History - The World Storm

The World Of Khoras - History

0 CY - 1 CY

(The First Year of the Common Calendar)

"The World Storm was a year like no other. Storms raged across all the lands, ships were swamped and city walls crumbled. The land shook day and night while the sky rained down fiery death from above. Valleys were flooded and whole towns were washed away. They could be no doubt as to the cause. The gods were angered at the arrogance of the Alliance mages. On that, all agreed."

- Cal Tarik, Lore Master and Historian, Ithell

The ecological effects of the Sundering were many. One of the most significant effects is what scholars call aberration. That is, the effect that the Sundering and subsequent Drellis Effect had and still does have on all living creatures. Starting with the World Storm and continuing through the Age of Chaos and the Great War, the magical energies from the sun and in the world caused drastic evolutionary spurts and mutations. Many species began to change, evolve and diverge at a substantially accelerated pace. Evolution, it seemed, was running wild. This would later be the reason why so many new races, plants and animals had suddenly appeared in the short span of less than 2000 years. Aberration was strongest during the World Storm and the Age of Chaos. However, aberration continued, even as it dissipated, throughout the Ages. Even in modern times, the Drellis Effect still causes the occasional aberrant to be born.

The World Storm is the name given to the year long series of planet wide natural disasters that occurred as a result of the Sundering. As one might expect, chaos reigned supreme in the wake of the Sundering. The days that followed the Sundering were terrible indeed. Huge storms raged across whole continents. Landquakes, the likes of which had never been seen, devastated whole nations. Thousand foot tall tidal waves obliterated coastal villages and volcanoes belched forth rivers of lava. Mountains collapsed, islands sunk, rivers changed course and fiery rocks, vaulted forth from volcanos, fell from the sky.

It has been recorded in many texts that the sky changed color and this is true, for several reasons. Volcanoes all over the planet had erupted and filled the skies in an ocean of ash which blocked the light of the sun. In addition, the fractured sun poured down radiation upon the planet causing the northern lights to now appear planet wide and appear greatly intensified. These two phenomena combined to turn the sky a hellish churning green and grey. The ash filled sky led to the "endless night" which lasted for months. Crops failed and plant life everywhere withered. Millions of people and animals died from starvation and many people turned to raiding others for food.

The town of Aden and the entire valley of Baen were ravaged by the Sundering. Thousands of survivors from the local villages fled for safety leaving only smoldering ruins behind. This mana-rich valley reacted to the Sundering violently. Magical energy within the area formed into a sprawling essence storm... one which continued for many months. Those foolhardy enough to venture into the storm did not return. As the storm raged, Nature herself abandoned the area - animals mutated, plants died, the land shook and lava erupted from the ground. This was the beginning of a slow transformation which would eventually result in the formation of the Baen Desert.

At the height of the World Storm, the worst of the landquakes flooded vast regions in the north, wiping out over fifty Irenni cities and villages. The mountain range which had dominated the north sunk into the new body of water which was later named the Captured Sea.

The mages suffered the worst as many people have since said they should. All control of magic was gone. Many mages died as spellfire erupted from the bodies spontaneously. Other mages went raving mad claiming that they saw the Truth and tore out their own eyes. The totality of this planetary destruction and ecological chaos became known simply as the World Storm. It lasted for over one year before Nature finally began to settle down. Undoubtedly, the loss of life numbered in the hundreds of millions.

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