The Ashstorm

Geological / environmental event

In 1342 DR, an ambitious project led by the Cartographers’ Collective sought to expand the Radiant Citadel’s planar connections by establishing a stable portal to the Elemental Planes. While the Citadel had long been anchored to the Ethereal Plane, direct access to elemental forces could, in theory, provide abundant new resources—clean water from the Plane of Water, pure metals from the Plane of Earth, or sustainable energy from the Plane of Fire. The project, spearheaded by Zindan artificers and Tletepecan geomancers, attempted to open a controlled planar gateway using modified ley-line conduits woven into the city’s infrastructure.

However, something went catastrophically wrong. Instead of opening a stable gateway, the experiment ruptured the boundary between the Citadel and the Quasi-Elemental Plane of Ash—a barren, suffocating realm between Fire and Air, where all things smolder into cinders and life struggles to exist. Ash-storms surged into the city, clogging the air with thick, choking soot, and burning winds stripped vegetation from the Preserve of the Ancestors. Worse still, creatures of that realm—elemental wraiths composed of heat and decay—seeped into the lower districts, desiccating everything in their wake.   Panic ensued as the Citadel’s residents struggled to breathe, and buildings in the Passage of Respite and Gith Quarter became buried in ever-thickening layers of fine ash, making them impassable. Fire-based magic failed unpredictably, while water spells evaporated instantly. The Planar Watch and celestial emissaries from Tayyib and Yeonido worked tirelessly to contain the breach, while Tletepec’s flamecallers and Atagua’s stormcallers fought against the invading entities with controlled winds and sacred fire. The turning point came when a group of elemental shamans from Shankhabhumi discovered that the ash-storms could be dissipated using ancient water rites, allowing for the coordinated push that finally sealed the rift.   In the aftermath, the Citadel’s scholars abandoned all research into stable planar portals, declaring them too dangerous to attempt again. The event also resulted in the reinforcement of city-wide air purification enchantments, as well as permanent monitoring systems to detect elemental breaches before they could escalate. While the invasion was successfully repelled, the scars of the Ashstorm Crisis remain—some buildings still bear the soot-covered remains of that fateful day, and a few scholars wonder whether something from the Plane of Ash still lingers, unseen, waiting for another chance to breach the veil.