The Great Cataclysm
Following is the section on the Great Cataclysm that will appear in Skirmisher Publishing's "World of Kos," the next volume in its Swords of Kos Fantasy Campaign Setting. It describes the defining event of the milieu and its impact on the world the player characters live and adventure in. The beautiful image that accompanies this article is by fantasy artist Bob Greyvenstein and depicts an allegorical vision of the Great Cataclysm as a battle between the Olympian gods and the Titans.
Following is the section on the Great Cataclysm that will appear in Skirmisher Publishing's "World of Kos," the next volume in its Swords of Kos Fantasy Campaign Setting. It describes the defining event of the milieu and its impact on the world the player characters live and adventure in. The beautiful image that accompanies this article is by fantasy artist Bob Greyvenstein and depicts an allegorical vision of the Great Cataclysm as a battle between the Olympian gods and the Titans.
A century before the era of the campaign setting begins, the volcanic island of Kalliste — located in the center of the Aegean Sea — erupted in the most violent explosion ever experienced by Humanity. This event widely became known as the Great Cataclysm and defined the world of which Kos is a part.
Kalliste, "the most beautiful," was the political and cultural center of the Minoan League (q.v.), which used the island's volcanic energy to power its workhouses and accomplish untold marvels. After they lost control of that energy and it vaporized the majority of the great island, people began to collectively refer to the shattered, ring-shaped chain of smaller islands that remained as Thera, or "fear."
When Kalliste exploded, almost everything on it was either shattered or completely vaporized, and a massive column of ash and debris rose up many miles into the sky. The concussive force of the blast drove an immense cloud of superheated particles out over the sea and, as this glowing mass rolled over other islands and struck surrounding shorelines, it tore apart or incinerated everything it touched and ignited massive conflagrations. Earthquakes created chain reactions that spread thousands of miles in every direction, toppling buildings in cities far from the Aegean, and churned up colossal tidal waves that inundated communities already ravaged by fire or those on the shores of distant oceans. Volcanoes erupted worldwide as they were agitated by the force of the unprecedented explosion.
Dramatic though they were, the effects of the Great Cataclysm went far beyond destruction wrought upon the surface of the earth. Creatures nearly forgotten and long relegated to the realm of myth were awakened from their slumbers, and ancient peoples were driven from their redoubts in remote forests destroyed by fire or underground kingdoms devastated by earthquakes. Laws of nature themselves were altered and, in the months and years following the disaster, priests began to notice that their prayers were answered more often and explicitly, and sorcerers to see more profound results from their formulae.
Those who survived the initial effects of the catastrophe often did not consider themselves to be the fortunate ones. Ash from the many volcanic explosions blocked out the warmth and light of the sun for years afterward, plunging the world into a gloomy and persistent winter that caused crops to fail and widespread famine to descend upon the world. People wandered far from the places they knew in search of food and warmth, and murder and cannibalism became widespread. Strange new religions emerged as Humanity was exposed to the ideas of other peoples, witnessed things like deep-sea horrors washed up on shores ravaged by tidal waves, learned to look into other planes of existence, and sought power from otherworldly entities.
Eventually, order both benign and malign began to be imposed in many areas, as people banded together for security, made pacts with races whose existence they had only recently learned about, and began to rebuild. Hamlets and, successively, villages, towns, and cities rose up from the ashes, along with temples and palace complexes, most of them fortified against the hazards of the new world. Local and state governments of all sorts were reestablished and, as people rebuilt their societies, they variously followed examples from the past or rejected them altogether and adopted new ways of doing things. A century after the Great Cataclysm, the scars of the disaster still persist but most people have been born into a strange new world, with only glimpses of the old one remaining and many people being oblivious to it.
While no one questions the fact of the Great Cataclysm, theories as to exactly what it was and what caused it vary widely. Many of those who believe in the Gods and their power to intervene in the lives of mortals believe that the disaster was, in fact, caused by and at the site of the Titanomachy, an apocalyptic war between the Olympians and Titans. Those with less of an inclination toward a belief in divine intervention are more inclined to view the cataclysm as simply a natural event, albeit an unprecedentedly terrible and destructive one. Numerous stranger and more convoluted theories exist, one of the most persistent being that giantkind in general and the powerful and antagonistic Fire Giants of Sicily deliberately engineered the catastrophe as a step toward their own domination of the world.
Two of the areas most heavily hit and profoundly affected by the Theran disaster were the island of Crete and the archipelago of islands known as the Cyclades (both of which are described in the Lands Beyond Kos campaign sourcebook). A century after the Great Cataclysm, these places remain especially dangerous, in large part because of the creatures warped by the forces of the disaster that haunt them. They are also prime targets for quests by many adventurers, however, because of the wealth, lost technology, and other things of value that might be found within them, and many such stalwarts have perished there.
While the main period of the Swords of Kos Fantasy Campaign Setting begins a century after the Great Cataclysm, some storytellers might wish to create episodes that take place in alternate timeframes. An adventure might be set, for example, in the years immediately following the disaster, when people were struggling to survive within the post-apocalyptic wasteland, or even during the cataclysm itself and the destruction of the surrounding region.
