Second Sundering

The Sundering is an event that will be described in a series of novels and game supplements planned for release in 2013 in anticipation of the newest version of the Dungeons & Dragons game, D&D Next.

When Ao the Overgod destroyed the Tablets of Fate at the conclusion of the Time of Troubles, he instigated the Era of Upheaval. The Tablets defined the laws of Realmspace and kept it relatively stable. Without them, chaos ensued and the worlds of Abeir and Toril, separated many thousands of years ago, slowly started to overlap. The Spellplague drastically sped up this process. The Sundering involves the re-separation of those worlds. In addition, Ao will rewrite the Tablets of Fate, and the gods, unsure of what this will do to them and their power, make efforts with their most powerful servants to prepare for that event.

The Sundering is somehow connected to The Sundering that took place around -17600 DR when an elven High Magic ritual went both forward and backward in time to create Evermeet.

History and development
The changes to the Forgotten Realms when 4th edition D&D were announced in 2006 were done without the consultation of Ed Greenwood or any of the main Realms authors. Despite entreaties not to go through with them, they happened anyway. Ed and R.A. Salvatore worked together to come up with a plan to fix the inevitable damage that these changes would cause. They came up with The Sundering.

The first announcement of the Sundering came at Gen Con 2012. Wizards of the Coast is calling the event a "cataclysm." Forgotten Realms campaign setting creator Ed Greenwood described the event as "war, gods, and plain folks trying to get by." The novels and adventures will be released in a staggered, overlapping fashion, and the collective results of players in their adventures can be submitted to Wizards of the Coast, and will influence the stories in the novels. The result of the events, in game terms, will be a simplified set of rules detailed in the upcoming 5th Edition, dubbed D&D Next.

Novels
A series of novels explaining the events of the Sundering are planned for release beginning in the second half of 2013:
 * The Companions by R. A. Salvatore, featuring Drizzt Do'Urden
 * The Godborn by Paul S. Kemp, featuring Vasen Cale
 * The Adversary by Erin Evans
 * The Reaver by Richard Lee Byers
 * The Sentinel by Troy Denning
 * The Herald by Ed Greenwood, featuring Elminster