Welcome to the continent of Iolex, a land ravaged in the recent past by a destructive event known as The Calamity, theorized by the few academics who survived to be a form of planar slip or fracture, pulling energetic elements of the Outer Planes into the material realm of the world and sequestering it from the rest of the material realms. Indeed, the planes themselves seem to be fractured around the edges of this world, separating those planar chunks from their home planes in the 'vicinity' of Iolex.
For a brief history of Iolex since the time of the Calamity, see the History of Iolex
For a summary of the world and its inspirations, read the Iolex World Meta