The Catalyst Event

"'The fire-ball made a silent descent towards the mountains, streaking down to slam into the peaks a few miles away. The entire range shimmered as a huge blast wave spread out from the impact, ancient stone transformed to powder in the blink of an eye as the sky turned black with displaced dust. For a second the mindscape disappeared, swallowed by the dark, and when it returned Clay found himself standing in a crimson desert.' - The Legion of Flame"The Catalyst Event was a world changing calamity that occurred thousands of years before the events in the Draconis Memoria. It consisted of a meteor landing in the middle of a mountain range that covered the center of Arradsia. The mountains were destroyed and debris was thrown into the sky, blocking out the light and heat.

Arradsia Before the Event
Kriz's people theorized that before the meteor smashed into Arradsia, there were about half a million people inhabiting the island. Hardly anything is known about them due to their primitive ways.

Arradsia After the Event
Most of the mountain range that the meteor hit was pulverized, the end results are the Iron Wastes, also known as the Red Sands. Within the space of a century the population had fallen to barely ten thousand. The planet suffered a hundred-year-long winter, so much debris had been cast into the atmosphere it obscured the sun. Whole species were wiped out, the larger animals went first, followed by the predators that preyed upon them.

Results of the Event
“The Event came within a whisker of destroying us, so ironic then that it also brought the key to our prosperity.” - Kriz This meteor brought with it crystals with special powers. No one is sure how they discovered the abilities of the crystals, only that they did. Many of these people believed the crystals to be a gift from the gods. Some ancient texts referred to them as Divine Seeds. These crystals, and their powers, became the basis of technology and civilization for the people of Arradsia.

The Drakes
The crystals, debris, and geographical alterations were not the only results of the Event. Whatever power the crystals had also affected one particular species of wildlife."“We never really discovered how exactly it happened, but somehow a small, reptilian species survived the Event and it . . . changed them. The ability to spit venom became the ability to breathe fire and they grew in size with each generation. Some theorised that crystals disintegrated during the Event and the fragments fused with the drakes. The power they held seeped into their being.” - Kriz"The powers that the crystals manifested also developed in the drakes, though it took thousands of years before the Arradsians learned of the effects of Drake's blood.