The Great Dark

The Great Dark, also sometimes called the Dimming, the Despair, and the Great Winter, is the greatest natural catastrophe that the people of Avaria have ever known. The name refers to the three years following the eruption of the holy Mount Elemnis, when the skies were so clouded by ash and dust from the volcano that the sun dimmed, harvests failed, and a terrible chill settled upon the whole world. Across the globe numberless millions died from cold, famine, and the widespread unrest that accompanied the disaster, and civilization came to an abrupt standstill.

Mount Elemnis itself was destroyed in its own violent eruption, and tidal waves were spawned that swept the entire Adelantean basin. The island homeland of the Yehani, Yashalen, was drowned beneath the waves along with the entire portion of the populace that had not been evacuated or else already perished in the cascade of hot ash and poisonous gas. The strongest shock waves from the blast spread out to the north and east, devastating the Ruveran coastline and sinking numerous islands and port cities, and even flooding some cities further inland where the rivers temporarily ran backwards with the force of water pouring in from the sea. The great city of Summa Ruva, former capital of the Ruveran Empire, was among the cities destroyed, but it was but one of countless casualties.

In the wake of the disaster, the world was left changed. Coastlines and currents in the Adelantean were irrevocably altered, casting accumulated generations of navigational knowledge into the dustbin of history. Weather patterns changed as well, and from being a warm and friendly sea the Adelantean became a stormy and treacherous one, filled with perpetually shifting shoals and currents, and regularly plagued by tempest and fog. At the center of the sea, where the holy mountain once rose majestically above the placid waves, an immense maelstrom known as the Eye of God now churns endlessly, an object of both terror and awe and a reminder of the fragility of the world below heaven.