The Shattering¶
"Recorded history before this event is very difficult to find." — the Terrun Compendium (S372)
The Shattering, also called the Breaking of the World, was the destruction of the Worldstone, the Anthu'Mithis, and the cataclysm that followed it. It ended the Age of Dragons and opened the Age of Magic; the calendar of almost every nation of Numenia counts from it, so that the year of the Shattering is year 0 MA. Scholars believe more than ninety-eight in every hundred living people died in the event or its direct aftermath, and the recorded history of Terrun effectively begins on its far side.
Also called: the Breaking of the World (S372, S384); the destruction of the Worldstone; the Anthu'Mithias or Anthu'Mithius in older spellings of the stone's name.
The destruction of the Worldstone¶
The Worldstone had been the foundation of the Elven Imperium and then of the Draconian world-empire that crushed it. Scholars surmise that it was once an Astral demesne moved to the Material Plane to form the Abscission, the barrier between the Material and the Abyss, and that it was "bound to all life on the Material Plane" (S419). The High Elves of Anthu'Mithis controlled it during the Pax Lothim Anthu; after their fall it passed to the dragons of the Pax Draconia, whom S419 names the Twilight Dragons and S386 the Draconians under their dragon lords. The Draconian empire held it for more than six hundred years.
Then the stone was destroyed. Every source agrees on the central fact and on nothing else: "It is not known by whom or why the stone was destroyed" (S386). The Compendium calls the question "the subject of academic conjecture and disagreement" (S372). No surviving account names a culprit, a method, or a motive, and this wiki follows the sources in leaving the question open.
Gap
No source says who destroyed the Worldstone or why, where exactly the stone stood when it broke beyond "most of the continent of Astia" (S429), or what the Draconian empire's last rulers did in the hours of its fall.
The cataclysm¶
The newest history (S386) gives the destruction three effects. The first was "the Shattering of the world": global cataclysms that wiped out whole populations. Oddly, the lands farthest from the blast seem to have suffered worst; scholars hypothesize that whoever destroyed the stone "must have bent its energies toward protecting the land right before destroying it, and the lingering magic obviously was still somewhat effective." The second was that the power of the Primal Dragons and of the Archwizards, who had used the stone as both focus and power source, was "tremendously reduced." The third was that the dust of the explosion settled across the planet and made Mithis magic possible for ordinary mortals.
The continent took the blow. The Shattering destroyed central Astia, "leaving most of it at the bottom of the sea"; the fragments that remained became South Astia, East Astia, the Shattered Isles and Urastia, divided by a shattered sea that makes travel between them "difficult and dangerous" (S429). On the far side of the globe from that sea lie the low-magic lands where summoning is easy and other magic barely works (S372). One great fragment of the stone slammed into what is now Markhan in East Astia, where it became the deep-red Earth-Heart and the object of an orcish cult (S522). Scholars believe the deposits of Mithis ores across the world mark where large shards came to rest near rich metal deposits (S419).
The Dwarves weathered the Shattering better than any surface race. They lost almost seventy in every hundred of their people, where other surface races commonly lost more than ninety-five, and their engineering let whole dwarf-holds survive with their culture and technology intact "while almost every other race had to essentially start over" (S386). Among the Wood Elves, many of the Great Trees of the Druids were destroyed; the handful that survived, including the hidden tree-fortress Taer'ustol in the forests of Uoreskall, were lost to planar rifts that cut them from the Material Plane and set them adrift in the Void (S367). What had been Uoreskall is now the Desert of Qom.
Magic after the stone¶
Before the Shattering, Arcane magic belonged to those with a birthright to it: the twelve Archwizards and their disciples, the High and Dark Elves, and some breeds of Draconians and dragons (S208). The Archwizards' staves "allowed them direct access to the vast magical reserves of the Worldstone" (S208, S304), and a Wizard's Covenant governed them until the fall of the Council of Wizards. Afterwards, "Mithis became available to all beings, not just those with a birthright to it" (S208). The staves kept their place as the most powerful Mithis-channeling devices in existence, but a channeling device was no longer required to work magic; it only amplified it (S429).
The Abscission survived, weakened. The stone had bound the Mithis "into a uniform field around Terrun"; when the field vanished the Mithis became "a free agent, though still purposed at maintaining the Abscission," settling into living cells, crystals and metals (S429, S519). The barrier between the Material and the Abyss "remained mostly intact, though weak enough that small holes could now be punched in it" (S386), which is why demonic summoning became possible in the Age of Magic. Where magic was used heavily in one place, the Abscission thinned further and Demonblight could appear (S519).
The faithful recovered three pieces of the Worldstone Heart after the Shattering and gave them into the keeping of the clerics of Kalar and Orandos. They are not made of Mithis: "They OWN the Mithis," radiate no magic, and look like unusual meteoric metal (S132). One was later given to the Druids to help imprison two archdemons, one was kept as a sacred relic of Kalar, and the third was hidden by Orandos. Their later fate belongs to the Hollowing.
Legacy¶
Every race struggled after the Shattering. The remaining Primal Dragons went into hiding with their broods; the great powers of the world were "either destroyed, in hiding, or fled to the Astral Planes," and in their absence the mortal races rebounded quickly (S386). The Draconians, who had ruled the world, were "hunted and exterminated across the remnants of Astia" and fled to Pherox (S429). Secret societies claim descent from the event: the White Fire "dates back thousands of years to the Shattering" (S319). In the Fourth Age the scholars of Kyzall reckon the Shattering about two thousand years before their present and the end of elven dominance about a thousand (S358); the Age of Magic histories count from it directly, reaching 2713 MA in the newest (S386) and 3221 MA in the Compendium (S372, S384). See the Timeline.
Earlier accounts¶
The 2014 Compendium (S372, S384) places the breaking inside the dragon wars rather than after them: "During the First War of the Dragons, the Worldstone was shattered, releasing Ethereal magic into the world," and "Luckily, the Worldstone only shattered, spreading billions of shards across the globe," so that the magic keeping the demons in the Abyss was mostly intact. The same document elsewhere begins the Age of Magic with the Breaking of the World, so even internally it is unclear whether the Shattering fell during or after the dragons' wars. The newest history (S386) is followed here: the Shattering came after the First Dragon Wars and the six centuries of Draconian empire.
The Compendium also gives the Dwarves lighter losses in one place (half their population against ninety in every hundred for others, S429) and heavier in another (seventy against ninety-five, S372); the newest reading (S386) is used above.