The Start of the Shardstorm Phenomenon

Over the skies of the Mana Wastes, pieces of the lost city of Alkenstar, fragments of strange crystals fall from the sky, and even the occasional outsider from any of the various Planes of the Multiverse begins to fall from the sky. Soon, this phenomenon spreads to the entirety of the continent of Garund, and then eventually the rest of the globe. Over time, these crystals come to be known as weepshards, due to the effects of handling them without a seemingly random bonding ritual, often resulting in the same type of madness that came from coming too close to the World Weep in the previous age.