. First, it was the weather, which started to lose its normal patterns, with irregular weather becoming the norm. Then there were the groundshakes, but these weren’t like the ones that you know. Along with these groundshakes, whole mountains would explode.”
~ Excerpt from "Mother of Secrets" by jayseaboom

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Type

Natural