The Second Sundering
Celestial / Cosmic
The Second Sundering, also known as the Sundering of Toril and Abeir, was a great catastrophic event in the history of the worlds of Abeir and Toril, that took place during the decade of the 1480s DR. It changed the relationship between mortals and gods, rearranged the multiverse, and ended the lingering effects of the Spellplague.
The Second Sundering, also known as the Sundering of Toril and Abeir, was a great catastrophic event in the history of the worlds of Abeir and Toril, that took place during the decade of the 1480s DR. All official 5e content occurs after this event. When Ao the Overgod destroyed the Tablets of Fate at the conclusion of the Time of Troubles, he instigated the Era of Upheaval. The Tablets defined the laws of Realmspace and kept it relatively stable. Without them, chaos ensued and the worlds of Abeir and Toril, separated many thousands of years ago, slowly started to overlap. The Spellplague drastically sped up this process. The Second Sundering started with Ao's decision to recreate the Tablets of Fate, and to separate the worlds of Abeir and Toril once more. The deities were unsure of what this would do to them and their power, and made efforts using their most powerful servants to prepare for that event. Many deities previously presumed dead or missing managed to return to life (or to re-emerge) during the Second Sundering, and then to quickly amass new followers (or to win back their old faithful),[33] and to reclaim at least some of their former portfolios (resulting in a new distribution of spheres of influence among the Faerûnian deities). Known examples were: Mystra, Helm, Mask, Lathander, Bhaal, all the previously lost Drow gods, Leira, Myrkul, Gilgeam, Enlil, and Nanna-Sin; all the Mulhorandi gods, Azuth, and Tyr, among others. After the Sundering, sages were unsure if there were changes to the cosmological order of the planes. Scholars came to the conclusion that the different cosmologies were just theoretical constructs created by mortals and not the true shape of the cosmos. By the late years of the 15th century DR, the most popular cosmological models among sages were the Great Wheel, the World Axis, and the World Tree models. The Great Wheel model remained the most commonly used of the three, but modified to include the planes discovered after the Spellplague, such as the Elemental Chaos, the Feywild and the Shadowfell.