Time of Troubles
The name used in Western Noefra for the period between 6 Spring Dawning 254 AC and the present. Characterized by the dissolution of the Federated Nations and many of the nations that used to comprise that treaty body, as well as the aether fog that makes fast travel and communications difficult.
Significant Changes
There are many major changes to situation of Noefra (especially) but also to the rest of the world.
Aether Fog
After the Searing of Kaelthia, a fog of luminous aether, almost like magical radioactive fallout has encompassed the globe. It's worse in western Noefra, but its effects are global to one degree or another.
The primary effect is that all long-range communication, transportation, and scrying spells have been hampered or nullified. "Long-range" here means "more than line of sight". Teleportation spells fail more readily (with often more gruesome results than before), the Portal Network is offline other than very-carefully protected and rare occasions (and even then is not entirely stable), and communication spells require paired tokens to function outside of a range of a few hundred yards. Scrying is unstable as well. This also affects interplanar travel.
Secondary effects include a substantial increase in the frequency and power of Abyssal incursions, as well as spontaneous undead manifestations. The fey have also become more hostile--less capricious and more malicious.
Divine Withdrawal
The events immediately preceding the final destruction of Loran Hae at the hands of the Ruin Raiders involved the heaviest divine intervention (sanctioned by the Great Mechanism) since the Cataclysm. And since the veil between the Mortal Plane and Shadow was already weak, this intervention (and the forces released at his destruction) threatened to destabilize the veil entirely. As a result, the gods have withdrawn even further. They only act now through clerics, and only guide clerics by vague dreams and visions. Even the Ascended heroes are more circumspect in their interactions, mostly leaving things to their mortal priests.
Politics
Western Noefra
- The Windwalker Confederacy completely disintegrated.
- The Duarchy of Kotimaa fell apart, with the short-lived Kingdom of Dreamshore taking half of the duties, but by 260 AC it has been replaced by a sequence of nations:
- ...stub
- The Crisial Kingdom has given up some territory that it could not hold.
- Rauviz has become a kingdom, absorbing some elements of surrounding nations.
- The Ungoverned Lands have mostly solidified into a few nations:
- ...stub
