SECOND
SELF
STUDIOS
SECOND
SELF
STUDIOS
The cataclysm that broke the world's connection to raw magic and reshaped all three continents. No one agrees on what caused it. Everyone agrees on what it cost.
Three hundred years ago, give or take a decade depending on who you ask, something broke. The ley network that carried raw magical energy across Veridia collapsed in a matter of hours. Entire cities lost power. Wards failed. Constructs went still. The sea boiled along the southern coast of Kalendra for three days.
The immediate death toll was staggering but hard to calculate because so many record-keeping systems relied on magic that no longer worked. Estimates range from tens of thousands to a quarter million depending on the source and how much that source wants to make a political point.
The Thal Empire's official position, recorded in the last documents before the empire's collapse, blamed a coordinated attack by an unknown external force. Andorian historians argue it was Thal overreach that drained the ley network past its breaking point. Morgard doesn't share its theories with outsiders.
A minority view among modern scholars suggests the Sundering wasn't a single event but the final failure of a system that had been degrading for centuries. Under this reading, magic was never meant to be industrialized the way the Thal Empire industrialized it, and the network's collapse was inevitable.
The Thal Empire fell within a decade. Its refugees scattered across the continents, founding cities like Kael'Doran on the Ashenvael cliffs. Magic didn't disappear entirely but became unreliable, weaker, and increasingly difficult to control. Ward-Masons and other magical practitioners now work with a fraction of the power their predecessors took for granted.
The Great Erg Desert in Kalendra is widely believed to be a direct consequence of the Sundering, though whether it was caused by ley network feedback or by the collapse of magical climate systems is debated. It continues to expand.
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