In the early-mid centuries of the Third Age, the Vanir high elves of Itelion stood at the zenith of their civilization. Spanning the continent of Tolria, their silver spires rose to meet the stars. They were the first to decipher the Mythar Runes left in the wake of the shattered Mytharil Empire (of the second age) and learn much from the Aether Drake, their draconic creators who taught them to master Ether-Rifting—piercing the arcane veil of Ether that permeated through the Riftways.
But among them walked a shadow in the shape of a Vanir.
Malekith, the Sundered Sun, had survived the First Continuum Crisis, cast adrift from his severed shadow (Valekith). By the Third Age, he had cloaked himself in contradicting guises, whispering beneath the masks of Vanir seers and Solir scholars. He did not command—it was subtler. He suggested. He questioned. He ignited the first spark of doubt in a people too brilliant and proud for their own good.
The Riftfire Rebellion
Malekith’s whispers bore fruit in the minds of the young and ambitious—he framed the Aether Drakes as fearful gatekeepers, withholding truth from the Vanir out of jealousy and weakness. Many believed him. The True Dragon, having never recovered fully from their losses in The Planar Rapture and the First Crisis, could not quell the rising dissent.
This paranoia ignited The Riftfire Rebellion—a civil schism wherein rebellious elves turned against their draconic creators and any who still supported them. During this revolt, ambitious Vanir magi unearthed several Infinity Shards scattered across Tolria. With Malekith guiding their rites in secret, they began manipulating raw Rift Energy and fragments of The Continuum Crystal to devastating effect.
What began as a power struggle became a planar contagion.
Those who tapped into the Argent energy of the shards began to lose their minds. They heard whispers—the voice of Azhorra'tha, the Watcher in the Abyss. Their forms twisted. Their rituals grew unstable. Worse still, the rift-magic drew planar seams thin across eastern Tolria.
Eventually, in a final act of madness, the rebel magi enacted a ritual designed to breach the Crystal’s binding—and in so doing, tore through the very fabric of reality.
The Fall of Itelion & War of the Elves
The rift destabilized everything. Itelion, once a bastion of arcane majesty, was annihilated. Its gleaming towers folded inward and fell through themselves. Entire isles crumbled into the sea. The archipelagos of eastern Tolria were fractured, their coastlines split and lands forever reshaped. The continent itself was forever scarred.
The power surge sparked an even greater divide between the already tense elven civilizations:
- The Solir of Itela (in The Sun Realm of Osira), believed the Vanir had betrayed the elemental harmony and were led (by Malekith) to believe that they tried to use the rift to destroy their civilization.
- The Njordir of The Earth Realm condemned the etheric experiments as a violation of natural law and were also led to believe (by Malekith) that the Solir/Vanir were using Rift Magic to undermine their society.
Though all had once shared a common ancestry, Malekith’s schemes had made strangers of them all.
Fallen Heroes
A group of Vanir dissidents—later called the Valorant Few—rejected the madness of Itelions elder magi and sought to mend the damage before it was too late. They descended into Underhollow, a vast subterranean labyrinth beneath the worlds crust, seeking the final shards needed to restore the Crystal’s seal.
They never returned.
Above, the surviving Vanir completed their apocalyptic rite—attempting to merge the shards and wield the Continuum itself. But Archangel Ezekiel (formerly Emperor Ezekiel), who had watched silently until this moment, descended in blinding fire. With the Hosts of Helion, he shattered the ritual circle, sealed the Crystal with divine wards, and purged the last of the cultists.
The cost was incalculable.
Legacy: Sundering, Schism, and Escape
- The Prime Plane was irreversibly altered—continental drift, scorched skies, and planar storms persisted for decades.
- A deep schism was carved between the Solir and Njordir, once allied, now estranged by grief and suspicion.
- The Vanir were a people in decline, their golden age lost in a whisper and a silent scream. The only Vanir whom survived were that of the hidden civilization of Aerenal.
- Malekith, ever a step ahead, vanished long before Ezekiel’s blade fell. He sailed westward with his most loyal cultists, across the sea, and made landfall upon the southern coasts of Osira, where he would one day establish the Serrakhan Sultanate at the dawn of the Fourth Age.