The Separation

The defining moment of Dendralin history, The Separation was a week-long arcane-induced tectonic catastrophe, resulting in widespread destruction of the Elderwood, a massive expansion of the Dendralin landmass, global flooding, and the end of the longest era in remembered society across Terramora.

Background:

Aéldelin society had been relatively static for millennia prior to the separation. Having been born of, and evolved with the forest, the Aéldelinians had developed a symbiotic relationship with their home, resulting in a vibrant and virtuous culture that existed in absolute harmony with the land. There were imperfections, however, that festered below this utopian surface


The Aéldelinians, whose secular and spiritual connections with the land were indistinguishable from each other, utilized a fairly decentralized form of governance, that ensured no one individual could attain excess power. This inability to gain more power than was provided to Elders, the community leaders of the Elderwood, inspired a cohort of Elders (primarily from the eastern forest) to conspire against Aéldelin society, and to consolidate power to their small alliance. Much like the greater Aéldelin culture saw no separation between spirituality and politics, this dark alliance matched their political aspirations with equally dark spiritual and magical practices, the latter of which was the direct cause of the separation.

The Dark Alliance:

Riding the growing wave of Taurétyelca through the eastern Elderwood, Maedhros forged an alliance with seven other Elders near the eastern seaboard in hopes of advancing his agenda. To form this alliance, Maedhros leaned into Taurétyelca's primary belief - that life stemmed from the Elderwood, and claimed that as Elders in the eastern wood, Maedhros and his cohorts were imbued with the most life across Dendralis, and therefore, should be the ones to lead all living things. Under this guise of ordained 'liveliness', the Dark Alliance concocted their plan to accuse other Elders of attempting to grab all the

Maedhros

power for themselves, and then, in the ensuing chaos, to assert themselves as the ideal leaders of the Aéldeliners to return them to their sanctified and harmonious ways with the forest.

A Confrontation in Accusations:

The final Nórelómë, or Convention of Elders, began without incident, as the five-day event saw nothing out of the ordinary that would be reported from survivors of the convention. Outside of the realm of Taurétyelca, the Elderwood had seen another bountiful year of health and harvest and peace, and the Convention was expected to pass without much fanfare.

The third day of the convention, however, saw an early break from tradition, as one of the members of the Dark Alliance stood to accuse one of the Great Elders of attempting to consolidate all power under himself. While this notion was demonstrably false, the uproar that it caused, sowed enough doubt for the convention to have already been derailed. Maedhros, known for his stoic demeanor, was able to quell enough of the volume at the site, providing him the opportunity to throw his weight behind this accusation. The second motion behind the accusation of a power grab threw the Convention into a frenzy, in which the remaining six members of the Dark Alliance voiced their support for the accusations, spiraling the meeting out of control.

According to survivors, the members of the Dark Alliance subtly moved to the eight corners of the octagonal hall while arguing their standing. Once in this strategic placement, Maedhros stood upon the nearest table and commanded the attention of the Elders. Standing above the crowd, Maedhros asserted that the followers of Taurétyelca were uniquely suited to lead the Aédelinians out of darkness and into "swiftness", the result of which sent another uproar through the crowd of Elders. The Dark Alliance members saw this as an absolute refutation of what they believed to be a benevolent offering, leading them to initiate weaving a binding ritual over the whole of the Elderwood, since being dubbed the Dagortauré.

The Separation Begins:

Now known as the Dagortauré, the binding spell that the Dark Alliance attempted to use came from the Parma Tyelca, or The Book of the Swift, a supposed ancient text that Maedhros had found, and which had inspired him to form the Taurétyelca practice.

With the eight Dark Alliance members evenly spaced at the eight corners of the great hall, they began attempting to weave an arcane web over the room, as purple static shot from their fingertips through the air. The surviving Elders claimed to have seen what looked like an ancient and intricate basket weave above their heads made of purple lightning, while time seemed to become impossibly slow, leaving any resistance well behind the actions of the Dark weavers.

Meanwhile, the followers of Taurétyelca had been working their own magic since the day the Elders left for the annual convention. With promises of increased life energy, the Taurétyelcans performed a ritual that unified their collective energies, and directed it to the Elders at the convention, who Maedhros had promised would be performing a cleansing over the Elderwood. As the binding ritual over the Convention had stabilized, the Dark Alliance began tapping into the well of energy being fed to them from the eastern wood. This influx of energy allowed the eight to begin weaving a bind over the whole Elderwood, intending to exert control over the entire forest. As bolts of lightning shot out of the great hall, shattering windows from the electric vines leaping out of the room, the ground began to rumble.

The Stretching of the Land:

According to one of the surviving Elders, the greatest, and perhaps only continent-saving mistake made by the Dark Alliance was that they believed themselves to be above the Elderwood. While the key element in Taurélya, and Aéldeliner society as a whole was the understanding that the Elderwood acts as its own interconnected organism, Maedhros, and with him the followers of Taurétyelca viewed themselves as not equals of the Elderwood, but as its keepers - its superiors.

The hubris of the Dark Alliance was met with a wrath from the Elderwood that none knew was possible. As the ground quaked not just under the convention, but across Dendralis, the land began to spread. Massive swathes of forest crumbled as valleys formed as the land stretched apart. The edges of the continent pressed outward into the neighboring seas and oceans, as stretchmarks formed across the land, leaving a new surface in a matter of days that otherwise would have taken years to form.

The Conflict Settled:

The brutal quaking of the land broke the concentration of the Dark Alliance, causing the binding magic they had weaved to falter, freeing the rest of the Elders. Almost instantly upon the breaking of the binding, the members of the Dark Alliance were trampled, being restrained and beaten violently in short order. The physical assault was cut short as the Great Hall began to fall into pieces. First, pieces of the rood began falling inward before the first wall fell. As the wall fell, the Elders began evacuating en masse, leaving the beaten and bloodied members of the Dark Alliance to be crushed in the rubble - all except for Maedhros who was dragged out of the Great Hall by a small number of Elders who sought punishment for the event.

After the evacuation, the Elders attempted to return to their homelands, with much of the attempts being futile. As the largest valleys formed along a north to south parallel, those who attempted to flee in any direction other than south were nearly universally lost to the destruction, being either dropped in sudden crevasses, or crushed under the collapsing forest. Those who fled south, including the captors of Maedhros, were among the vast majority to survive. While the land quaked and stretched for nearly seven days on end, the south-central region of the Elderwood only saw very minor stretching, leaving only deep river valleys that today seem more the natural result of erosion rather than an extreme tectonic catastrophe.

The Aftermath:

The destruction levied across the land left Dendralis with a scarred and fractured face, leaving no doubt as to the fate of the Elderwood. The eastern and western shorelines pressed outward into the oceans, leaving massive, continent-long valleys. The land of Taurétyelca was pushed further into the ocean, isolating this stretch of the Elderwood as its own forest, which today is known as the rotten and vicious Darkwood.

To the west, the majority of the Elderwood collapsed as the land pushed towards the ocean. This region saw vast majority of Aéldelinian loss, leaving only a swath of forest in the far southern peninsula standing. The majority of the land to the west became jagged and rocky during The Separation, and today features a large amount of semi-arid brushland, and some of Dendralis' highest peaks.

The south-central area of Dendralis is the only region that today harkens back to the original Elderwood. The quakes created narrow valleys under the rivers that ran through the region, leaving deep, sharp valleys through the southern wood that today hold some of the most impressive waterfalls on Terramora. Thanks to the limited losses in this region, the Aéldeliners were able to recover in many ways, reestablishing much of their culture over time while rebuilding their relationship with the land. The efforts by these survivors forged the modern Olosse, and have helped the lone surviving piece of the Elderwood to thrive again as The Greenwood.

The fate of Maedhros was just as his Taurétyelca claimed - swift. The only known capital punishment handed down by the Aéldelinians, Maedhros was tried in a public space one week after the settling of The Separation, sentenced to death, and hung from one of the Eldertrees, left swinging from a branch for a full month before being taken down and set out to sea on a burning raft. Word of Maedhros' fate eventually reached the survivors in the Darkwood, enraging his followers. His death provided him martyr status to Taurétyelcans, their practices which have since turned darker and violent, forming what is today known as the Cult of Maedhros .

Impact Beyond Dendralis:

The impact of The Separation stretched far beyond the new borders of Dendralis. To the east, continental land masses the faced the same ocean as The Darkwood faced massive, myth-making flooding, leaving significant damage across the lands. Prior to the Second Era, these floods were seen as driven by gods or demons by locals, with word of their true source - The Separation - only coming to common knowledge just before the turn of the Third Era.

The flooding caused to the west by The Separation covered far less landmass, having hit mostly narrow lands between coast and mountain ranges. These floods actually left a positive long-term impact as these lands have remained quite fertile in the millennia since.

A New Era Begins:

As the reality of The Separation and it's carnage settled in on the surviving Aéldelinians in the southern forest, there was a concerted effort to start their lives anew. Elders who endured the Dagortauré and made it to the south convened again for one final time in their lifetimes so that they may lay the groundwork to recover their great society in this relatively small patch of surviving Elderwood. Relying heavily on Aéldelin precedent, the religious and governmental structures remained relatively the same, carrying on the same traditions while using very similar, though further decentralized leadership in order to protect against singularization in the future. Though the new Olosse culture took centuries to fully entrench itself (especially as a result of Orcish war parties taking advantage of the demise of the Aéldelinians), they eventually returned the forest to it's original glory, albeit on much smaller scale.

The catastrophes caused globally by The Separation left civilization at a clear turning point. The Aéldelinians, and all inhabitants of Dendralis were forced to reckon with a destroyed landscape, while overseas, man and mankind were left to deal with the impact of mythical flooding. Though the exact time of when the Second Era was born is debated by scholars, the cause of the First Turn of eras is universally accepted as The Separation.

Manifestation

In the Modern Era, remains of The Separation are best seen in the Great Eastern Corridor, and The Fissures, two land-separating valleys. The Great Eastern Corridor stretches the length of the continent, separating the Darkwood from the rest of Dendralis. The valley is lush and fertile today, but was a desolate, rocky landscape for the first half of the First Era.

Great Eastern Corridor in 851, 3E

Separating part of the southern peninsula from the mainland, are The Fissures, a black, rocky lowlands dotted with fissures in the land. The black rock was pulled up from under the thin crust in this region during The Separation. The curst here was so thin, that despite the cooled rock, there are a wide range of fissures that reveal hot flowing magma underneath. The region is hot and rather inhospitable.

Localization

Beyond the most obvious signs of The Separation, other localities have their own signs of the event. The Greenwood features river valleys that are far deeper than natural erosion would have made them, while the western shore features a small mountain range that was not known to exist before The Separation.

Also known as:

Hantale (Elvish)
The Autumnal (The Redwood)
The Great Western Flood (Eastern Lands)

Type

Metaphysical, Arcane

*The exact details of The Separation are a bit hazy, and have been compiled, edited, and recorded in written word by Talamus Wynned, the fabled historian, scribe, and monk of the early Greenwood, and one of the progenitors of written language in The Greenwood. The article above provides the most accurate available record of The Separation known to modern man or elf.

All images other than the Summer Camp 2024 logo were created by the author with Bing Copilot | Designer
"The Separation" Generated with AI ∙ July 9, 2024 at 2:05 PM
"Maedhros" Generated with AI ∙ July 2, 2024 at 9:56 PM
"Great Eastern Corridor" Generated with AI ∙ July 2, 2024 at 9:30 PM