12th Age - The Sundering Era - 17,500AB - 12,105AB
The Ascension and The Sundering are the same event, taking place at the end of the 11th age and ushering in the 12th age of Abraeas’Dor, the current age that most campaigns take place in. This event caused the opening of the Depths and the Core, and led to one of the most significant events of the 12th age, The Great Immigration and The High Assimilation, which will be covered in the next section.
The Ascension is what the Alitheans of Abraeas’Dor call the event, while the Sundering is what the current day people of the torn continent of Old Ethrell, Roth, Borr, Vaarnux, and Thraxus’Nall call the event. In the times of the total collapse of Old Ethrell due to the plagues of Vibarii and The Rung, which would later evolve and mutate into Wrath V1, Wrath V2, and the Endii Virus, Old Ethrell's majestic megacities and interconnected networks failed. Abirrian priests and casters tried to slow the tide, their resistance to Vibarii’s plagues making them great allies in a time of dire need, able to walk through infected forests, survive bites from the infected, and were able to heal many people, making the Abirrians known as saviors. But even their interference was not enough. Protestors blocked them, bandits and criminals attempted to rob them as the world’s societies collapsed, violence, civil wars, and religious zealotry overtook the land. The smartest, the elites, the healers, the scientists, the high mages and shamans of the land uncovered a mysterious force of energy, harnessed it to try and save who they could, clearing multiple safe zones across Old Ethrell, and their came a day when they mastered the source as the millions and millions of infected overran the majority of the safe havens.
These elites enacted their plan, used this unknown source of energy, this machine, and activated it, ripping the remaining safe zones from the continent itself, breaking the world in the process, elevating them high into the sky so that some would survive, the fight against the infection lost, and millions and millions dead. They left the surface behind in a last bid for survival and let the world below rot. The abirrians who had travelled to Old Ethrell refused to leave their friends and their families, and cursed what would become the new Alithean empire for cowardice.
This abirrians would become the forefathers of The Borrian empire, and the vacancy of Habrintom left a space for Vibarii to reign and revel in the chaos he had created.
The world fell even further into darkness, millions more died, and the plagues ran rampant. Many who were left behind took to worshipping Vibarii, as he was kinder to those who served him, while the Abirrians and those who still held onto the light of the Arsennean Gods of Arsham and the Alithean Gods fled across the new sea in a dangerous journey known as the Dawn Crossing with what remained of Old Ethrell's ships to start anew.
As they sailed, catastrophic waves, tsunami’s, storms, and erratic multi-day hurricanes and tornados were unleashed by Vibarii, and the bastions of Roth were constructed, where they still live today, The few Ethrellian Ibnans fled back to their homeland and have left it few times since, the Ibnans once again retreating after defeating the plagues in their homeland. The alithean gods were abandoned on the surface, and the Brottoans retreated back to their homeland on their own, unwilling to let more of their people become infected. They defeated their own infection with brutal methods of execution and fiery siege weapons. This era is a time the Brottoans like to forget.
As the tide turned from the light to the dark, many who were once there to assist the people of Old Ethrell began to be branded as evil and heretical, for Vibarii had taken full control of the savages and dregs of the surface world, with only the newly founded people of Borr resisting the grasp of Vibarii. These future Borrians would take the old scriptures of Arsham, the ancient, wrathful version of him and reawaken him through zealotry and vicious methods of defending themselves. They would be touched by Arsham, stare into his supreme divinity and would start a new empire around 350 years into the aftermath of The Ascension and The Sundering.
Thraxus’Nal would appear around 150 years into the new age, and Vaarnux would appear around 200 years into the new age. Roth would adopt Vibarii as their great god alongside the enemies of the Arsennean gods like Arsham, the greatest creations of Habrintom, the Rotharii Draed, as those who saved the rothiian people were Draed-Marked, touched and possessed of the shadows of the long dead Rotharii Draed, beginning a new religious era born out of desperation and a great loss of faith.
