The Sundering
In the age before the counting of years, the world was whole.
The great empires of the Elder Races spanned continents unbroken by sea. The Sarathi basked beneath twin suns on the obsidian shores of their homeland, the lizardfolk cultivated vast marshland kingdoms, and the first humans were little more than wandering bands who tended small fires in the shadow of mountains that no longer exist.
Then came the Sundering.
No sage agrees on its cause. The dwarven Annals of the Deep speak of a crack in the world's spine — a fissure that ran from pole to pole in a single night. The elven Chronicle of Leaves describes a war among the gods, a conflict so violent that the divine blood spilled upon creation tore the land apart. The Sarathi have a different account entirely: they speak of the Devouring Tide, an ancient hunger that rose from beneath the world and swallowed whole civilizations in salt and darkness.
Whatever the truth, the result was the same. Continents broke apart. Seas rushed in where mountains had stood. Entire civilizations vanished beneath the waves in a single generation, their towers now reef-encrusted ruins visited only by the bravest — or most foolish — divers.
The world that remained was a fractured thing: a scatter of islands, peninsulas, and broken coastlines separated by treacherous waters. The old empires were gone. In their place rose smaller kingdoms, desperate alliances, and a deep, abiding fear of the sea.
The Aftermath
The centuries following the Sundering were marked by chaos. Warlords carved petty domains from the wreckage. Pirates — the first of the crimson-sailed corsairs — claimed dominion over the trade routes between the surviving landmasses. Strange creatures emerged from the deep places: things that had been sealed away beneath the earth now swam freely through the flooded tunnels of the world below.
It was during this era of darkness that the foundations of Fort Valiance were first laid — not as a city, but as a last stand.