History Main / WorldSundering

* Mystara suffered through several such cataclysms, most recently the ''Wrath of the Immortals''.

* PaulBunyan was this trope solidified into human form, being responsible for just about every major geographical feature in America. Minnesota's ten thousand lakes? Paul's footprints that filled up with water. The Grand Canyon? What happened when Paul dragged his axe behind him. The Mississippi River? Dug by Paul so he could float his logs down the country. The Rocky Mountains? Well, all that dirt he dug up making the Mississippi had to go ''somewhere''.
** And Michigan happened when he lost [[CargoShip his left mitten]].

* ''{{Exalted}}'', as usual, takes this trope up to eleven; before the Primordial known as "She Who Lives Within Her Name" was banished to Malfeas, she flung globes of her unquenchable flame at Creation, effectively [[RetGone Retgonning]] ''two-thirds'' of everything that had ever existed up to that point in time.
* ''MagicTheGathering'' recently ran a pair of mini-blocks in a setting like this; it started out as the idyllic, LighterAndSofter ''Lorwyn'', but then the Aurora occurred and changed the plane (and set) into the much less friendly ''Shadowmoor''.
** The Overlay, Yawgmoth's plan to invade Dominaria, is one extreme version of this trope. During the ''Invasion'' block, several things happened to change Dominaria's face, so that when the war was over, Skyshroud Forest (part of the invading plane) was part of Dominaria, and Teferi's magic had shunted Zhalfir and part of Shiv into another dimension. When he tried to bring them back during the ''Time Spiral'' block, the rifts caused by his original shunting hindered the process: He was able to return Shiv, but Zhalfir was lost to the rift.
*** Similarly, Alara was one plane that became five, each missing two allied colors of magic and having a concentration of their more common enemy. (So, for instance, Esper, lacking the individuality of red and green, is a world of machines.) In the Alara block, they came back together.

* {{Atlantis}}, according to {{Plato}}, was caused to sink beneath the ocean in a single day by the gods, making this one of TheOldestOnesInTheBook.
* The TropeCodifier is {{Tolkien}}, of course. This happens at least three times in ''TheSilmarillion'': the original battle between Morgoth and the Valar leads to the creation of an ocean with Valinor on the Western side of Endor and the great inland Sea of Helcar on the supercontinent of Middle-Earth; the War of Wrath at the end of the First Age causes the entire subcontinent of Beleriand to sink into the ocean; and the Drowning of Númenor is accompanied by a divine intervention which makes the entire world round rather than flat. Finally, it's implied that Middle-earth is simply the Old World in a lost era of prehistory, so untold other cataclysmic changes would have occured between the setting of the novels and the present day.

* ''TalesOfPhantasia'', ''TalesOfSymphonia'', and ''TalesOfSymphonia: Dawn of a New World'' take place in the same setting with a (literal) world sundering and world re-merging between each game. It was originally one planet, then split in two, then put back together again.
** ''TalesOfTheAbyss'' has a very weird variation. While [[spoiler:the BigBad is the one who gets the ball rolling, it's your party that finishes the job.]]
** ''TalesOfLegendia'' has this as part of its backstory, ''twice''. To wit: [[spoiler:the world was once entirely ocean. Then the Orerines came along and used the Wings of Light to create an entire continent. At some later point, the Ferines got ahold of the Wings of Light and used it to ''destroy'' half of that continent.]] This is a bit of an odd example in that none of the gameplay even takes place on the continent in question.

* The Breaking of the World in ''TheWheelOfTime''.

* In ''THeSagaOfTheExiles'', an actual geographical event in the shaping of Europe as we know it is the (very) direct result of character actions. We're talking "Grab the faultline with telekinesis and pull" levels of directness.

*** World of Warcraft ''is'' a cataclysm.

Since MedievalStasis makes it so that a MagicalLand will always be the same, and that 1000 or so years in their world has the same amount of political, economic, and technological development as about five years in our world - that means that natural change happens pretty much never. Including geological shift. The continents, landmarks, etc. will remain in the exact same way they are across a span of 10,000 years, so the prophecy about the SealedEvilInACan in the Mountains of Shadowblood Peak will always be fulfilled without having Shadowblood Peak turn into the Shadowblood Picnic Hills thanks to erosion.

With one exception: WorldSundering. Used as part of ExpansionPackWorld, to revamp a setting, the WorldSundering is a huge magical explosion that does the job of millions of years of geological shift in a few seconds. Generally, an evil wizard, an ArtifactOfDoom, or some other event causes all of the continents of the world to shift rapidly.

This allows writers to set two stories [[ChaosArchitecture ten years apart in a world that's completely different from the old one.]]

Geological change in these worlds doesn't happen because of tectonic plates or any nonsense like that. AWizardDidIt. Always.

* David Eddings' ''{{Belgariad}}'' series has this in the backstory, related in the prequel ''Belgarath the Sorcerer''. When Belgarion acquires the Orb of Aldur (which caused the sundering at Torak's command), he muses about the destruction... and the Orb starts giving him precise instructions on how to ''fix'' it. (He declines, for numerous reasons.)

* Averted in Glen Cook's ''Deadly Quicksilver Lies'', where natural geological change really ''does'' take place in a fantasy setting [[spoiler: and caused a buried treasure -- one everyone in the book is fighting each other over clues to -- to collapse into the sea, courtesy of plain ol' cliffside erosion, several hundred years ago.]]

* Done rather bizarrely in the second quadrilogy of TheRunelords: in the second book of it (sixth overall), the main character fuses his world with another. 95% of the world from the first quadrilogy [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse vanishes, unresolved]].

* ''{{Exalted}}'', as usual, takes this trope up to eleven; before the Primordial known as "She Who Lives Within Her Name" was banished to Malfeas, she flung globes of her unquenchable flame at Creation, effectively [[RetGone Retgonning]] ''two-thirds'' of everything that had ever existed up to that point in time.

* Occurred in the backstory of the {{Warhammer}} world, when the dimensional gates built by the [[{{Precursors}} Old Ones]] collapsed, resulting in a huge blast of magic energy, followed by massive earthquakes and an enormous demonic invasion. The most notable result in the present day is the existance of [[{{Mordor}} the Chaos Wastes]] on both poles.
** A smaller-scale one occurred when the Elves were forced to sink part of their homeland beneath the waves to contain the magic energies released from the afformentioned cataclysm in order to keep the entire world from being torn apart, and later when the Lizardmen decided to use their magic to alter some mountain ranges, leading to the destruction of several Dwarf holds.

** ''TalesOfTheAbyss'' has a very weird variation. While [[spoiler: the BigBad is the one who gets the ball rolling, it's your party that finishes the job.]]
** ''TalesOfLegendia'' has this as part of its backstory, ''twice''. To wit: [[spoiler: the world was once entirely ocean. Then the Orerines came along and used the Wings of Light to create an entire continent. At some later point, the Ferines got ahold of the Wings of Light and used it to ''destroy'' half of that continent.]] This is a bit of an odd example in that none of the gameplay even takes place on the continent in question.

* Frequently happened on ''GraalClassic'' pretty much whenever the admins got bored - a cataclysm and an island appears, a cataclysm and it merges with the continent, a cataclysm and it gets invaded and burned down, a volcano erupts and another island sinks....
* ''GoldenSun'' had a [[strike:minor]] version of this in the events between the first game and the second, caused by the activation of Venus Lighthouse. At first, it seems that its greatest effect was to break an island off of one continent and drift it across the ocean (with some important characters brought along for the ride). During the opening of the second game, though, it's revealed that it ''also'' caused a massive tsunami that (as you find out later in the game) awoke an ancient monster from slumber and ''moved one continent for miles until it slammed into another.''

* Averted/subverted/played straight in {{STALKER}} Where after the second Chernobyl disaster radiation, psy waves, mutants, gravitational anomalies, and more spill out into the Zone. Enormous radiation emissions happen daily which kills anything that hasn't taken cover. But despite all the catastrophic results, the geography of the area remains more or less the same. However in the sequel, Call of Pripyat, you see that the anomalies have started to warp the terrain. Gravity anomalies are creating bizzare rock formations, burner anomalies are causing areas that were formerly stone or concrete to melt, acidic anomalies are causing strange plant growths all over, and generally the anomalies are twisting around the landscape.

<<|SpeculativeFictionTropes|>>

Overlaps with TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt. See Also: PatchworkMap, EarthShatteringKaboom, ColonyDrop, {{Atlantis}}

* This arguably describes the most devastating event in the ''Mega Man'' series: the Elf Wars, a time period between ''MegaManX'' and ''[[MegaManZero Zero]]''. The world is completely devastated, with [[strike:possibly]] only one bastion of civilization left. Also, there's a radical decrease in the population (60% humans, 90% [[RidiculouslyHumanRobots Reploids]] wiped out). It's all the cause of EnergyBeings with the power of MindControl and RewritingReality, which are in the hands of a OmnicidalManiac CompleteMonster. The war, which spanned ''only 4 years'', was thankfully ended by the duo of the series' heroes before things got much, ''much'' worse¦

* Occurred in the backstory of the {{Warhammer}} world, when the dimensional gates built by the [[{{Precursors}} Old Ones]] collapsed, resulting in a huge blast of magic energy, followed by massive earthquakes and an enormous demonic invasion. The most noable result in the present day is the existance of [[{{Mordor}} the Chaos Wastes]] on both poles.

** Another case seems to have occurred since the release of Alchemy at the end of the second game, judging by the map for ''[[GoldenSunDarkDawn Dark Dawn]]''. Particularly noticeable are the apparent sinking of Kolima Forest & Tolbi, the expanded mountain range near where Altin should be, and the ''waterfalls between different levels of ocean''.
*** Kolima Forest didn't actually sink. It just changed. [[{{Understatement}} a lot]].

* The TropeCodifier is Tolkien, of course. This happens at least three times in ''TheSilmarillion'': the original battle between Morgoth and the Valar leads to the creation of an ocean with Valinor on the Western side of Endor and the great inland Sea of Helcar on the supercontinent of Middle-Earth; the War of Wrath at the end of the First Age causes the entire subcontinent of Beleriand to sink into the ocean; and the Drowning of Númenor is accompanied by a divine intervention which makes the entire world round rather than flat. Finally, it's implied that Middle-earth is simply the Old World in a lost era of prehistory, so untold other cataclysmic changes would have occured between the setting of the novels and the present day.

* Hyborian Age Europe in Robert E. Howard's [[ConanTheBarbarian Conan stories]] underwent such shifts to become the Europe we know today. In Conan's day, the Mediterranean is solid land, its future southern border delineated by an extension of the Nile; the Black Sea is considerably larger, stretching northward to form a continental divide; and the English Channel and much of the northern Atlantic are above water, linking Britain, Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland to the European landmass.

** Another case seems to have occurred since the release of Alchemy at the end of the second game, judging by the map for ''[[GoldenSunDarkDawn Dark Dawn]]''. Particularly noticeable are the flooding of Kolima Forest and the ''waterfalls between different levels of ocean''.