The Great Disaster

A natural disaster with worldwide consequences in the year 0, marking both the end of the young world and the beginning of the current timeline. It was caused by a great release of magical energy in the deserts of Noria, turning the island into an uninhabitable wasteland and completely wiping out its ancient civilisation and most of their buildings. Even though the origin of said energy is unknown to most of the world, it is generally believed to be some sort of a divine punishment for the Sarthanian's abundant use of black magic.

Cause

The Great Disaster was caused by a great release of energy after a failed experiment of the School of Sarth in which the scholars tried to materialise energy of the (then unsplit) elemental cores. By simultaneously channelling energy from the Everchanging and the Everlasting, the scholars tried to apply enough energy and pressure on the elemental cores to materialise them into our world. This failed however. The scholars lost control over the huge amount of energy they accumulated. That resulted in the elemental cores to be split and an enormous amount of elemental energy to be released into the material world which ended up destroying most of Sarth and turned Noria into its current state.

Consequences

The annihilation of Sarth caused great shock and unrest in the rest of the world. The Sarthanians were known and respected as great users of elemental magic. The cause of their destruction, however, was not known. Only very few scholars of the School of Sarth and high ranking officials knew about the experiment that resulted in the Great Disaster. Most Sarthanians were thus as unaware of it as the rest of the world.   After The disaster some people started to develop stronger dark magic powers due to the split elemental cores attaching themselves to peoples' celestial cores. Others completely lost their ability to use magic since they derived it from the unsplit elemental cores and thus lost their connection to challenge from the Everchangin.