The Great Sundering

Long ago the world existed as a singular continent with a multitude of races strewn about. Elves inhabited the forest and highlands, gnomes inhabited mountain homes, halflings -- though they were known by another name in those days -- took to the rolling fields and plains. During the year 64ka, which would later become known as the year 0 and the beginning of a new calendar, A large structure appeared in the night sky burning in the atmosphere and creating an artificial day. It did not move swiftly but descended almost comically slowly a roiling mass of flame and rock as it fell upon the earth it fractured the world and split the continent into three with many archipelagos between two of them and creating a smaller continent among them, all mountains and volcanic is construction. From these ruins appeared the first of the kotel their minds ablur and bodies pale. They soon grew in number though no obvious female among them and spread to the nearby mountains burrowing as the gnomes were want to do. After many years some emerged from the crater caused by the sundering though they were no longer pale the ones who came forth came with mystical metals never before seen from the likes of the underground gnomes nor the mystical elves.