The Sundering

Disaster / Destruction

A cataclysmic event occurred in the northeast corner of the continent, permanently rendering that area a blasted wasteland, and altering the shape and culture of the continent. The Adlon Empire collapses literally overnight, and Rhyduania fractures into nation-states mostly along provincial lines. Natural disasters decimate populations, and the sudden absence of central government and trade regulation causes enormous and vicious conflicts for resources over the coming decades.   As a result of the widespread destruction, nearly all history from before the Sundering is lost, and history from the first two centuries after the Sundering is foggy and poorly understood. Any attempts to sail past the northeast corner of the continent end in doom, with rare survivors claiming to have witnessed entire ships dropping beneath the waves like stones.

The Sundering occurred on the Adlonian Peninsula, the origin and center of the Lon'res elves whose conquest of the majority of Rhyduania established the Adlon Empire.   The exact nature of the event is completely unknown, and after three millenia it seems unlikely it will ever be known. What is known are the consequences of that event, many of which are still clearly visible in modern times. The peninsula itself was irrevocably altered, leaving a poisonous alien landscape hostile to humanoid life, now known as The Blasted Lands. Even the seas around the land were altered, rendered completely impassible. The narrow stretch of rainforest that managed to escape the event at the very edge of the Lon'res homeland became corrupted over time, twisting into the Chuulth Jungle and mutating its Lon'res inhabitants into the dreaded Chuul'res. This jungle and the violence of the Chuul'res effectively prevented any overland travel into the peninsula, and with sea travel impossible, the Blasted Lands have remained almost entirely untouched for the last 3000 years.   Even more alarming was that the event coincided with the sudden disappearance of an overwhelming majority of the elven nobility spread across the continent. The Lon'res having maintained their colonial dominance by spending centuries strategically marrying themselves into the local nobility, their disappearance immediately sparked a series of succession conflicts, sparks that were fanned into the flames of outright war. Elf-blooded rulers have long lives and hold long grudges, and the wars begat more wars until by the end of the The Golden Famines in the early 600s, the Sultanate of Nehemen was the only nation-state in place on the continent, and nearly everything left behind by the Empire had been consumed, destroyed or murdered.