10 Important Facts about Forgotton Realms (part 1)

I sent most of you this before, but here are the first 5 of 10 facts about the larger world that our campaign is set in. If you are familiar with the setting, these will summarize the major events in the world since 1374 DR, the Year of Lightning Storms. If you are new to the setting, this information will give you the basic background that most inhabitants know.

1. Roughly a hundred years have passed in the world since the previous edition of the campaign setting. The current year is 1479 DR, the Year of the Ageless One.

2. The Spellplague has drastically altered the cosmos. The Spellplague broke out in 1385 DR (the Year of Blue Fire), the result of unfettered wild magic on the death of the goddess Mystra. Whole countries are gone, especially in regions south of the Sea of Fallen Stars. Even familiar lands have become magical and fantastic in appearance. Islands of rock called earthmotes drift through the sky. Weird towers and spires of stone jut from the landscape. Spectacular chasms and waterfalls abound.
All things were sustenance for the Spellplague’s insatiable hunger—it assailed and transformed flesh, stone, magic, space, and dimensional walls. Even
the cosmos beyond Toril was affected. Some ancient realms returned that had been thought gone forever (such as the Feywild), and entire planes (such as the Abyss) shifted to a new cosmic structure.

3. Portions of Abeir have fused with Toril. The Spellplague raged even beyond planar boundaries, and Toril’s long-lost twin world, cut off for tens of millennia, was also caught up in the maelstrom. Large parts of Faerûn exchanged places with equivalent land masses on Abeir, bringing their populations with them. Across the Trackless Sea, an entire continent of the lost realm reappeared, now called Returned
Abeir.

4. The number of gods has dropped markedly. During the last century, even deities succumbed to divine and diabolical plots or to the chaos of the Spellplague.
Of those now absent, many died, some left, and a few were revealed to be aspects of already extant gods. Others lost so much power that they became exarchs, lesser divinities who serve the other gods.

5. The Spellplague left its mark on creatures. Some effects of the Spellplague persist to this day, especially in the so-called Plaguelands where wild magic
yet rages unrestrained. After exposure to the Plaguelands, some creatures exhibit physical marks called spell scars. These spellscarred individuals develop unique abilities, but not without a price. Victims of the original Spellplague were horribly
changed, not simply scarred, their flesh warped in unimaginable ways. The abilities of the spellscarred, though unique, are never as monstrous and powerful
as those of plaguechanged creatures. Luckily, such monsters are few, and of those, only a handful are free-willed, mobile threats.