The Dakhini Cataclysm

The Dakhini Cataclysm was a massive destructive event on Alusia that took place around 25,000 years ago. For several months, swarms of comets passed overhead, and stars rained down from the heavens. Next there was a series of earthquakes clustered around the areas now occupied by the Lunar Empire and Hindia, which lasted for around a month. The skies around the globe darkened, and the sun was hidden for days on end by thick black clouds, punctuated by fierce downpours and severe flooding, while the sea level fell several feet. Even on the rare fine days, the skies were tinted a dusky orange, and the days became short and dark, while a thin layer of mud and ash covered the ground and destroyed the crops. The previously alabaster Moon turned a dark shade of red, and once the skies cleared, the Moon was the pitted and scarred ruin we see today. It took several decades for the colder weather to desist, and in that time, many human and orcish tribes across Alusia were severely depleted or wiped out due to cold, starvation, disease and war.

As travellers set out from the surviving lands to re-establish what trade they could, they discovered that the entire Dakhini peninsula was simply missing; at the old border of the Maryn Consociation were cooling lava flows, which sloped down to a still-steaming sea. A report from an expedition from Alfheim tells of seeing a large ball of fire erupt out of the sea and fly directly up into the sky, causing huge waves to surge over the lava formations almost to their very feet; three days later there was a fresh scar on the Moon. There was no trace of the Elvish state that had raised the various lesser life-forms that were native to the Dakhini peninsula into a complex and flourishing multi-cultural civilisation, that had prospered for five thousand years; and only scattered remnants of a few of the lesser tribes who had migrated north and east. The Dakhini Episode was over; the mortal races now had to raise themselves from their squalor and ignorance without the aid and enlightenment of the elves.

Causes

It is not clear what caused the Dakhini Cataclysm. It is possible that this was one of the last of the Great Strikes by the Drow Council, who had an uneasy truce with the Dakhini, interspersed with small wars. However, by then the Council was scattered and waning in power, and even during the sporadic wars, Dakhini was never its main target, having distanced itself from the isolationist policies of Alfheim. A more controversial theory is that the military influences in Alfheim no longer had to keep the Progressives on side once the Drow threat had been addressed, and amid growing concerns that the lesser races were gaining too much knowledge without safeguards, they could deal to the Progressives' pet projects such as the Maryn Experiment thus dealing to their ideological rivals in Dakhini. There were also reports of some of the darker cults from the Kinslayer wars having sway over senior members of the Maryn family, which may have prompted action from the Elvish Crown.

Reappearance

In mid winter 809WK, some 25,920 years after its dramatic disappearance, much of what had been the Dakhini Peninsula mysteriously reappeared as an island off the southern coast of Hindia. Its reappearance was as smooth as its disappearance had been violent; both are equally inexplicable.