Sundering

Warning: This page contains major spoilers for one or more stories in the Rideen setting!

The Sundering was an apocalyptic event in which a disruption of the planar system caused an intersection between the mundane and vyrcane plane. This resulted in cataclysmic earthquakes that leveled most major cities. It also allowed hordes of invasive species native to the vyrcane plane to enter the world, displacing local wildlife and causing havoc. The event worsened one year later with the arrival of the "Dark Aspects," powerful epcane demigods taking the form of monstrous animals. The event reached a climax with the manifestation of The Apex, a being of pure hunger formed from the collective instinctual fears of all life in the vyrcane plane. The Apex was ultimately killed, though as it originally manifested from a force of nature, there is always a risk that the Apex could return once again.

The event was so destructive to life in Rideen that it is the reference point from which all historical events are recorded: the modern calendar is measured in years "Post Sundering Event," or "PSE." (Most entries in this worldbuilding site assume that the current year is 837 PSE.)

Initial Event
The vyrcane plane is a material world similar to the mundane plane, but with a vastly different evolutionary history. On the initial event date in the year 0 PSE, a powerful and at-the-time-unknown force shifted the vyrcane and mundane plane to overlap one another. This shift caused world-wide earthquakes that killed an estimated 2 percent of the world's population almost immediately. The epicenter of the event, the northern part of the human continent of Pritami, was torn to shreds, leaving behind a desolate and jagged coastline called "the Sundered Sea."

The overlap also caused animals from the vyrcane plane to pass over into the mundane plane. These animals ravaged much of the natural landscape, causing mass extinctions. Millions of people died in the coming months due to starvation, predation from the vyrcane beasts, and infighting amidst a massive societal collapse.

Missing Persons
The overlap between the mundane and vyrcane plane wasn't a one-way trip. In certain places in the world, entire populations were transported to the vyrcane plane just as its animals were transported to the mundane plane. Very few of these initial lost travelers survived, but those who did established towns in this other world, some of which remain to this day.

Dark Aspects
Exactly one year after the initial sundering event, a series of smaller quakes marked the arrival a new threat: the "Great Beasts." Taking on the form of exaggerated or mutilated versions of vyrcane animals, these creatures had destructive magical abilities and an insatiable hunger for flesh of animal and person alike, though no actual need to eat, sleep, or drink. They destroyed much of what had been rebuilt since the initial event.

Later, it would be discovered that these "Great Beasts" were actually Aspects, (or "demigods") of the Apex. Upon this discovery, they were renamed the "Dark Aspects" after their epcane nature.

Arrival of the Apex
One year after the arrival of the Dark Aspects - two years after the initial event - the Sundering reached its climax.

In the same way that the collective unconscious of entire cultures can manifest as gods in the arcane plane, the collective unconscious fears and hungers of all animal life in the vyrcane plane had given birth to the Apex, a behemoth "god of the hunt," an unthinking killing machine driven only by primal urges. Over the course of the Sundering Event it had been gathering its strength, stoking fear, and causing destruction in order to empower itself enough to leave the epcane plane and manifest in the physical world.

It is unknown exactly how the Apex was defeated. Popular account holds that a group of Aspects serving various popular gods at the time led a secret mission to defeat. Others believe that the act of leaving the epcane plane violates the nature of gods, and the Aspect quickly died after manifesting as a result. Whatever the case may be, the world watched in terror as a mountain-sized monster slaughtered hundreds of thousands, and then was simply gone the next day. The Dark Aspects disappeared with it, though the tear in reality between the mundane and vyrcane plane remains in several places, such as the Hana Barr mountains and the Sundered Sea.

Aftermath
The Sundering resulted in a massive loss of history, technology, and culture across the world. Countries with rich, interconnected, century-spanning cultures were reduced to individual city-states, and when larger political entities did reform, they bore little resemblance to what had come before. But with the death or disappearance of the Apex, civilization slowly began to recover. Within the decade, many cities had been reestablished and reconstruction processes were underway. Records that survived the collapse shortened the ensuing dark age to only a few generations. Within the century, technology had caught up to where it was before the apocalyptic event.

The animals that invaded Rideen began to come under control, as researchers slowly began to discover that the background level of arcane radiation in the mundane plane was toxic to them. Many became sterile or sick. Others adapted, and now live in relative equilibrium with local wildlife. Though still a threat to the unprepared traveler, they are rare, and usually keep to themselves.

Though many of the wounds from the Sundering have healed in the 837 years since, the scars have remained. The Sundered Sea is still a barren and inhospitable wasteland. In certain places, such as the Hana Barr mountains, the walls between worlds remain thin, and travel is dangerous, lest one accidentally tumble into one of these other worlds. The descendants of those initial survivors who were transported to the vyrcane plane still life there, despite the harsh conditions, deadly wildlife, and low levels of epcane radiation, and despite advances in magical technology making it easier to travel between the two worlds.

The Sundering had changed all of Rideen, instilling many cultures with a fear of magic and gods. A grain of nihilism and existential horror had been buried deep in Rideen's cultural memory, and it would itch there for many centuries to come. 837 years later, the Sundering seems like ancient history. But listen to the ghost stories about the haunted ruins of destroyed cities told around a campfire in the Grellain badlands, or the fables of hapless wanderers eaten by vyrcane beasts whispered to a child, and you'll see that the scars of the Sundering go much deeper than the landscape.