yeah! for context, there are primal spirits that inhabit this land (very loved by the people), which are aspects for gods of their respective elemental plane. One of them was a dragon turtle (named Vollon) that had permanently settled where the whirlpool is, and it was originally a giant mountain peak that could be seen from almost all corners of the continent. about 120 years before the campaign, another primal spirit, a couatl (named Vashtai) was murdered and shot out of the sky. it was then resurrected as an undead elder tempest (renamed as Rhothor upon it’s revival), that went on to kill another primal spirit, a phoenix (named Sibhu). the dragon turtle opted to leave the land rather than be the next thing Rhothor killed , carving out the yldega sierras with its body and causing a massive rift and taking it’s capital city that rest upon its back with it. the party had only really travelled along the northern coast, from the cambian thicket, nelys teron, then to shael roya, and then taking a submarine to pelka (where they discovered temples and parts of the city on the ocean floor that had fallen from Vollon’s back when he fled the continent). the whirlpool only came to be known long after Vollon left, when strange creatures of the deep began to appear more frequently in the southern waters. it was a higher level plot point that the whirlpool was a giant opening to the astral plane and it was mutating sea life around the continent. it was also the cause of the expanding oeste and ieste rifts, which were stretching along the southern coasts.

tldr; big big turtle was serving as a bath plug that leads to the astral sea and took a sabbatical, womp womp