The Decade of the Boiling Sea (The Cataclysm)
Five hundred years ago, the water began to vanish. The exact cause remains a bitter mystery shrouded in myth—some blame a broken divine pact, others an absolute failure of a high-arcane portal to the Elemental Plane of Fire, and the fey believe it was a terrible curse born of mortal greed.
The change was not instantaneous, but it was rapid. Over the course of a single, agonizing decade, the oceans boiled, evaporated, and receded.
Empires collapsed as their navies were suddenly run aground on rapidly rising sandbanks.
Millions perished from famine and dehydration as coastal ports were left stranded hundreds of feet in the air, looking down onto empty air.
Marine life died by the billions, leaving their colossal skeletons to bleach in the sudden, relentless sun.