The Story of Agranna and the Wicked Man:
On any island, you will hear tales told to children as they grow. Stories of monsters and heroes, of kingdoms both fallen and yet to rise. On every island, there are different tales with different purposes, but the one story that spreads far and wide over the waves is that of the sunken kingdom. No one knows what lies in the depths of the ocean, the places where no living person has yet reached. No one except the gods who sank the land in a torrential rain. About four centuries ago, the world was covered in more land than water. As far as the eye could see, craggy mountains, green fields and magnificent castles rose into the sky. Kingdoms were spread far apart and their ideals were peaceful for a time. Nothing good lasts forever though.
A man from the mountains came to one of the kingdoms, a land known as Agranna which was the largest and most powerful on this plane. He tricked the king into believing that the peace was faltering, made the king order Agranna's troops to all corners of the earth. And so they went, tens of thousands of heavily armed soldiers scattering across the fields and mountains, an unstoppable war machine. As they came to the borders of the lands, couriers warned their kings of the impending war, and in a rush to stay sovereign, they too formed armies to contest the tricked Agrannan soldiers. His plan set in motion, the wicked man finalized his plot. The moment he and the king of Agranna were alone, he ran a knife through the king's heart. With the last heir to the throne, the king's son, still much too young to take it, the duty of governing the state fell to the wicked man. It was just as he planned.
Battles raged, towns fell in the wake of war, and the world's peace was lost, all thanks to the will of one man. He sat on the throne, content with his cunning maneuver to ascend to power. With his lead, Agranna began winning the war rapidly, but at a hefty cost. Many lives were lost, fortunes turned to poverty, land became cold, hard and useless. He assured his people that it was for a good cause, that in the end, they would live like lords on a land of gold. His assurances were filled with falsehoods and evil intent though, and the gods saw through this. Seeing no other option to stop the slaughter of innocent people, they told the few peoples still unscathed by war to flee to the mountain tops. Heeding the gods' words, the innocents ran and climbed the mountains. With their chosen few safe, the all mighty deities summoned a torrential rain that flooded the world and killed all who hadn't fled for the heights. At the first sign of trouble however, the wicked man ran to the mountaintops as well. And thus, the old world died, drowned beneath the waves of a gargantuan sea. The people who survived began new lives on the mountaintops, which were now islands in the middle of a vast expanse of water and the wicked man's kin still survive, somewhere in the world.