Shattering of the World

It was a single moment that changed the face of Raan and destroyed half of the pantheon. It lead to the emergence of the primal forces, and a frozen apocalypse which killed over three quarters of the population of Raan. Summer was gone for over a decade and the chill kept its grip on Raan for several decades more. Its name is not hyperbole; the world was truly shattered by this event.

How Did It Happen?

There are a number of Scholars who study the Shattering, and one of the first things they found is looking directly at the event is suicide. The powers at work and the mind-boggling force of the destruction have shown they are capable of transmitting through divination sensors, making direct observation of the event dangerous not only to the person invoking such magic, but also anyone around them. And the more powerful the spell or effect used, the more energy is released in the explosive destruction that follows such viewings. Sorcerers, clerics, wizards, and even gods and goddesses have died in massive explosions as a result, the worst of which have left craters and spheres of absolute annihilation in an impressively large area.

Thus study of the Shattering has to be done the old fashioned way, through the recovery of items and records of those who lived through it first hand. In this respect, both the Dwarves and Elves have something of an advantage here, thanks to their long life spans. And from what they and others have gathered, the strongest evidence points toward an attempt to control a little-known and small plane known as the Observatorium. The Observatorium was unique among the planes as it moved throughout the outer planes. This mobility is likely why an attempt was made to control it.

What Happened?

While the details of how the attempt was made are scarce, barely decipherable, and distressingly inconsistent, what occurred thereafter was not. In the clear morning air, a number of beings appeared in the center of the central landmass. These beings were colossal, and tethered below a huge landmass that was slowly descending toward the face of Raan by what looked like a line of lightning. The landmass made a very slow descent. The deities below the landmass called upon their followers to help them, but one by one these deities were immolated by their own power was expended trying desperately and futilely to remove themselves from their predicament or hold back the fall of the landmass.

The Aftermath

The landmass accelerated the further it fell. But even with two days to attempt to flee, most who were close enough to react were dead the instant the landmass struck. The landmass that was once one large super-continent was broken into three, and their landscapes were forever altered. Almost instantly, Mount Ventax arose, spewing vast amounts of soot into the already-darkening skies. For hundreds of miles around, buildings were destroyed and trees felled or shredded. The darkened skies dropped the temperature to just above freezing even in the warmest of climes, and the lack of sunlight dimmed the entire world. Summer never came that year, nor did it come the next, or the next, or the next. It took almost 12 years until the height of summer began to pierce the sky well enough to be felt. The loss of crops caused widespread famine in those places where alternatives were not found, and that lead to a massive death tolls.

Many of the Dwarves were driven underground by a combined effort between giants and goblinoids, and suffered under a nearly 75 year occupation before they were able to drive them off. The elves, however, took several different strategies to preserve themselves, resulting in the schism which created the many elf variants:

• High elves gathered together and pooled their magical resources into Mythals that could create Vales -- land protected from the harsh conditions outside.
• Dark elves followed the example of the Dwarves and moved underground.
• Eladrin and Shadar-Kai left the Material Plane behind to move to the Inner Planes of the Feywild and Shadowfel, respectively.
• Wild Elves were the only ones who stayed behind to eke out a living in the impossibly brutal Endless Winter.