The Quake represents a significant geological cataclysm that transpired on the planet Quesh, starting circa 53,600 BBY. This event, characterized by a succession of groundquakes spanning three hundred years, resulted in the continents of Quesh drifting apart by several meters, thereby generating enormous chasms and fractures across the terrain. Simultaneously, the noxious chemical compound venenit queshaaga was expelled from the planet's inner layers, permeating the air as it vaporized and leading to the extinction of all indigenous animal life as it transformed the atmosphere from a survivable one to a poisonous one.
By way of illustration, a groundquake possessing merely 1% of the intensity of a single tremor during the Quake would obliterate any surface-level constructions, even though the planet had achieved geological equilibrium for millennia thereafter.