The Sundering's Echo
The Sundering’s Echo is not an era of history, but the moment history cracked. Spanning the immediate, cataclysmic aftermath of 1700 YE, this period demands rigorous documentation, for it represents the raw, unadulterated consequence of Umbral’s unchecked ambition. The stone holds all truths, and this moment carved the sharpest, most painful lesson. It is the necessary bridge between the gilded, reckless failures of the Age of Weaving and the subsequent, long misery of the Age of Lingering Echoes. The value of this period lies not in its achievements, but in its precise cataloging of collapse.
The atmosphere was defined by geological trauma. The infrastructure designed by Architect Vorlag failed catastrophically, transforming Umbral from a city into a chasm. The air was thick with the dust of vaporized rock and fine, shimmering Aetherium Shards, remnants of the over-stressed conduits. Every surviving structure groaned under impossible pressure, a pervasive, low frequency tremor known to the immediate survivors as The Stone Scream. Immediate action replaced planning; survival trumped all other mandates. The chief knowledge gain was the grim, undeniable truth of Anya, the Gloom Weaver’s prophecies, now validated by ruin.
The primary collective action was triage and stabilization. The most decisive achievement was the swift mobilization of the ad-hoc documentation and survival crews, later formalized by the nascent Dwarven Abbey, which began the meticulous process of surveying the damage and recovering essential artifacts. This necessitated the rise of practical leaders and engineers over the former mercantile Barons. We owe the stability of the immediate post-cataclysmic centuries to these nameless individuals.
To ensure we never confuse the noise of tragedy with the clarity of its lesson, Chroniclers categorize this single year of transition into the following critical, short phases of assessment and survival:
1. The Dust Veil: The hours immediately following the blast, characterized by total obscuration and geological flux.
2. The Silent Count: The desperate first census of survivors and the dead, marking the true scale of loss.
3. The Vault Sealing: The emergency effort to lock away unstable magical resources and damning records from opportunistic raiders.
4. The First Assessors: The initial movement of engineering and chronicler teams into the destabilized zone to map the critical structural failures.
5. The Ascent of Dust: The permanent evacuation of all remaining non-essential personnel and the final abandonment of Umbral’s main levels to the ravages of time and shadow. The Echo thus ends where the long Age of Lingering Echoes begins.