Ghostly neon red lines that stretched for kilometres into the sky along the perimeters of the known tectonic plates while the earth vibrated at a frequency too high to be classified as an earthquake. The scientists around the world panicked, frantically searching for the cause of this event but they detected nothing. Gravity began to increase eventually stabilising at approximately 2.5 times its original strength as illusionary phantoms of fantastical creatures seemed to erratically teleport along the borders dictated by the ghostly red walls, unpredictably phasing between existence and non-existence but slowly seeming to become more tactile and solid.
After a minute, the enclosed areas began to recede from each other revealing new land not documented by any known scripture, myth or story originating from earth. The now not so illusory phantoms seemed equally panicked as ordinary people either ascended, the Planar Records acknowledging their struggle against the calamity, fell victim to the now harsh conditions of the planet or survived as a result of their well trained bodies or shorter constitution.
Once sufficiently expanded, new red borders connected to the old, the illusory figures fully solidified and the process began again, repeating for an estimated total of ten times, with each expansion introducing several different and once thought to be fantastical races, first appearing as ghostly and flickering projections, only to slowly solidify into reality. First Elves, then Dwarves, followed by Orks, Beastkin, Draconians, other unknown races wither mythically or fantastically inspired, Chimeras and finally a race that called themselves Aeonians.
Only two hours after the Shattering began, it ended, as abruptly as it had started the world once again fell silent, the ghostly barriers fell, the shacking of the planet ceased and the space that was seeming as if it were being ripped apart returned to its original and solitary state. Afterward, scientists scrambled to retrieve and analyse the data obtained from any still working sensors eventually deducing initially from the increased gravity and later from experimentation and observation that the earths size had increased by around an order of magnitude, the current theory and the one given to the general population was that several other worlds of similar sizes and composition had been merged with or superimposed on each other. With the governing bodies of the various races, who had contacted each other via ascended envoys, all concurring the same events, albeit with varying timings between the advent of the Planar Record and the ascended up until the Shattering - the name given to this calamity.
Communication between the commonfolk of the different races was kept to a minimum for the following year due to strange crystal-like structures of varying shape, size and colour began to emerge from the earth or spontaneously appear in the air before falling down. These crystal structures had many unusual properties such as forcing non ascended of different races to fuse together, completely erasing their personalities. Mutant races such as the ogryn originated from these phenomena with mutant races in general having an initially ridiculously fast and almost fungous like method of reproduction until their population reached an apparently appropriate value. Along with this their lifespans were estimated to be slightly shorter than the average between the two species they originated from, in the case of ogryn, around 40 years with them apparently reaching maturity potentially as young as five, and in the case of other mutant races, lifespans up to and sometimes beyond 200 years.
A year before the current time, calamity once again befell the planet, from the crystals came the crystalline, a race of monsters (the term given to races with the initial strength of the average ascended but without sapience). Their numbers were uncountable and they were seemingly aware of the locations of governing bodies and poorly disguised military outposts since they were all raided and destroyed only 40 days after the crystalline's first emergence, mainly due to creatures of ridiculous strength and proportions termed titans by the Planar Records, now known to have combative strength similar to act 3 ascended. The crystalline also seemed to own what can only be described as a local hivemind, a strange series of behavioural patterns involving most of the crystalline in an area submitting to either the one with the largest volume of crystals covering them, the one with the most vibrant crystals or the one with the most of its body covered by crystals. This was assumed to be a from of hierarchy among the race as these three metrics were also confirmed to be valid methods to quantify the strength of a crystalline: with the volume of the crystalline dictating its physical abilities such as strength, resilience to attacks; the vibrancy and colour of the crystals covering it being a slight indicator to the breadth and type of its mystical abilities and the percentage of crystals covering the crystalline's body, termed purity, denoting its intelligence.
As of the current day, the war with the crystalline is at a standstill with around 40% of the planets land surface considered to be Death zones, places considered to be completely uninhabitable due to the population and density of crystalline in the area and the fact that the ground itself has been connected to their hivemind, allowing crystalline titans to emerge from the crystal covered ground, a standard sign of an area being a death zone, to decimate anyone unfortunate enough to be in their vicinity. Another 15% is considered to be a warzone, with government owned or contracted ascended fighting non stop to halt the ongoing invasion. The rest of the surface aside from the large cities is either considered to be hostile, in which case crystalline can be found in varying numbers but without titans, or, the land is unfit for the crystalline to traverse due to environmental dangers. The state of the ocean floor and the many cave systems is unknown but due to the sighting of some crystalline emerging from oceans onto beaches or cliffs and several cavers calming to see huge caverns supported by crystal obelisks, the worst has been assumed by most experts.
***
Auro was walking steadily towards his tent while his current earliest memories of being found in a cave and after establishing that he had no memories of who he was nor earths history before and during the shattering, being abruptly told the frankly horrendous state of the world, especially the notion that it wasn't just the world that had been broken and forcefully smashed back together, but its inhabitants had been, suffering in silence. Their deaths which individually would have apparently been national or even global tragedies had now been reduced to a statistic, a soulless number.
Due to the fiasco at the bar, Auro had gained three Relics belonging to the ogryn that he butchered for threatening to rob him and later to kill him so, after lying down on the thin mat of his tent he first unsummoned his cloak and began to pull up the sleaves of his now slightly bloodied grey tunic in order to read the sigil on his right forearm while his grey and slightly gilded eyes could be seen to smile.