Terra: The Sundered Realm

Centuries ago, the world was the domain of humans. Small enclaves of other races could still be found in the forgotten and wild corners of the world, but they did not often mix with the humans. Eventually, the humans believed the other races to be nothing but fairytales, and saw themselves as the true heirs to the world. In their arrogance and foolishness, humanity attempted to mould the world as they saw fit, mining and logging and dredging to harvest the world's resources, and developed technologies reliant on destroying these resources to power their lives.   The planet reacted with rising temperatures and extreme weather patterns. Animal and plant species began to die out, and eventually, humanity realised the folly of their ways. They attempted to mitigate the damage they had caused, and for a while, it seemed they were successful. Ultimately, however, it was too late, and humanity’s casual disregard for the world in which they dwelled returned to haunt them in the form of the Sundering, a destabilisation of the physical and metaphysical fabric of the world.   Natural and human-made forces began to ripple across the planet, causing disaster and mayhem along tectonic plate boundaries, fault lines, and ley lines. The world endured a fierce reclaiming by the elements, and as humanity reeled in the face of this cataclysm, the Convergence began. Over the course of the next years, other planes of existence began to encroach on the prime material plane, with rifts of varying size and stability forming to other planes. In extreme cases, sections of the prime material plane became fused with that of other realms.   As time passed, the world began to stabilise. The rifts with other planes began to calm, settling into a more-or-less known quantity, naturally or through magical and scientific intervention. Villages, town and cities began to emerge from the chaos, either constructed from new or slowly but surely reclaimed and rebuilt. Today, humans share the world with a myriad of other races, including dwarves and gnomes, elves and fey creatures, orcs and goblins, elementals and spirits, fiends and devils. The realm is fraught with peril, with lingering scars from the Sundering and the Convergence marring both the landscape and its people.