When the people of Illiad started interacting with the people of Sancstoryl about 2600 years ago, the world and most notably the continent of Liwilai soon entered a golden age due to the cultural exchange, trade opportunities and access to other worlds... But about 2100 years ago, 500 years after first contact, all would come crashing down.
First, all contact to the Illiadian homeworld immediately ceased. All portal technology stopped functioning, and the Illiadians left on Sancstoryl were stranded. And then... the Wasting Plague happened. Almost every single Illiadian was beset with an affliction resembling Ha'zas Syndrome, which most Illiadians would be afflicted with near the end of their natural lifes... and soon, many of them, no matter how young or how old, succumbed to this affliction. Even many of those Illiadians who'd never develop Ha'zas Syndrome in their natural lifes were afflicted... Though the young fared better than the old in terms of survival... The reverberations of these events were soon felt all across Sancstoryl. Many countries that were now depending on Illiadian know-how, technology and the travel to other worlds started collapsing. Many great technologies and even more lifes were lost in the chaos... But eventually... The world started to rebuilt.
As the world rebuilt, so did the surviving Illiadians... However, the experience left them and their culture in shambles, and the survivors' bodies forever changed. The Mikaru, the Arrash, the Ree-Mai, the Rakiakaru and the Tirrdaka found their and their descendants' lifespans severely shortened, Shadow- and Light-Walkers fell into a slumber that sometimes lasted decades or even centuries, and even the Dorro, who largely at least were able to survive the effects due to their naturally aging bodies, came to notice that their ability to switch forms was lost; leaving many stranded in one form forever.
And yet, the Illiadians endured. While only two of their three city-states remain, Argentis and Khrusia, with Aesil falling into ruin, they remain bastions of Illiadian culture to this day... And new developments in The Argentian Republic seem to be ushering a new golden age for the world...
The events of the Great Wasting are also known as the Great Liwilaian Collapse by the people of Liwilai.