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Most scholars agree that the Bendan Rift is a product of the Cataclysm commonly termed the Upheaval. Certainly, records indicate it did not exist prior to the Upheaval. And the opening of a massive chasm in the center of the Northern Sulian Continent is certainly consistent with the newly emerged mountains to both the east and west. No, this much is clear - the Upheaval pulled opened the chasm just as it thrust up the Dagger and Sword Mountain Chains.

What is disputer, however, is the nature of what is found within the Bendan Rift. Wild Magic Zones and Living Spells seem to roam the area. Portals and Pools that appear to lead into other Planes or even places yet more arcane spring up amidst the crags and caverns of this great canyon. And always, there are whispers of dark forces at work within the depths.

Some scholars maintain that there was always strong magic buried beneath what was once the Canto Plain, pointing to old writings recovered from Shamans of the plains tribes that spoke of springs of magic welling up from the earth. They maintain that the Upheaval merely revealed the magical energies that had always been there. It is likely that these magic energies were not always so chaotic, but with the sundering of the land itself, disruption of the magic concentrated there would hardly be a surprise. Some maintain that the Upheaval was largely the product of powerful natural forces, arguing that the Upheaval could not have been caused by the placid magical currents that had been under Canto. Others argue that the magic of the land was what broke first, and the shattering of the plains were the natural result of that much magic gone haywire.

Some scholars argue that such strong and wild magic could not have been solely from what magic might have resided beneath Canto. Not only do they regard the Upheaval as far too great to be a non-magical disaster, but they doubt that there was so much magic in the plains to begin with,citing the relatively low use of magic by the plains tribes. The Upheaval itself, they argue, released magical energies that came to collect in the Rift and form the strange phenomena seen there. The wonders and dangers of Bendan are merely the fragmented leavings of whatever immense magical event caused the upheaval, a magical event caused by some improbable conjunction of global magical patterns.

An expansion of that theory, championed much more by conspiracy theorists than legitimate scholars, maintains that the creation of the Bendan Rift was the aim of Upheaval. Some great and malevolent power, almost to horrible to contemplate, wanted to open the Rift as a connection between Aers and whatever foul domain it spawned from. But for all the chaos death and destruction that occurred in the Upheaval and it's aftermath, no massive armies of darkness marched forth out of the Driftlands to conquer. The sentients of Suli fought only nature and each other for survival.

But even if the "Cosmic Horror" theory is commonly debunked, suspicious scholars still have their thoughts about what might have caused the upheaval. While no mortal mages could bring to bear the magic needed to cause such a calamity, it is not to say that a sufficiently resourceful group of mages could not have exploited and bolstered natural events to create the destruction of the Upheaval. Certainly the denizens of Risi, the continent across the Eritian Ocean, would have cause to want to see the nations of Suli humbled, particularly the large, prosperous and socially egalitarian Republic of Melas, now broken to but a shadow of it's former glory. And Risi has for centuries been the world's leader in arcane lore, as it's stewardship of the libraries and artifacts salvaged from the shattered civilizations of Uri, gave it's old and feuding nations the resources to push the pace of magical development. But could even the world's greatest mages have wrought such a thing as the upheaval?

Even now, thirty years after the first earthquakes that heralded the upheaval, scholars are still mystified about the event, and the secrets of the magic rich Bendan rift are largely unexplored.