Great Cataclysm

The Great Cataclysm, also known as The Great Collapse, was a mysterious event that involved a drastic lowering of the sea level, the end of the Bronze Age and the destruction of the ancient Sangkovian Empire. It happened roughly 3,000 years before the events of Skies of Sangkovia.

For reasons unknown, the sea level was quickly and unexpectedly lowered and most of the water that surrounded the islands of the ancient Sangkovian Empire was drained, turning their archipelago into the dry, mountainous region that is now known as the Sangkovian Range. It was at this time that their civilization ceased to exist. The commonly accepted belief is that since the ancient Sangkovians relied so much on sea travel for trade, commerce and transportation, they were doomed without having the sea to connect the various islands that made up their empire. Most of the ruins of ancient Sangkovian settlements have been found atop of high mountains that used to be islands but are now surrounded by terrain that is tough to traverse, and travel between them would have been very costly.

The part that baffles historians and archaeologists the most, however, is that no traces of the ancient Sangkovians have been found at altitudes lower than where the sea level was before the Great Cataclysm, nor has there been any archaeological evidence of their existence afterwards. One would expect that they would simply climb down the mountains and migrate to better locations, but there is no evidence of them ever doing so; they seem to have just vanished. Although many other ancient civilizations were formed right after the lowering of the sea level, none of them seem to have any connection to the language or culture of the ancient Sangkovians; they all migrated from different regions. There are some cultures in the Sangkovian Range, such as the Balkorians, who claim to be descended from ancient Sangkovians who did, in fact, climb down the mountains and discover iron. While Balkor does appear to have been founded right after the Great Cataclysm, even their oldest artifacts seem to have nothing in common with the ancient Sangkovians, nor does their language or architecture, so this claim remains unproven.

Some people theorize that the Great Cataclysm was a divine punishment to the ancient Sangkovians for the various sins committed throughout their thousand years as an empire. Others believe that the Sangkovians had attempted a sort of dangerous sorcery that resulted in lowering the sea level and wiping out their empire.

The Great Cataclysm also marks the beginning of the Iron Age, as the ancient Sangkovians mainly used bronze, whereas most of the cultures in the region who came after them used iron.