II. Aftershock and Silence
When the first aftermath of the Upheaval passed, Eldareth did not settle back into the world that had existed before it. The fires could be extinguished, the dead buried, and the fallen stone cleared from the streets, but the systems that had sustained much of the Age of Wonders were no longer dependable. Cities that had relied upon Galarium and the ley lines found themselves rebuilding without knowing which parts of the old world could still be trusted.
The damage varied greatly from one region to another. Some places lost little more than enchanted infrastructure, while others were scarred by shattered Galarium formations, collapsed leyline stations, or magic that no longer behaved as it once had. Caverns opened beneath the earth where major underground systems and concentrations of Galarium had catastrophically failed, stretches of land became difficult to cross, and familiar spells could produce very different results only a short distance apart.
In a few places, the changes continued long after the initial destruction. West of the Greyspires of Vel'Nathar, the Thalorin Expanse began to change in the years following the Upheaval. Fertile ground gave way to tangled bramble-forests and spreading bogs, while unnatural mists settled across the region. Within a generation, the land had become known as the Bleakthorn Wilds, one of several places where the magical scars left by the catastrophe proved far more persistent.
For the surviving arcane institutions, the years that followed were spent relearning what they thought they already understood. The Age of Wonders had placed great confidence in magic that could be measured, repeated, and engineered with precision. Now old formulae had to be tested again, ley lines resurveyed, and surviving conduit networks examined one section at a time. Some could be restored. Others had been built around currents that no longer followed the same course.
Magic did not return to stability everywhere at once. In some regions, familiar spellcraft settled into predictable patterns within a few years. Elsewhere, disturbances lasted far longer, and certain areas never returned to the conditions recorded before the Upheaval. Scholars disagreed over whether the ley lines were healing, finding new courses, or simply revealing how little mortals had ever truly understood them.
The fracture of the Mythal raised questions of its own. The greater gods still could not freely manifest within Eldareth, but the Upheaval had also been followed by widespread instability in the boundaries between the Material Plane and other realms. Priests recorded unusual dreams and visions, while encounters with celestial, infernal, elemental, and other planar beings became more common in the decades that followed.
For most people, however, those questions could wait. The immediate work was simpler and harder. Roads had to be cleared, crops replanted, water made safe, and shelter found for those whose homes had been lost. Refugees moved away from ruined cities and damaged regions, often settling wherever walls, farmland, and surviving infrastructure could support them. In places where old governments had collapsed, local councils, military leaders, temples, and surviving officials filled whatever roles they could.
Some regions recovered more quickly than others. Vel'Nathar became an early center for organized reconstruction, drawing scholars and surviving records from across the region. The Cobalt Lyceum was founded during these years, with much of its early work devoted to the changed ley lines and the restoration of dependable magical practice.
Political order followed more gradually. The Iron Assembly emerged as a new government in Vel'Nathar, replacing institutions that had failed during the catastrophe and helping restore trade, defense, and administration. In the years that followed, the Veilbound Order was sanctioned to investigate dangerous magical practices, reflecting a fear that had survived both the old Imperial Inquisition and the destruction of the world that had created it.
Elsewhere, recovery took different forms. Some cities rebuilt over their old foundations, while others were abandoned altogether. Libraries and academies salvaged what they could from collapsed archives, temples became shelters and meeting places, and surviving scholars carried knowledge between communities that had lost the institutions once responsible for preserving it. Much of what survived from the Age of Wonders did so in fragments rather than as part of the great networks that had once connected the world.
The Upheaval had also changed Eldareth's relationship with the planes in ways that became clearer only with time. Over the following decades, individuals with strong planar traits appeared in greater numbers. Aasimar, Tieflings, Genasi, and others whose heritage or nature tied them closely to distant realms became increasingly familiar across the world.
These peoples were not entirely new, but their growing numbers were difficult to ignore. Together they came to be known as the Planetouched, and their emergence became one of the clearest signs that the consequences of the Upheaval reached farther than ruined cities and broken ley lines.
By then, a new generation was already growing up among the remains of the old world. Many had never seen the great cities of the Age of Wonders at their height or watched their skies crowded with arcane vessels. What their parents remembered as ordinary life was becoming history, preserved in damaged records, surviving machines, and stories of things that no longer worked as they once had.
Eldareth had survived the Upheaval, but survival was only the beginning. The years that followed were quieter, marked less by a single great catastrophe than by the long work of learning what remained, what had been lost, and what kind of world could be built from what was left.