The Sundering: The Cataclysm That Broke Ilyndor

Explore the apocalyptic event that shattered the fantasy world of Ilyndor, ending the ancient war between elves and orcs in a storm of corrupted magic.

Sepia portrait of an elven woman with a gold circlet

This archive page details events from the opening chapters of Mike Rawson's novel Resonance Portal Wars, blending high fantasy mythos with alternate WW2 history. (Spoiler level: Safe for new readers).

The Death of a World

Long before the forces of the Third Reich tore a hole through reality to march upon alien soil, the world of Ilyndor had already suffered an apocalypse of its own making. To the survivors who navigate its rotting forests and fractured magical currents, this cataclysm is known simply as the Sundering.

In the early chapters of the novel, the Sundering looms over every character from Ilyndor. It is the defining trauma of their existence, the event that ended a brutal, continent-spanning war between the elves and the orcs, but at the cost of the planet itself. The Great Pattern—the underlying structure of Resonance that maintained the harmony of nature—was shattered. In its place, a dying world was left behind, choked beneath a green-haze sky where twin moons cast their light over ruined landscapes and volatile Mana Scars.

The Desperation of the Elves

Prior to the Sundering, the elves and orcs of Ilyndor existed in a state of brutal, unrelenting warfare. The conflict had reached a breaking point. Orc war bands, riding massive Grimfangs into battle, had shattered the mountain front. Every elven stronghold west of the central leylines had fallen, and the invaders were advancing on the sacred groves.

Cornered and facing total annihilation, the Elven Council of Elders debated frantically. It was High Lord Elenion, the heir to the Elaren Crown, who made the fateful decision. If conventional warfare could not halt the orc advance, the elves would invoke ancient, forbidden power to reshape the battlefield.

Gathering at the Aetherial Spire, the Council initiated a ritual of unprecedented magnitude. At the centre of their formation floated Vael'tharion's Core, an obsidian sphere that functioned as a Primary Node of magic. But Elenion brought something else to the ritual—a living relic known in the deepest, most feared corners of orc lore as Vael'tharok.

The Ritual and the Ruin

As the Council funnelled their harmonic Resonance through Elenion, the ritual began to bend the fabric of reality. Vael'tharok, embedded directly into the High Lord's shoulder, pulsed with a single, glowing eye. It whispered truths that only Elenion could hear.

But the artifact did not merely amplify the magic; it hijacked it. Vael'tharok's runes surged, consuming the flow of Resonance and overwriting the Elven Council's intent. The spell intended to save the elven nation mutated into a force of absolute annihilation. The ground split open, bleeding molten veins of raw Resonance.

Watching from a nearby hill, Elenion's daughter, Commander Lithariel, witnessed the moment her father realised his catastrophic error.

A leyline surge ripped through the sky, turning day into a maelstrom of unnatural light. Mountains crumbled to dust. Rivers boiled and vanished. Entire cities—Elven sanctums that had endured for centuries—were swallowed by the void.

As the storm of raw magic devoured the Aetherial Spire, High Lord Elenion issued a final, desperate warning to his daughter before he was destroyed.

A final whisper, barely audible above the roar: "Vael’tharok is not to be trusted." Then he was gone—swallowed by the storm he had unleashed.

The Price of Survival

The immediate physical toll of the Sundering was staggering. Massive floods drowned a third of the world. The majestic forests of Cormanthor withered, and the land was scarred by unpredictable, violent magical eruptions.

For the elves, the catastrophe was both a national and personal tragedy. Lithariel, who was a young wife and mother at the time of the ritual, lost her husband to the fracturing earth; he was swallowed by fire and unraveling magic as he fought an orc chieftain. She was left to carry the weight of her father's apocalyptic mistake, swearing never to rely on such unchecked magical hubris again. Today, the scattered remnants of the elven nation hide in the ruins of their former glory, their numbers dwindling as the planet's corruption slowly encroaches.

For the orcs, the Sundering was the ultimate proof of elven arrogance. Entire war bands were erased from existence in a single heartbeat. Though they survived the cataclysm, they inherited a rotting world. To leaders like Balfur Skullrend, the shaman-chief of Grom'Karn, the event was a betrayal of the natural order. The orcs view the current state of Ilyndor—where shamans must cast their spells with extreme caution lest they trigger a magical overload—as a curse inflicted upon them by desperate, cornered enemies.

A World Split in Two?

As the narrative of Resonance Portal Wars unfolds, the true nature of the Sundering begins to present unsettling questions. Balfur Skullrend, attuned to the deepest frequencies of Temporal and Spatial Resonance, experiences visions of the cataclysm that suggest the Elven ritual did more than just break the physical world.

In her visions, she glimpses a fracture between realities—two Ilyndors existing simultaneously. One is the ruined, dying wasteland they inhabit; the other is a vibrant, untouched realm where the leylines remain whole and the forests thrive. This revelation raises profound mysteries for the inhabitants of Ilyndor. Did the Sundering actually split their reality into two separate timelines?

Furthermore, as Nazi forces begin pouring through the Bell Gate, the interactions between Ilyndor's leylines and Earth's dormant magic hint at a deeper, older connection. Did the shockwave of the Sundering ripple across the cosmic void to touch Earth? Are the unseen forces that manipulated High Lord Elenion through Vael'tharok still active, using the SS and their mysterious Element 115 to finish what was started decades ago?

As the war escalates, both elves and orcs are forced to confront the possibility that the Sundering was not merely an accident of war, but the first move in a much larger, darker game.

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Frequently asked

What was the Sundering?

The Sundering was an apocalyptic magical catastrophe that broke the Great Pattern of Ilyndor. It ended the ancient war between the elves and orcs but left the planet slowly dying from corrupted magic.

Why did the elves trigger the cataclysm?

The elven strongholds were falling to a massive orc advance that had broken the mountain front. In sheer desperation, the Elven Council attempted a massive ritual to halt the invasion, which went catastrophically wrong.

What is Vael'tharok?

Vael'tharok is a mysterious, living relic mentioned in deep orc lore and elven memory. It was used during the ritual by High Lord Elenion, who realised too late that the artifact had hijacked the spell to cause global destruction.

How did the Sundering change Ilyndor?

The disaster drowned a third of the world in massive floods, boiled rivers, and crumbled mountains. The sky turned into a sickly green haze, and the planet's magical leylines were permanently fractured.