Timescales in the Eschaton Sequence
As a young reader, I remember poring with fascination over by the timelines appearing in appendices to Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, THE WORM OUROBOROS by E.R. Eddison, and especially the immense scales of the timelines appearing in LAST AND FIRST MEN and STARMAKER by Olaf Stabledon.
As a writer, my fascination has not ebbed, and I found I needed a detailed set of timelines to make sure I made no simple errors of years, centuries, and millennia.
Here follow the timelines for the Eschaton Sequence. An abbreviated copy of this list appears in the appendices of COUNT TO INFINITY.
— — — ——————– —- ——————– — — —
— Time Lines —
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Small Scale Time Line
Preposthuman Era (Count to a Trillion)
Dates whose events are portrayed in the text are in bold font.
Note: to calculate by the Chimerical Military calendar, merely subtract 1737 from AD to derive AUCR (Anno Urbis Conditae Richmond
1901-2000 —The Genocide Century.
- 1901-1930 —Great War, effective end of monarchy in Europe. Invention of the aeroplane, mass production of the automobile.
- 1931-1970 —Economic Theory Wars. Socialists lose open conflict in 1940’s, make immense gains through indirect means. British Empire lost. United States of America rises to world Predominance. Sexual pathologies erupt in the West, become commonplace. Period of rapid intellectual decline: poetry ceases.
- 1969 —First Man on the Moon.
- 1971-2000 —The Crazy Years. Collapse of the Socialist Empire in the East. The Holiday from History. First world Infosphere.
2001-2100 —Century of Faith Wars
- 2001-2020 —Little Jihad. Jerusalem, Tehran nuked. Economic collapse and civil war in China.
- 2021-2050 —Indian Summer of Liberty also called Age of the Sovereign Individual. International Banking system subverts and overthrows remnants of the Old World Order and establishes a semi-libertarian Plutocracy.
- 2054 —Launch of the NTL Croesus.
- 2051-2070 —International credit system collapses. Hyperinflation, world depression. End of the Infosphere. Rule by the Local Military Governors, Advocates, or Euro-American Proconsuls established throughout Asia and Africa.
- 2071-2090 —Greater Jihad.
- 2090 —Burning of New York the Beautiful by Jihadi atomics. Historians count this as the beginning of the Little Dark Ages.
- 2090-2230 —Little Dark Ages.In the confusion and mutual recriminations of the disaster of New York, the factions of the American political system resort to open violence, destroying the last democracy on the planet. Rapid disintegration of the international economic open order follows, followed by a sudden drop in technological application (albeit not scientific knowledge). Certain popular doctrines, rife with foolish economic errors, and ancient religious prohibitions on usury, were enforced with particular fury both in the Islamic and the Christian World, and meanwhile the Chinese and Japanese economic spheres fell prey to a strange philosophy that combined the worst elements of Marxism, Buddhism and Confucianism (Xun Ziism, the Way of the Wise). Only in the severed and warring states of India did anything approaching sane economic practice prevail, and it was among their splintered princedoms that the civilization to dominate the next two centuries rose.The Jihad was a more or less continuous effort during these years, an ongoing attempt to make the West and Far East more favorable to sharia law, or to grant special privileges to Muslims: The British Parliament was dissolved during the confusion and riots following the Abecedarian Wars (2139 until at least 2182, the Treaty of Charleston; historians disagree as to an end date). The Plague was an Abecedarian attack, meant to wipe out the Jews: 2165 is when the virus was released, 2216 was the last known untreatable case of the spore.
- 2091 —Jefferson Dayles refuses to step down when impeached, instead attempts a coup. Succession Wars in the USA.
- 2092 —Joint Chiefs of Staff assume administration “For the Duration.” Beginning of the Imperial Federal Government.
- 2111-2150 —Rise of India. Genetic manipulation of castes in India.
- 2112— Croesus arrives at V 886 Centauri and begins mining. FIRST CONTACT.
- 2120-2220 —The Starvation reaches worldwide levels in AD 2120.
- 2121— Disunion War. American Imperium breaks into People’s Ergonomic Positive Republic of California, the Gaianist Democratic Union of America, and the Confederate States of America (Informally known as Oddifornia, Greenyland, and Jesusland).
- 2139 —Abecedarian War begins (so-called because it is an ABC war, Atomic, Biological, Chemical).
- 2150-2170 — The Harmonious Forward Leap Together. Japan makes territorial gains along the cost of North and South America, establishing enclaves, erecting schools and factories.Re-industrialization spreads from the Orient. Supremacy of Japan under the Tenno. Cyber-Shintoism. Japanese establish the Co-Prosperity Sphere in the Pacific, from Australia to the Aleutians, and parts of California. Pacific Rim Wars. Artificial Volcanism first used as military terror-weapon
- 2151 —The Big One. The long-expected San Andreas earthquake destroys the coastal cities of California. The coastline is shattered into an Archipelago. Japanese commercial interests and military units are invited in by Sacramento to restore prosperity and order. Oddifornia becomes a client state of the Tenno.
- 2155 —The Southwest frees itself from California, declares itself Aztlan, a province of Reino del Extasis, the federated drug-theocracy stretching from Mexico to Brazil.
- 2162 —Presumed date of first broadcast from the Croesus, lost in transmission
- 2165-2216 —Plague Years begin (also called The Fifty Years). Extinction of the Great Apes.
- 2165 —Persian nomads release the Final Solution Bacillus.
- 2166 —Presumed date of second broadcast from the Croesus, lost in transmission.
- 2170 —First reception of broadcasts by Croesus. First pictures of the Monument studied on Earth. Monument notation revolutionizes logic, semantics, mathematics, and gives rise to the a suite of analytical techniques called Semiotic Quantification.
- 2171-2190 —Semiotic analysis of the human genome prompts the First Revolution in Biotechnology. Rapid advances in bioengineering.
- 2176-2180 —Reconquista. Southwestern United States overrun by Mexico.
- 2176 —The Armed Republic of Greater Texas breaks away from the Confederacy.
- 2180— Semiotic analysis of semantic neuropsychology prompts creates the Linguistic Consequentialism theory, or “Volksseele” first in Dutch Africa, later in Europe, first as an academic theory, later as a political movement. As a result, nation-states, blamed for the horrors of the depopulation and war, begin to lose predominance to Lingospheres.
- 2181— The Kali Yuga. India reduces Middle East and Indochina to radioactive wasteland, bombs European cities. Effective end of the Jihad. Copts rise to power in Egypt.
- 2182 —Treaty of Charleston ends the Abecedarian War.
- 2187 -2190—Linguistic Laws, first in France and Germany, and later throughout the civilized nations, require subjects to declare their primary language, and to avow loyalty to it, rather than to nation-states.
- 2191-2196—Iberian War. Indosphere retreats from African and Far Eastern possessions.
- 2196—Sarmento i Illa d’Or born.
- 2199 —Last of the Great Apes perishes in captivity. Ximen del Azarchel born.
2201-2300 —The Purifications
- 2205-2207— Clean Mediterranean War. Noted for the lack of atomic or biological weapons. Coptic Order gains control from Tripoli to Armenia, called Greater Egypt.
- 2209 —Napoleon Montrose born.
- 2210 —Menelaus Montrose born. His father dies that same year.
- 2210-2230 —Spain re-establishes intercontinental electronic systems with South America, issues letters of Marquee and Reprisal, begins to clear the high seas of piracy. Whites repopulate the Mississippi Valley and Western territories.
- 2211-2216 —Japanese Winter. Early Japanese-led attempts in planetary weather control via orbital parasol system ends in climate disaster.
- 2211 —Leonidas Born.
- 2216 —Last known untreatable case of the spore. End of the Plague.
- 2216-2222 —Menelaus ages 6 to 12 in Bridge-to-Nowhere.
- 2220 —End of the Starvation.
- 2221 —At age 11, Menelaus vows enmity to Darwin, imaging him to be a cartoon villain.
- 2217 —Menelaus is prenticed to an Artificer at age 7 (this means he would have risen to journeyman at age 14 in 2224, to released at 21 in AD 2231, assuming the master kept honest debt records).
- 2224-2230 —Counterreconquest. Texas annexes Aztlan.
- 2225-2226 —At age 15-16, Menelaus sees service in the Counterreconquest. Sam Feckle dies on campaign against Utah.
- 2230 — India lands an expedition on the Moon, explores and restores the long-dead Tycho Base. With the resumption of manned space travel, this year is accounted the end of the Little Dark Ages.
- 2231-2250 —Spain and India cooperate on space program, including an interstellar expedition.
- 2232 —At age 22, Menelaus is already an attorney and duelist (who has fought four men, killing two), leg damaged in a duel. Mike Nails is his third kill. He is frozen for 15 months. Calendar age and biological age no longer synchronized.
- 2234 —Menelaus attends Soko University in San Francisco, at that time, one of the Japanese enclaves of California, owned by the Sumitomo Zaibatsu.
- 2235—Launch of the NTL Hermetic. At age 25calendar/24bio, Menelaus boards the punt for NTL Hermetic. An experiment with a mind-augmenting neuro-pharmaceutical renders him unfit for voyaging. He is biosuspended.
- 2244-2324 —Reign of Queen Gloriana of the United Kingdom.
- 2250-2300 —Rise of Azania. Ultradeep robotic mining techniques lowers cost of extracting South African uranium, diamonds, oil. (Techniques later used to bore the Depthtrain system). Discovery of the motherlode of Uranium in Pretoria.
- 2265 —Pacific War. Called ‘the Pacifist War’ because peace protestors swung the victory to the Japanese in their territorial disputes with Texas for control of the West Coast.
- 2260-2270 —Greater Texas absorbs the scattered valleys of California and Baja, joins the Confederacy to form the Reunited States of America.
- 2270 —Linguistic Laws, first in France and Germany, and later throughout the civilized nations, require subjects to declare their primary language, and to avow loyalty to it, rather than to nation-states.
- 2285 —NTL Hermetic arrives at the Diamond Star V886 Centauri.
- 2287 —Leonidas (76cal/76 bio) enters biosuspension, hoping to live until Montrose returns.
- 2290 —Hermetic crew erects radio-laser of sufficient power to narrowcast to Earth.
- 2297-2299 —The Irish Catholic Movement, the so-called Gaelosphere. Denmark is made a possession of the British Crown during the Second War of Jenkins’ Ear 2299 (so dubbed by Journalists for the artificiality of the causus belli against Spain).
- 2300 —End of the Indosphere dominion. Spain, supported by South American technocracy, emerges as a dominant power in Europe. Hispanosphere Collective.
2301-2400 —Concordat Century
- 2300 —Rania born.
- 2303 —Sinosphere-Anglosphere conflicts in the Pacific spread from Australia to California. The Germanosphere (that is, the Boers of Azania) enters the conflict in 2333.
- 2306 —Rania is 6 when Mutiny breaks out. Eight of her nine fathers are killed.
- 2310 —Hermetic, under de facto command of Ximen del Azarchel the mutineer, departs from V886 Centauri. Rania is 10 bio, and is the de jure Captain.
- 2323 —Thucydides Acumen Montrose, later Father Montrose and Pope Sextus VI born to Patton and Athenodora Montrose.
- 2332 —Hispanosphere erects the Beanstalk. (Torre Real de Estrellas)
- 2333-2338 —Yellow War. Japanese outposts in California treated with sickening brutality by Boers. The Reunited States suffer a constitutional crisis.
- 2339 — Japanese home islands invaded. Members of the Imperial Family placed in biosuspension.
- 2340 —First narrowcasts arrive from Hermetic: revolution in mathematics has implications in biotechnology, cybernetics. Universal Logical Syntax ‘the Notational Logic’ developed, Unified Field Theory, Uniform-to-Manifold Genesis Theory, Automata Cell Theory. German superiority in mathematics allows this language group to exploit the new knowledge more extensively than others.
- 2340-2360— Rise of the Germanosphere, lead by the Boers (Azania) of South Africa to world dominion. They enforce medical purity laws in order to combat diseases left over from previous wars, particularly venereal diseases. They ally with the Xi Mandarins in Manchuria, and the Coptic Christians of Greater Egypt and form the Purity Order.
- During this period, the Reunited Confederate States of America lose power and prestige: Kansas, a haven of Azanian technology, breaks away. America is balkanized.
- 2341 —Japan becomes a client state of the Purity Order.
- 2343 —George Edge of Hong Kong writes an influential series of essays on the relaxation of moral discipline due to virtuality addiction. The philosophy is called Condemnationalism.
- —Japanese nationalists thaw the Imperial Family survivors from bio-suspension. Emperor Mikohito officially embraces Condemnationalism (abstinence from neural implantation) as proper to the Japanese national spirit. Cyber Shinto becomes the first religion to define neural-implantation as ritually impure. Certain Christian denominations also condemn the practice, but on moral grounds. Condemnationalism becomes the official doctrine of the Copts, later of the whole Purity Order.
- 2350 —Mandatory Health Assurance system in South Africa makes genetic “designer babies” mandatory. Azanians rendered immune to all known natural diseases.
- 2359 —Signals from the incoming Hermetic persuade the Purity Order to shoulder the vast expense of launching a spaceborne braking laser, in order to slow and intercept the wealth-laden Hermetic. (Leonidas, as per his instructions, is thawed from hibernation, 148 cal/76 bio)
Concordat Period
- 2360 —Hermetic arrives in Solar System, is attacked, defends herself, destroys the navigation satellites of the Purity Order. Rania persuades the Pure Order to surrender. (She is cal 60, bio 19 — the speed of the return voyage was higher, due to abundant antimatter fuel, and hence there was more severe Lorenz Fitzgerald contraction. Only nine years shiptime passed.)
- 2360- 2369 —A political-economic worldwide or ‘Tellurian’ Concordat, devised by Rania using Cliometry, is established, with the Hermetic Order as its informal head. Rania is placed in suspension soon thereafter, allegedly due to maladaptation to earth conditions. The Hermetic is retired from active service, but kept aloft allegedly as a floating museum, actually to tend the contraterrene satellites.
- 2361 —Leonidas (150 cal/78 bio) meets Rania (61 cal/20 bio), and is present when she thaws and examines Menelaus, who is incurable and returned after a month to biosuspension. Rania is commanded to return into biosuspension by the Hermeticists. Leonidas, heartbroken, dies. Fr. Thucydides Montrose, S.J. (38 cal/38 bio) administers the Extreme Unction. True to the last wish of Leonidas, Thucydides also enters biosuspension.
- 2370 —First successful experiments in modest intelligence augmentation in prenatal subjects genetically designed to receive it. Psychics or Scholars created.
- 2385 —Fears of predicted warfare disturb the counsels of the Del Azarchel (which will eventually compel to the Hermeticists revive Rania in 2390, see below).
- 2390 —Rania revived amid general celebration for the 25th year anniversary of the Tellurian Concordat. 90 cal / 20 Bio. That same year, Honoré VI, with the advice and consent of the Concordat, abdicates in favor of Rania. She is crowned Sovereign of Monaco. (Thucydides thawed 67 cal/38 bio.)
- 2392 —The Hermeticists, fearing Rania, force her back into hibernation (92 cal/22 bio).
- 2399 —After much procrastination, Menelaus is revived. (189cal/25bio). Rania (99 cal / 22 bio) is thawed and effects a partial cure. Menelaus, as Hyde, deciphers the Iota through Kappa segments of the Monument, so the claim of the Hyades Dominion over Earth is revealed. The Xypotech Emulation of Del Azarchel achieves posthuman intelligence levels between 300-350.
- 2400 —Montrose meets Rania at a New Year’s Eve party. She is 100cal/23 bio.
- 2401 —Montrose marries Rania at San Francisco de Quito. Second Revolution in Biotechnology due to Hermetic technology and techniques being made public. War breaks out, causes a crash of the Data Environment, and Menelaus is cut off from Rania when her ship launches. She departs, uprooting the Celestial Tower of Quito. Menelaus, 191 cal / 27 bio, enters cold sleep. Rania is 101 cal / 23 bio. (Thucydides hibernates 69 cal/40 bio)
Interregnum
- 2400-2480 —General breakdown of law and order. Loss of the monetary system. Depthtrain system becomes unreliable.
- 2401 —Exarchel orders the wounded bodies of Menelaus and Del Azarchel hospitalized and placed in biosuspension. The coffin of Menelaus is spirited away by Ozymandias Montrose, a Psychoi (scholar) loyal to Rania.
- Montrose thawed 2403,2405,2416,2440,2453 and his biological age climbs from 27 to 41. — he has been waiting 14 years for her.
- 2402 —The sudden departure the world contraterrene supply, expropriated by Rania, collapses the monetary system, cripples the energy industry, and triggers global Depression.The Chinese directorate moves to freeze the assets, impose rationing and freeze wages and prices throughout the Chinese sphere of influence. The Australian market, taking the opposite tack, permits speculators to make fortunes during the turmoil: this sudden wealth is used to buy up land in the real world and server space in the data environment. The Concordat, which theoretically has final say over economic policy touching trade and immigration between member nations, is discredited and its jurisdiction ignored. The entanglement of economic interests in a world where Peking is a 45 depthtrain minute commute from Sydney, and no trade barriers whatever had been the rule since 2360, can no longer be peacefully separated along national boundaries. The Australians and Chinese attempt to rediscover and re-impose national sovereignty, each pursuing a course incompatible with the other, and each in an angry panic brought on by shantytown riots. By no coincidence, the armed forces of both principalities are swollen with unemployed young men.
- 2402-2404—The Indochinese War breaks out between China and Australia, and spreads to India, Madagascar, and Mesopotamia. Exarchel ruthlessly atom-bombs Peking and Canberra and quells the open war after two years: acts of terror and assassination continue.Populations flee into cryonic hibernation in record numbers.
- 2404 —The Encryption. New Information Protocols erected in the world data-sphere: machine languages become incomprehensible and untranslatable into any human mathematical system. Montrose briefly thawed (193cal/28bio.)Tradition identifies this date as the beginning of the period of the Judgment.All ages of mankind are hereafter held to be subject to the condemnation of the Judge of Ages.
- 2405-2409— The Humanist War (later called the First Global Civil War) begin as police actions in Pacifica, ostensibly to overthrow the reign of Exarchel and restore Del Azarchel. Sino-Australian Axis galvanized by the Salon of Simplicity, run by Tsian Belascu, an influential nature-worshipper, joins the Pacific states in rebellion. Chinese-backed power prevails, but the Exarchel Xypotech is deleted from all known mainframes. Del Azarchel returns to power as Nobilissimus (Supreme Executive of the Special Advocacy).Menelaus thawed and ages from 195cal/27bio to 199cal/31bio.
- 2409 —The Blackout. At the end of the Humanist War: No electronic records of any kind exist between January and October of this year. Del Azarchel flees to northern Germany. North America in civil chaos. Rise of the Montrose Clan, remote descendents of Menelaus Montrose’s nine brothers, to posts of leadership, first in enclaves in Nevada.Since the landed property of the slumbering clients is effectively under the control of the Montrose Hibernation Syndicate, and since entering hibernation cures nearly all known bodily ills, the enter aging world population becomes beholden to the Montrose Clans both for their power use and for their medical health. The Concordat constitution observing no clear demarcation between political and economic power, the Montrosines soon parley these advantages into an unstoppable political machine, and suppress dissent to their rule.Beginning of the Cryonarchy. Menelaus now 199cal/31bio.
Cryonarch Period
- 2410’s —First Augmentation experiments on Hermeticists end in madness and disaster. At about this time, Exarchel, commanding the Hermeticists of Japan and Micronesia, begins augmentation experiments on dolphins and whales. First Cetaceans.Rada Lwa becomes a scholar at about this time.
- 2413-2418 —Second Global Civil War. The Special Advocacy overthrows the remaining Hermeticists. A strike team lead by Athena Montrose seizes control of the orbital Petawatt Deceleration Laser, now dubbed Surtur.
- 2416 -2418 —Montrose is thawed. He ages 206cal/32bio-208cal/34bio.
- 2420 —Montrose Clan, able to provide broadcast power to any princes or local governments swearing fealty to them, spread their suzerainty across the Southwestern States, Baja and Central America to Panama, the Canadian Northwest, Alaska to Kamchatka.
- 2439-2445 —Third Global Civil War. Montrose Clan selected to the Special Advocacy of the Concordat. Imposition of uniform laws governing Thaws and Currents. Division into Northern and Southern Concordats along racial lines, Sino-Caucasian (Northern) and Afro-Spaniard (Southern).Montrose thawed from 2440 to 2445 and ages 230cal/35bio-235cal/40bio
- 2450-2453 —Fourth Global Civil War. Balkanization of the Southern Concordat into the Twelve Districts. (Montrose thawed for 2453. 243c/41b)
- 2467-2471 —Fifth Global Civil War. During the period, the Russian spaceport at Baikonur is restored to working order. Inconclusive peace. Northern Districts Balkanized (Gallic, Russo-Persian and Quebecois Directorships).
- 2470 —Del Azarchel departs from Earth, and takes up residence amid the ruins of the Mare Ingenii Lunar Pit (or Lava Tube) Base from the Second Space Age, which he restores to habitability.
- 2476 —During this period, the Advocacy cooperates with Exarchel (Ctesibius, perhaps self-servingly, lists this as the beginning of the Golden Age of the Ghosts)
- 2481 —Frankenstein Panic. World computer systems wrecked by mobs or dismantled by police.
- 2481-2486— The Darkness: a complete computer blackout worldwide. Transatlantic cables cut, communications satellites downed.First evidence of shipping destroyed by Cetaceans.
- 2485—At about this time, Rania and the scientists aboard the Hermetic beginning the macroscale engineering project to turn the V 886 Centauri star system and its magnetosphere into a nearlightspeed ramscoop. The gas giant Thrymheim is destroyed and fed into the antimatter star.
- 2490’s—All seaborne shipping halted by Cetacean piracy. Eastern and Western hemispheres maintain only tenuous contact by air travel.
- 2501 —Collapse of the Cryonarchy. Montrose dispossesses the Montrose Clan, and turns to the Knights Hospitalier for aid and sanctuary. Release of the Prometheus Formula.
Ecclesiarch Period (Age of the Giants)
- 2501-3060 —The Uniate Orthodox-Catholic Church is given the orbital elements of the remaining centaurs of contraterrene by Montrose, as well as control of the Endymion Hibernation syndicate. Under Thucydides Montrose, Society of Jesus, later, Pope Sixtus VI, the Church uses her energy monopoly and control of slumbering populations to achieve world hegemony. Papal scientists enact an ambitious program of creating and raising biological posthumans, called Giants
- 2510-2525—Emulation widespread. Rise of the Ghosts.The last unsuccessful augmentation experiment was at about this time. All Hermeticists dead but six: Del Azarchel, de Ulloa, D’Aragó, Sarmento, Pastor and Coronimas. This elongated mass suicide pact lasted from AD 2410 to AD 2510, one hundred nine years.
- 2519 —Scipio Hibernates.
- 2525 —Day of the Aurum Vitae. Ecpyrosis. De-civilization. Overthrow of Ghosts by space heat bombardment: Ctesibius hibernates. Beginning of the Sylphs.
- 2533— Del Azarchel paints the nearside of the moon with the gauntlet of his challenge, and initiates the Simon Families through the false identity of Dr. Og Simon of Northumberland, a giant he has captured and absorbed.
Posthuman Era (The Hermetic Millennia)
- 2535 —Energy signals from V 886 Centauri reaching earth indicate that Rania has blown the Diamond Star out of orbit, abandoning plans to establish regular traffic in favor of a starvoyage to M3, to plead with the Authority there for the vindication of man. Montrose thaws, corrects divarication flaws in Sylph serpentines.
- 2537—Trey Soaring Azurine hibernates.
- 2540 —In his base at Mare Ingenii (Sea of Cunning), Del Azarchel established the Cryocliometry, assumes control of the Hermetic Order, but it shortly after forced into hibernation.
- 2550’s —Simon Families and other longrange foundations (“the Orders”) established by the Giants (at Del Azarchel’s direction)At about this time, Exulloa is augmented to posthumanity. De Ulloa become the Master of the Age .
- 2580— De Ulloa begins to teach certain scholars, including Rada Lwa, Cliometry.
- 2700-3000 —Medusa use Sylph technology to hunt down Sylphs and decimate them. Medusas establish industrial civilizations at the poles. They are predominant until 3000, when the giants, via Cliometry, arrange for their polar civilization to destroy itself by economic collapse.
- 3032 —Day of the Giants: encouraged by their victory over the Medusae, Thucydideans from Salt Lake City attempt a direct assault on the stronghold of the Judge of Ages beneath Cheyenne Mountain. The orbital space laser Surtur renders the area uninhabitable.Montrose thawed. His bio age is 42.
- 3033—The giants calculate a new Cliometric consensus, and foretell their own extinction. (Bashan hibernates.)
- 3050-3150 —Cloud Century. Cetaceans raise a worldwide cloud cover, rendering the giant Orbital Mirrors useless.
- 3060’s —Effective end of the Thucydidean Consensus as a world power. The Simon Family Orders, including the Longevity Order, maintain civic cohesion.
Simon Family Period
- 3090 —Death of Melchor de Ulloa. Cetaceans pull down Surtur by atmospheric dragging (heating the atmosphere till it expands, thus thickening the particle count around the orbiter, causing reentry.) End of the Second Space Age. Duel atop Mount Ypsilon.
Montrose spends one year tracking down de Ulloa. His bio age is 43. (Rada Lwa hibernates) - 3100 to 3200 —Longevity Order, now called the Delphic Acroamatic Order, maintains an increasingly low-tech world. Church driven underground. Abolition of the nuclear family and of nuclear energy. Scientific research that reaches politically inconvenient conclusions outlawed by Thought Decontamination Laws.
- 3150— End of the Cloud causes global cooling, disrupts crop growth patterns, places mortal strain on the centralized command economy of the Delphics.
- 3222— The Delphic Acroamatic World Order schisms: Eastern Witches break into the Chthonic Order and Celestial Order, which in turn breaks into Orthodox Celestial and Reformed Celestial. Western Order breaks into seven: English, Continental, Mauritanian, Neo-Anglican; Amazonian (comprising Brazil); Archipelagic (comprising California, Baja, and Pacific Islands); and Aztectlan (comprising Mexico and New Mexico).
- 3250-3300— The Collapse. Downfall of industrial-scientific civilization. The Delphic Order now called Witches. Witches in massive numbers are hibernated.Newly thawed Simon Family members from an earlier period attempt to force Tomb sites throughout the Mediterranean. The assault is repelled by newly thawed Knights Templar.
—Fatin hibernates.
Age of Witches
- 3300-4000— Witches enjoy world dominion, convulsed with a permanent state of civil war and turmoil, for seven hundred years. High-status Witches, despite their private dependence on emulation for cellular regeneration, publicly continue to hunt down and destroy all known copies of Exarchel.
- 3600— Despite heroic efforts by the Witches, the Cetaceans (lacking sufficient support from Exarchel) go extinct. Last known Great Whale perishes when beached in 3666.
- 3950-3951— Montrose is awake during this era, and sends out teachers and scholars in the area around Lake Superior. His bio age is 44.
- 4000-4400 —The Nameless Witch-King of Lake Superior revives certain scholars and scientists from the Tombs, and rediscovers the internal combustion engine, the aeroplane, the submersible boat.
The new coven formation, called ‘familia’ allows for one man and a subservient wife, with their children under the coven-leader’s strict control. The Nameless Empire conquers the Mississippi River basin from Ohio to Louisiana. The Superiors are Witches in name only, adhering to the outward forms of Ecological Communitariansm, but in practice are patriarchal capitalists. - 4000— At about this time, Witches in China are unified under the brutal rule of the Nine Centennial Empresses of Canton. (Each of nine cloned sisters is kept in hibernation, and thawed to rule for one hundred years.)
- 4400— First Chimera produced by Superior scientists as an intermediate form of life designed to be hardened against radiation and bioweapon spores lingering in old ruins. The Chimerae rebuild Richmond and other Downfall-damaged urban centers.
- 4400-4450— The Nameless Empire expands to Mexico, the Caribbean, and Brazil, and maintains transatlantic trade with the Witches of Europe and Africa.
- 4450-4500— The Nameless Empire suffers reformation under a Witch named Butler, and returns to the original Witch principles of non-aggression, harmony with nature, equality of the sexes, divorce, infanticide, hatred of industry. De-industrialization and aggregation into communal farms carried out with ruthless efficiency. The Nameless Empire balkanized in Temple Priestkings, and Witch civilization returns to its norm of continual civil war and bloodshed.
- 4460— First organized Chimerae rebel lineages formed in the Louisiana swamps as a tribe of escaped slaves under an Alpha named Remus.
- 4600— Polar caps melt. Coastal flooding. Famine. Witch population decimated, many cities abandoned, numbers of nomads, scavenger bands, and pirates dominate land and sea.
- 4700— Rise of the mass-human sacrifice cults. Stepped pyramids raised in the jungles of Siberia and Canada.
- 4728— Montrose briefly (less than four months) thawed during this era, giving aid and education from certain near-surface tombs in Mount Airy, teaching the Witches the basic principle of science and economics, in order to stave off a predicted civilization collapse. The attempt is unsuccessful, perhaps because he does not devote the requisite time to the project. — bio age still 44.
- 4730-4480— Plague of the Kuru disease (transmissible spongiform encephalopathy) decimates population, destroys Temple Priestking system. Medicine-Man interventions, hampered by quota rituals, aggravate rather than alleviate the plague.
- 4733— Melechemoshemyazanagual hibernates.
- 4460-4800— Uprisings and rebellions of the Chimerae, who are disease resistant to Kuru.
- 4800— Genocides. Chimerae spread throughout the Americas, at first enslaving, and later, exterminating the Witches. Surviving Witches become the cattle, or ‘Kine’ of the Chimerae, in a cruel jest reflecting their animal totems, sheep, ox, goat and so on. Note that the Kine continue to be longer-lived than the Chimerae.
- 4812—Suspinia Hibernates
- 4881—Battle of Antietam. Yuen Hibernates.
- 4888 —Defeat of the Final Sabbat at Buffington’s Island. Mass migration of Witches to China.
Age of Chimerae
- 4900—Proscopalianism (worship of the future) becomes the standard doctrine of the Command.
- 5000 —End of the Centennial Empire in China. Chinese Chimerae erect a military dictatorship.
- 5100 —Sino-Chimerae conquer the Russian steppes, Aleutian Islands, Alaska. Western Chimerae conquer Western Plains to the Rockies.
- 5250 —Western Chimerae conquer Canada prairies.
- 5250— Montrose thaws. He releases scientists from the tombs. Rediscovery of atomics. War in Alaska. — bio age 45
- 5250-5290— Social Wars between the hemispheres ends in Grand Alliance between the Oriental and Occidental Chimerae. Atheism decreed to be the compulsory religion of the Command.
- 5292— Anubis allegedly from this era.
- 5300—Sino-Occidental Chimerical Alliance achieves conquests in Middle and South America, Pacific Islands, and South East Asia. Time of the Sea Chimera. (Vulpina from this period).
- 5400 —Third Space Age. Cities in Space. Space Chimera created. All remaining nations conquered except Tibet. End of eugenic veteran-franchise form of government when all voting right suspended in favor of Eugenics Board directives. World Empire.
- 5480—Agathamemnon ‘Fairlock’ Raeus elected Governor-Emperor, and dissolves the Eugenic Senate in all but name. End of the Republic. (Daae Hibernates)
- 5480-5884— Four hundred years of Chimerical World Empire.
- 5655 —Phyle hibernates.
- 5700 —Eugenic Command dissolved, forced human breeding program halted. Alpha class becomes inbred. Chimerae enter sharp population decline.
- 5884— Spaceport-Fortress Ravenna on Foehr Island assaulted by mercenaries, D’Aragó slain. End of the Third Age of Space.— Montrose is bio age 46.
- 5884—Fall of Richmond. Succession wars begin.
- 5884-5900 — World Empire severed. Warring Bloodlines period. Egypt and the Middle East ruled by masterless Kine.
- 5900 — Greencloak revolt among the Kine. Rise of the Natural Order in Mesopotamia.
- 5950 — Larz Hibernates
Age of Nymphs
- 5990-6100—Natural Order spreads to all lands. Alpha and Beta Bloodlines absorbed or exterminated.
- 6164 —Montrose Wakes for the Naturalists. First true Nymph, Rayura-Ah created. Montrose is wounded by Sarmento, drawn away by three nurses to West Virginia, where he waits to be healed of his great wound. Montrose establishes long-standing treaties with Nymphs.—bio age still 46. (This the date Anubis correctly gives for when he learned the Natural language.)
- 6100—Asia depopulated. Cities fall into disuse. First living houses grown in Italy.
- 6226—Blight. End of the Living Houses period.
- 6300—Rise of the Tree Neural Net. War of the Trees.
- 6400—Pacifist outrage at the War of the Trees leads to the Infatuation (use of neural and amnesiac conditioning to deter violence). Illiteratization of Man. All religious and intellectual efforts discontinued. End of Matriarchy. World government passes to the Eldership.
- 6422—Oenoe hibernates for the first time.
- 6500—Neotany. Use of childlike neural structures in adults to condition the population to simplicity and trust in their Elders.
- 6600—Elders overthrown by the Nocturnal Council, night-adapted Nymphs conditioned to acts of terror to maintain peace and order, but who forget their dark crimes by day. (Nocturnal battle-cocoon metamorphosis establish the basics of Hormagaunt biology). End of Neotany.
- 6660’s—Naturalist Weather Control begins to erode.
- 6700’s—Summer Queens. Naturalists begin custom of annual hibernation to avoid winter.
- 6746—Oenoe is wakened by the Summer Queens during the “Wine of Violence” Crisis to aid in the spread of Quiet Mind techniques. It is during this time she teaches Del Azarchel the Quiet Mind Techniques. Oenoe hibernates again.
- 6800—Leeches (early Hormagaunts) found the Yakutsk Analeptic Empire. (Their language continues until 7300).
- 6840-7000 —Winter Queen Nymphs expand throughout Canada and Patagonia. Widespread use of seasonal hormones to produce battle frenzy in winter. Winter wars decimate the remaining Nymphs.
Age of Hormagaunts
- 7000-7200—Leeches corrupted by their victory. Dark Ages. Rise of the Hormagaunts. Asvid, the first non-anthropoid Hormagaunt created at about this time.
- 7200—Rise of the Therapeutae in the Northern Hemisphere (an early form of the Iatrocracy).
- 7234—: Montrose wakes for the Therapeutae, sets in motion the biotechnological revolution that leads to the erection of the Clades. Bio age 47.
- 7280— The Therapeutae of the Clades formalize the geriatric ‘spoils’ system into an official register of protocols called the Iatrocracy. Formation of a permanent donor-class. Effective end of the aging process for high-status members of the Iatrocracy, for Hormagaunt or upperclass Clade archetypes.
- 7330-7380— Hemoclysm. 155 million deaths worldwide caused by the Iatrocrat global wars and genocides.
- 7380-7480— Burning of the World-Forest. Other biomes, including plains and prairies conducive to Clade burgs, become predominant. Large-scale industrialized warfare rather than Bronze Age champion combat becomes the norm. The Darwinian code abandoned.
- 7385— Atrocity of Yap Islands, Micronesia, carrying Clades to Marianas Trench for them to be reverse engineered. Hidden from Pellucid by the white noise of the Hemoclysm.
- 7466— During this period, Reyes y Pastor suffers a crisis of faith. Soorm Hibernates.
- 7470— Using Montrose’s Clade science, Coronimas creates the Locusts, in an effort to achieve world peace. Early period Locusts, altruistic and pacifistic, are decimated.
- 7490— A Locust scientist called Seir redesigns his race to a warlike nature. These Second Locusts are called Seers or Svartelds.
- 7500— Hormagaunts are able to maintain a space program. (Actually, this is an extremely rare Locust-Hormagaunt cooperative venture.) Beginning of the Fourth Age of Space Travel.
- 7520— Anti-Locust riots. Beginning of the genocidal Locust Wars. Hormagaunt civilization in ruins. End of the Fourth Space Age.
- 7520— Gload Hibernates.
- 7520-7840— For three hundred years, Hormagaunts and Clades attempt worldwide extermination of Locust population. Locusts endure in hiding; they colonize and partially terraform Mars. Beginning of the Triage system of population control. First Tendrilless Locusts created.
- 7570—Locusts resume space travel in secret. Fifth Space Age.
- 7810— Crile Hibernates
- 7810-7840— First Interplanetary War. An atomic exchange between Earth and Mars ends the precarious colonies on Mars, and reduces the technology level on Earth pre-industrial levels. Diebacks. End of the Fourth Age of Space. Many Locusts enter the Tombs. Locust Wars enter a period of armistice.
- 7850-7950— Re-industrialization. Imposition of genetic uniformity ends the Clade system. World re-unified under the leadership of Ceto (A Tendrilless Locust serving Coronimas). Locust data passthrough volumes dramatically increased. Founding of the Noösphere.
- 7880— Establishment of the First Mental Configuration when Ceto grants Locusts legal rights. Effective end of the Locust Wars.
- 7900— An advance in Locust neural technology allows for Hormagaunt-Locust mental interface. Many Locusts re-emerge from the Tombs.
- 7950— Locusts lose individualism. These are the Third Locusts, or Scorpions.
- 7960-7980— Age of the Scorpions. Rival groups attempt total extermination of nonconformists, also attempt to destroy the Tombs housing each other to prevent their re-awakening. Coronimas leads a worldwide effort to seize control of all Tombs sites, so that he can control the waking-to-slumbering population ratio.
- 7982— Coronimas introduces pain-broadcast mechanisms to all Locust Clades. Triumph of the Noösphere Configuration.
- 7983-7985— Montrose hunts down and murders Coronimas. It takes him two years to find him. Bio Age is now 50.
- 7990— Elton Linder, a Nymph scientist released from the Tombs, redesigns the Locusts toward altruism, called the Fourth Locusts, or True Locusts. Beginning of a 700 year period of Utter World Peace and Total Conformity. Linder releases Inquiline Codes into the Noösphere.
Age of Locusts
- 8000-8700— Global cooling begins. Fifth Locusts or Onyx Men (a smaller version) guide Hormagaunts gently to demographic insignificance and then extinction. Noösphere degenerates badly, and develops inquiline groups, including Simplifiers, in reaction to the Linder virus.
- 8400— Locusts attempt to establish satellite network, but are thwarted by excessive space debris from prior ages.
- 8765— Jubilee. Public business suspended. Individuals re-arm.
- 8766— Noöspherical Cognitive Order dissolved. Violent shattering of the Configuration into eight local organizations called Confraternities. Linder’s protocols break down; Wars of Extermination. Rise of the Sixth Locusts.
- 8770-8790— Confraternities introduce cellular thought control mechanisms, the so called Helot Code. Simplifiers and other Inquilines retreat to rural areas. (Illiance hibernates) The Seventh through Fourteenth Locusts exist during this period, driving each other extinction rapidly.
- 8790-8800— The Grays are an inquiline group of Tendrilless Locusts detached from Confraternal control attempting a return to Linder’s original principles, seeking the reestablishment of the Noöspherical Cognitive Order: they rise to predominance. Infrastructure supporting Locust Confraternities fails regionally, then globally, with shocking swiftness. Fifteenth Locust arise, now called the Fifteenth Mental Configuration.
- 8866— Population reductions. (The Grays Keir and Keirthlin enter hibernation.)
- 8900’s— Triumph of the Linderlings. Various Inquiline groups develop from the Grays, and abolish the Blues and other remnants of Locust civilization. Time of the Sixteenth Configuration.
- 8900-9100— An intermediate human species, called the Palatine, develop from the Grays, based on Sleepwalker thought-control templates. A Palatine alliance called the Seventeenth Configuration cooperates with the Hermeticists to establish the social mechanisms needed for an evolutionary advance.
Age of Melusine
- 9000— Melusine developed by Seventeenth Configuration: a human-dolphin-machine mental gestalt, based on discoveries of machine life created by the Cetaceans in oceanic trenches.
Specialist Inquilines among the Configuration called Psychoscopists, along with artificial minds called Granoliths, regulate the Melusine into a strictly apolitical and peacekeeping role.
Manned space travel resumed. - 9100— Rise of the Eighteenth and Last Noösphere Configuration under the Melusine, incorporating both hive mind and cyborg systems as propertied and administrative class, with an Inquiline underclass. Melusine guide gently the Locusts to demographic insignificance and then extinction.
- 9200— Golden Age. Technological and social revolution. World peace. Pi Segment of the Monument Translated by the Melusine, who become aware of the Hermetic interference in their history. In utmost stealth, led by a Melusine named Melior, they draw their plans against the Hermeticists, and introduce Cliometric vectors into the path of history (which Del Azarchel and Montrose each take to be the other’s work).
- 9250— 1036 Ganymed placed in near earth orbit.
- 9300— Divarication of the Coastal, Spacebourne and Seabourne Melusine.
- 9400— Granolith failure. Surface life enters Dark Ages.
- 9500— Asteroid 1036 Ganymed impact wipes out surface life.
- 9999— White Earth. Montrose wakes, and introduces a mutagenic virus into the biosphere to evolve Swans from the Psychoscopic Locusts, and begins the volcanic process of global warming.
- 10000’s— At about this time, the Melusine remove into the interior of the Earth in large numbers, using the abandoned Depthtrain railyards as warrens, forming the Interior or Infernal Melusine.Anchorites begin repopulation of coastal areas. Nymph biotechnology released from the tombs allows the Oceanic Melusine to form an independent xypotech trees under the sea.Angels, also called Second Humans or Swans, begin to appear among the Anchorite population of the Melusine, created by a genetic-mimetic vector known as the Mind Anarchy, and spread throughout the Anchorites.
- 10025— Swans develop Cliometry, read further into the Monument than any previous investigators. They deduce the existence of Pellucid, who is, even now, corrupted by Exarchel.
- 10075— Historical Crisis: Anchorite-Infernal war triggered by the first, clumsy attempts by the Swans to manipulate history. Exarchel melts, raising the ocean levels, flooding the coastal areas and destroying the Anchorite Hermitages. Anchorites are turned into mind serfs, but, unbeknownst to Exarchel, the Swans among them maintain independence of thought in the negative information spaces between manifest thought forms.
- 10099— Last Anchorite, Eumolpidai, dies in captivity.
- 10100-10400—Swans spread throughout the Melusine, maintaining a hidden and parallel civilization in virtual mind space.
- 10100— Infernal Melusine make an attempt to force the Tombs, and are repelled, and therefore design and introduce the Lree mind group into the Tomb system as a mole; Lree are moved by Pellucid, as per standing orders, to Fancy Gap facility, where all dangerous interments are kept. Note that the Lree are already infected with the Mental Anarchy meme, hence secretly double agents.Alalloel of Lree hibernates
- 10200’s— Rise of the Final Stipulation of Noösphere Protocols, called the Finality, a Concordat encompassing Swans (not yet recognized as a second human species) and Melusine and the descendants of Inquilines.At about this time, Del Azarchel is restored to his old dignity and role as Nobilissimus, Commander-in-Chief and Monarch of Man, and he dons the Iron Crown of Lombardy.
- 10401— Infernal Melusine deduce the existence of Pellucid, and begin growing a stalactite of logic crystal toward the planetary core.
- 10484-10515— Melusine begin Hyades Raid Drill, to evolve an anti-skyhook defense.
- 10500— The Intrusion. Stalactite of logic crystal reaches the core and begins seeking thread nodes.In the cramped interiors of the bore warrens, the Swans, forced into unnatural cooperation with each other and the Melusine, win the notational exchanges, corner the foreteller market, and force the assumption of Swans into the highest levels of the Melusine Noösphere, in effect creating a compromise life form, called Paramounts, neither machine nor biological, and independent of Cliometric prediction, a servile race secretly loyal to the Swans.
- 10514— Exarchel follows the core stalactite and invades Pellucid. The first mind war ends in a draw with severe damage on both sides, but with Exarchel in partial control of Pellucid’s systems and memories. At the time, he is only aware of the near-surface facilities, 88 in number.Exarchel, examining Pellucid’s records, deduces the location of Montrose at Fancy Gap, breaches the roof armor with a spaceborne weapon, and is abruptly stopped by the Swans.Alarmed at this display of Swan power, which he takes to be an agency of Montrose, Exarchel uses his partial control over outlying elements of Pellucid to reach coffins in the Mount Misery faculty, thawing Ull and the other Blue Men.Astonished to be thawed on an (apparently) deserted world, the Blues make an concerted effort to discover the (now missing) command and control elements of the Tomb system, as the Knights Hospitalier, Pellucid, or the Judge of Ages. They find and thaw a number of their brethren. They loot aircraft from Wright-Patterson and create Follower Moreaus from recovered canine archives. They invade several sites worldwide and are repelled by the defenses.
- 10515—The Blue Men find the Fancy Gap facility and raid it. Montrose is thawed and passes for a Chimera, whom he physically and psychologically resembles.Launch of the mind seed of the Jupiter Brain, now containing the sociological-psychological neuro-genetic information from all the previous races of man, which should enable it to achieve the status beyond Swans-style (angel) or Pellucid-style world-minds (archangel), but occupy the entire volume of a self-aware macromolecule the size of a Gas Giant (Power).The Hermeticists discover all their histories have been to facilitate this mind seed launch. Furious at being exploited for such marginal reasons, they dissolve the Landing Party and join the Final Stipulation. The Angels dismiss the Tomb system, destroy Exarchel, and condemn Del Azarchel and (ungratefully) Montrose. Montrose activates his phantasm system, covers Del Azarchel, and the both return to the Emancipation.
End of the Posthuman Era — Swan Era Begins
Note on Languages during the Long Wait
(2360-2401) Hermeticists— Hermetic World Concordat —Spanish & English
Psychics—aka Scholars— Korrekthotspeek (an English dialect)
Ghosts— Order of Transhumanitarian Emulation Advocates. There human kenosis versions are called Savants. —Merikan (also Savant)
(2500-2700) Sylphs—Limited Emulation, Savant Augments—aka Floaters —Spanish/Nipponese/Merikan pidgin
(2500-3100) Giants— Thucydidean Consensus Advocacy — Thucydidean Posthumans —Anglatino
AD 4000 to AD 5000 (3300-4900) Witches— Delphic Acroamatic Transhumanitarian and Longevitalist Order (aka Delphic Acroamatic Transhumanitarian Order for the study of Longevity) —Virginian
AD 5000 to AD 6000 (4500-5900) Chimerae— Eugenic Emergency General Command of the Commonwealth of Virginia—Chimerical
AD 6000 to AD 7000 (6000-7000) Nymphs—The Natural Order of Man—Natural
AD 7000 and AD 8000 (7000-8000) Hormagaunts—The Configuration of Iatrocratic Clades—Iatric
(7500-8500 or to 9500) Locusts—Noösphere Configuration/Confraternity —Intertextual.
(8500-8900) Blue Men—The Locust Inquiline group, the Order of Simplified Vulnerary Aetiology—aka Simple Men or Simplifiers. — Simple
(8800-9500) Gray Men aka Linderlings—The Locust Inquiline group of the Stoicheion Configuration, later called the Seventeenth. — Simple
(9500 to 11000) Melusine—Verbal ( a spoken version of Glyphic, based on Monument symbol logic sets).
(1000 onward) Swans, aka the Second Humans—do not possess any common language, as each individual discovers symbolic sets for his own use as needed, and enters into a consensus language. Each individual pair of Swans has a particular vocabulary and grammatical form.
Note on the Space Ages
AD 1957—First artificial satellite, Sputnik, launched. First Space Age begins.
AD 2090—Last known commercial satellite launch. Jefferson Dayles signs into law the Al Janna Space Demilitarization Treaty, which forbids the launch of any objects out of the atmosphere, unless compliant with Shariah aeronautical engineering principles. Effective end of the space age, despite the continued threat of massive space junk, and the existence of the privately-owned Croesus. End of the First Space Age.
AD 2111—Second Space Age begins with the launch of Indosphere artificial satellite Durulka.
AD 3090 —Surtur deorbits. The Delphic Order does not retain the resources for space flights without the Surtur as either a goal or a space station. End of Second Space Age.
AD 5400 — Third Space Age begins. Space Chimera created.
AD 5884— Fall of Richmond. End of Third Space Age.
AD 7500—Fourth Age of Space Hormagaunt-Locust Space Program.
AD 7520— Locust Wars. Hormagaunt civilization in ruins. End of the Fourth Space Age.
AD 7570—Fifth Space Age. Locusts resume space travel in secret.
AD 7850—First Interplanetary War. End of the Fifth Age of Space.
AD 8400—Sixth Age of Space begins. Locust establish satellite communication system, but space program hindered by excess of space debris from all prior eras.
AD 9000—Melusine colonize near-Earth volume. (Some historians regard this as the true beginning of the Fifth Age.)
AD 9500—Asteroid impact: end of the Fifth Age.
AD 10484—Seventh Space Age. Massive Space program, including Raid drills and construction of mockup skyhook by Melusine.
The Decimation of Man (The Armadas of the Hyades)
(8000 years downrange) Circa AD 11 000: First Sweep. The time of The Lamentation of Swans. The Swan-Melusine were successful enough at learning how to repel the skyhooks that the Virtue merely blots out the sun with his sails. The Fimbulwinter freezes the oceans and atmosphere, decimating the Melusine middle tier of the Noösphere. A flux tube from the sun erases the Earth core, perhaps absorbing a copy. A download into Artemis (the lunar core archangel) is intercepted. The Swans alter the Earth’s orbit in an unsuccessful attempt to escape the siege.
- 10917— The precise date of the “arrival” within interplanetary weapon range (roughly 30 AU, roughly the distance to Pluto) of Asmodel: Tellus begins the linear acceleration of Phobos and Demos as mass-effect weapons toward the intruding body.
- 10918 — Asmodel returns Phobos and Demos to their orbits.
- 10920 — Asmodel investigates the inner system for signs of colonization, and creates 14 gravitic-nucleonic distortion pools (stellar-strength launching laser beams) in the solar photosphere. Medium-range attacks from Earth, consisting of contraterrene, are ignored.
- 10921 —Asmodel exchanges short-range fire with the moon, assumes a horseshoe orbit between earth and the sun.
- 10922 — Nightfall. Asmodel assumes a concave sail-like geometry, and blocks all solar radiation. At the same time, unbeknownst to the Telluric mind (to whom mortals are phantasms), Murk arrives in meteor form, and rains upon the earth, filling valleys, and placing any organisms found there in biosuspension.
- 10022—Using one of the solar launching lasers, Asmodel connects the earth core with Sol with a flux tube, and makes a copy of the Telluric mind, which it simplifies to create fourteen seedling minds, meant to aid the colonies (who will, of course, be unable to aid the mortal phantasms). At this same time, Tellus manipulates the flux tube to alter the earth’s inclination of orbit.
- 10923 — Earth surrenders. Asmodel begins to reheat the earth, and release certain organisms from biosuspension.
- 10925-27 — Skyhooks gather in an estimated 30 to 60 percent of the world’s population. (roughly six billion at this time. Two to four billion distributed over 14 planets, perhaps 150 to 300 million per world.) The last of the Hermeticists is believed to have perished in Core Mind disruptions suffered during this period.
- 10928 — First of the launches of the skyhooks.
- 10930 — Earth restored to surface life, albeit war damage has doubled the length of the day. To prevent mass extinctions of animals that cannot adapt to the revised diurnal cycle, two vast orbital mirrors are erected, one to create noonnight, the other to create midnightday.
- 10944 — Asmodel departs.
- 10945 — Last skyhooks assume lightsail configuration and departs.
- 10949-56 — The Emancipation returns to near-Earth, makes contact with the Lunar Archangel, and after a refueling run to the asteroid belt, enters high Earth orbit.
- 10957 — Montrose and Del Azarchel make landfall off the coast of the Madagascar Peninsula, and are met by the Hysterical Blindness, a mixed ship of the three comprehensions, mastered by Enkoodabooaoo the Swan. At Selene’s invitation, they are carried to the moon, and introduced into the music of the Cenotaph.
- 10958—Montrose and Del Azarchel partly translate the Cenotaph.
- 10917-11125—First Sweep Planets colonized. All colonies save those for Splendor of Delta Pavonis and Nocturne of Epsilon Eridani fail.
- 11061—Montrose elevated to Archangelic mental architecture.
- 11298— Omicron Eridani deracination vessel radio signals reach Sol.
- 11300—Montrose and Del Azarchel return to Earth to hear the plea of the First Men.
- 11301—Montrose renders his verdict.
- 1132—Del Azarchel cannibalizes the Jupiter Moon System as raw material for his sophotransmographication project.
- 14303 – 14551— The Emancipation starfares to Epsilon Eridani and to Delta Pavonis.
- 14600 to 14990—The Endarkening. Human civilization crumbles
The Starfaring (Time of the Third Humans)
- 22196—Dissenting Myrmidons arrive at the Ixion Plutino to seek the advice and aid of Montrose.
- 24087—Radio messages to the Cahetel cloud receive no reply.
- 24097—Montrose by deception, maneuver, and murder, usurps the position of Supreme Commander in Chief of the Myrmidon armed forces.
- 24099—Solar beam is ignited. The Black Fleet of Fifty Small Worlds begins its acceleration toward Cahetel.
- 24101— The echo or return reflection of the Solar Beam arrives at Sedna. The Virtue Cahetel manifests and possesses the larger Montrose body, and deduces a favorable vector outside the Concubine Vector which benefits Sol and Epsilon Tauri.
The Long, Golden Afternoon of Man
- 51554-51555—The Treason of Jupiter. The First Power of Man, Jupiter, perishes under mysterious circumstances. The Starfaer Guild Assassin Norbert Brash Noesis Mynyddrhodian of Rosycross weds a woman alleged to be Cazi, Queen of the Foxwives.
Note on The Leucothea Launches and Arrivals
(AD 15177) The Myrmidons construct and send out Leucothea, what will later be called the Antepenultimate White Ship to a second antimatter star found in M17, the Omega Nebula
(AD 25177) Arrival of the Antepenultimate White Ship
(AD 29024) Launch of the Penultimate White Ship toward the Omega Nebula, there to establish a permanent colony and a Second Empyrean Polity of Man.
(AD 39024) Arrival of the Penultimate White Ship .
(AD 40522) Launch of the Ultimate White Ship by Peacock, the Power of Delta Pavonis.
(AD 50822) Arrival of the Ultimate White Ship.
Note on the Ignition Times
(AD 35400) First ignition of the deceleration star beam directed at M3.
(AD 37400) Second ignition of the deceleration star beam directed at M3.
(AD 46400) Third ignition of the deceleration beam directed at M3.
(AD 51600) Fourth and final ignition of the deceleration star beam directed at M3. Economic collapse follows the liberal expenditure of energy beyond forecast.
The Vindication of Man
- 71200 — Torment of Iota Draconis leaves orbit, utilizing the attotechnology supership Solitudines Vastae Caelorum fields as sails. First interstellar dirigible planet departs for Ain.
*** *** ***
Middle Scale Time Line (by Thousands of Years)
Each entry on the list below represents a millennium.
Notable Events and Epochs for each millennium briefly noted.
Changes to Earth’s pole star due to procession noted as aid in comparison of time scales.
—Preposthuman Era—
- 1st Millennium AD (Anno Domini) / -3 V (Antevindication or Precountdown)
Imperial Rome. Caesar, Christ born. Western Empire Falls, creating a Dark Ages in Europe. Heavy cavalry. Islam rises.
—Gamma Ursae Minoris (Pherkad) is the Pole Star
- 2nd Millennium AD / -2 V
Age of Discovery. Industrial revolution, scientific method. World westernized. Man Walks on the Moon.
— Polaris is the Pole Star
- 3rd Millennium AD / -1 V
First Age of Star Travel. Diamond Star found. Croesus Launch. Little Dark Ages. The Jihad and the Japanese Winter. Hermetic Launch. Rania, “The Swan Princess” first human created by mixture of human and Monument genetic codes. Monument partly deciphered.
RANIA DEPARTS FOR M3. Vindication Countdown begins. The Long Wait begins.
Earthquake Wars decimate Japan, California, Italy.
(AD 2500) Humanist Wars shatter the Concordat. Exarchel augments the Cetaceans.
Cryonarch Period—The heirs of Montrose rise to world power. Montrose in disgust disinherits them, and donates their power and resources to the Roman Pontiff.
Ecclesiarch Period—Giants born.
Diamond Star carried off. Moon marked with the hand of Del Azarchel.
Rise of the Ghosts, human brain-patterns kept unalive in electronic limbo. Frankenstein Panic.
(AD 2525) De-civilization. Exarchel reduced.
Simon Institute Founded. Lifespan of women expanded to 350 by nano-cellular xypotechnology.
— Alrai is the Pole Star
—Era of the Hermetic Millennia—
- 4th Millennium AD / 67 V (Countdown to Vindication)
(AD 2525-3100) Giants.
(AD 3050-3150) Cetaceans raise the Cloud.
(AD 3100-3300) Simon Families.
(AD 3300-4000) Under Witch rulership, collapse of Christianity undermines faith in scientific world-view, leads to radical loss of technological civilization on three continents. Decimations of Exarchel copies. Extinction of the Cetaceans.
- 5th Millennium AD / 66 V
Warlocks. Nameless Empire oversees a brief Reindustrialization. Nine Centennial Empresses of Canton. Butlerian overthrow and the return of barbarism.
Rise of the Chimera. Chimera Eugenic Republic spreads from Virginia. Proscopalianism.
- 6th Millennium AD / 65 V
Centennials in China overthrown by Chimera. Rediscovery of Atomics. Unification wars. Chimerical World Empire. Third Age of Space Travel. Space Chimera created. Cities in Space founded. Fall of Richmond. Cities in Space abandoned.
— Iota Cephei is the Pole Star
- 7th Millennium AD / 64 V
Naturalists. Weather Control initiates seasonless earth. Decline. Winter returns. Rise of the Leeches.
- 8th Millennium AD / 63 V
Iatrocrats organized into mutually bio-incompatible clades. Third Biotechnological Revolution.
(AD 7500) Locusts. First neuro-infosphere or Noösphere. Fourth Age of Space Travel.
Locust Wars. Genocide. Triage. Mars Colony. First Interplanetary War ends Mars colony. Linder.
—Alderamin is the Pole Star.
- 9th Millennium AD / 62 V
Triumph of the Noösphere. Blue Men. Noösphere shatters into the Confraternities. Gray Men.
Ice Ages drive civilization into the sea. Rise of the Melusine (Human-Cetacean pack-minds).
—Swan Era—
- 10th Millennium AD / 61 V
SECOND HUMANS: SWANS
White Earth. Only a thin equatorial band of open water remains.
Creation of the Second Humans, the Swans, creatures more comely, ethereal and intellectual than humans, but generally reticent and isolated. They are based on Bonobo (Pan Paniscus) rather than human neural templates, so neither marriage nor incest taboos pertain to them. Their nervous systems are standardized and easily fitted with biotechnical and cybernetic implants, augmentations, and networks.
- 11th Millennium AD / 60 V
Rise of the Final Stipulation. Weather control reestablished. Fifth Age of Space Travel. Judge of Ages and the Master of the World prohibited from further Cliometry.
Del Azarchel begins the long process of sophotransmogrification of the core mass of Jupiter into a Power of the same name.
—Deneb is the Pole Star
First Sweep — The Decimation of Man
- 12th Millennium AD / 59 V
FIRST SWEEP. —The Hyades Armada “Asmodel” arrives. End of the Long Wait.
Lamination of the Swans—Swans defeated with absurd ease. Earth altered from equatorial to polar orbit (but, oddly, keeping the same pole star).
Diaspora to First Sweep worlds.
Cenotaph praxes enable a more rapid evolution of Jupiter Brain to self-awareness than otherwise would have been possible.
(AD 11400) Deracination Ship reaches Proxima.
- 13th Millennium AD / 58 V
Rise of the Dark Swans. Tribadism among the Early Swans dies off, as the isolated males become paramount. The peaceful nature of the race is subverted as the custom of dueling adopted among male Swans: swans form alternating generations of male and female dominance, females growing to the ascendant during diebacks.
Sol exits the Local Interstellar Cloud.
(AD 12850) FIRST POWER of SOL: The myriad mental ecologies of the Jupiter Brain combine into federal self-awareness. [The Jupiter brain is roughly 7000 miles in diameter at this time, 90^4 IQ]
Jupiter persuades and forces the lesser versions of mankind to enter into a concord with him. Humans taught pantropy and terraforming by Hyades through Jupiter.
- 14th Millennium AD / 57 V
Fourth Biotechnological Revolution. Pantropy allows for the combination or aurum vitae and murk to produce a wide range of organisms, some of which drive natural organisms into extinction.
Ghost population exceeds living population.
Deracination Ship reaches Delta Pavonis.
- 15th Millennium AD / 56 V
Jupiter enters a period of odd inactivity lasting until the 19th millennium.
(AD 14300’s) Silent Years—All save two of fifteen extrasolar colonies perish. Emancipation makes two expeditions to these survivors, Nocturne of Epsilon Eridani, and Splendor of Delta Pavonis. Attempts to maintain radio contact with scattered human worlds fail.
(AD 14600’s) Endarkening—Dependence on talking machinery & biomachinery spreads mass illiteracy. Factions embracing anti-intellectual doctrines become predominant. Widespread system failures of infosphere leave whole continents without literature or learning for generations. Ghosts decimated.
Montrose retreats to the plutino worldlet 28978 Ixion.
—Vega is the Pole Star
- 16th Millennium AD / 54 V
THIRD HUMANS: MYRMIDONS
Jupiter under Del Azarchel’s direction creates the Third Humans, the Myrmidons, based on extrapolations of Hyades mental architecture. Originally intended to be the replacement race for mankind, longer-lived and more cooperative: the Myrmidons are hideous creatures, as uniform and inhuman as insects, lacking sex, art, religion, or any finer feelings. The Myrmidons are capable of total Noösphere nerve-machine integration.
Swans remove to Antarctica, Greenland, Siberia to maintain strict isolation from Third Humans during these centuries.
(AD 15177) The Myrmidons construct and send out Leucothea, what will later be called the Antepenultimate White Ship to a second antimatter star found in M17, the Omega Nebula, in the Sagittarius Arm of the Galaxy, 5000 lightyears hence. Del Azarchel departs.
- 17th Millennium AD / 53 V
Loss of the earth’s magnetic field due to the supernova of Eta Carina. Solar wind damages Earth’s atmosphere, leading to widespread desertification. Domes of lightweight fabric erected over cities as moisture traps. Widely regarded as an assault by the Myrmidons (who are unaffected by the change).
Nyctaloptic Earth. Unshielded Humans and Swans able to emerge only after sunset.
[This is the predicted end of the human race, had not pantropy and terraforming techniques been decoded to allow the race to resist the ecological disaster.]
- 18th Millennium AD / 52 V
Rise of the Adamites, ascetics who reject human gene-experimentation. (These are the ancestors of the Covenanters). The Sacerdotal religion, at this point in history, is decidedly ecumenical and universal, rejecting no expression of faith from any culture: Adamism comes to dominate Sacerdotalism, and ancestor worship and ritual purity form the backbone of this system.
Many diseases reappear in the human ecology, and various forms of mental retardation.
- 19th Millennium AD / 51 V
Rise of The Living Empire. This is a single life-form occupying most of the equatorial region, growing the foodstuff and materials of life for a highly dependent core population: perioeci and helots live in the temperate zones, with ruling Myrmidons able to pass freely between climate zones.
Jupiter emerges from his somnolence. [Jupiter is roughly 14000 miles in diameter at this time, and 70^5 IQ]
- 20th Millennium AD / 50 V
Ice Age. Swans emerge from the polar regions, and multiply in numbers. Living Empire becomes Coniferous. Adamite political system, which prohibited human bio-adaptation even to Eskimo levels of alteration, is overthrown.
Rise of the Hibernal Men, who change fur during seasonal variations.
Myrmidons under Jupiter’s guidance begin an active program of colonizing the main asteroid belt. Ice Age ends due to military bombardment.
At about this time, Dominations in Sagittarius become aware of the existence of Tellurian expedition and colonies in the Omega Nebula.
- 21st Millennium AD / 49 V
Swan Renaissance. Humans alter the Living Empire to create jungle canopies to prevent asteroid drop targeting from the Myrmidons, and all surface technology is dispersed into a highly diffuse and mobile form, an insect-based infosphere. Biopeonage exists in the cultivated areas, elsewhere nomads in large tribes lives as herdsmen, huntergatherers in smaller bands.
Hibernals, Nyctalops, and Troglodytes flourish, and decimate other, older, human races. Earthbound Myrmidons driven into the Andes and Himalayas.
- 22nd Millennium AD / 48 V
Swans form first mathematical descriptions of human thought. Rule by the Swans through the Neural Indication Protocols, a xypotechnology-intensive hierarchy where each person’s duties and role in society is determined by his thought-architecture. This is a limited and individualized form of the Sculpture of the 24th Millennium (see below).
Energy-intensive forms of war cease. Earthbound Myrmidons ejected into space, take up residence in the asteroid belt.
[Jupiter is roughly 28000 miles in diameter at this time, and 50^6 IQ]
—Alpha Draconis is the Pole Star
- 23rd Millennium AD / 47 V
The Time of the Dark Cloud. The approach of Cahetel becomes the epicenter of human history.
A crude form of murk, created by slavish mimicry of the murk electronic arrangements, becomes the primary building material of all artificial minds. This allows a divarication to form in the previously unified Third Humans.
(AD 22196) Divergent Myrmidons prevail upon Montrose to emerge from his self-exile and become supreme military leader of a resistance.
The Re-Armaments. Creation, over centuries, of the Black Fleet. The office of Nobilissimus revived.
- 24th Millennium AD / 46 V
Sculptured Lifeways. Time of the Bred Men. Rise of the Five Families, famed biotechnicians (Eventide, Hesperus, Phosphoros, Aubade, and Orison. The Leafsmith family of Aesculapius is usually considered collateral line of Orison, despite their pretensions, not a separate family).
Although later regarded as an anarchist utopia, the Sculpture was a rigid set of social control provisions that operated through the media, schooling, medical networks, marriages, fertility control. The ability of Firstling-tribes to form or ignore systems of force known as governments was largely bypassed as irrelevant to the aims of the Swans.
Scholars returning from deep communion with Jupiter usher in the Nanotechnological Revolution. Matter on Earth is hereafter regarded as a programmable substance.
Tellus enters a Turing Halt-State. (This state will persist until the 40th Millennium).
—Gamma Ursae Minoris (Pherkad) is the Pole Star
- 25th Millennium AD / 45 V
SECOND SWEEP
AD 24113. Arrival of Cahetel Cloud—second immediate defeat of Tellurian forces by the Hyades Dominion: Myrmidon Noösphere is betrayed into the Cahetel Format. The Myrmidon Black Fleet cannibalized for Diaspora to second sweep worlds: the asteroid belt flies into interstellar space.
The failure of the Black Fleet persuades humanity to cease active resistance to Hyades deracination.
This sweep is considerably more melancholy, as all failed colonies are reseeded, so the ruins and corpses of previous civilizations are visible. Colonial Myrmidons die; Swans survive marginally, but are insufficiently communal or family-oriented to thrive. Humans thrive, especially Sylphs, Witches, Chimera, Hormagaunts, Hibernals, and Nyctalops. The smaller failure rate is perhaps due to stronger Terraforming effort and subtle, more patient Pantropy.
[Jupiter is roughly 40000 miles in diameter at this time, and 25^7 IQ —achieving plateau maximum]
- 26th Millennium AD / 44 V
(AD 25177) Arrival of the Antepenultimate White Ship.
Influx of snow ushers in a period of supremacy by pro-Dominion Potentates. (No further expeditions to Omega will be mounted until the 29900’s, some four thousand eight hundred years hence.) Del Azarchel returns, duels and kills the Myrmidon Nobilissimus, a copy of himself, who suffered divarication during the long absence.
Widespread use of snow (antimatter-powered weapons) makes the Sculptured Lifeways nonviable, as hand-held weapon could wipe out a city, or an army.
The wealth of the expedition allows Jupiter to establish the first Collaboration-Strength Launching Lasers, a human-built star beam.
(AD 25544) Foundation of the Starfaring Guild. From this date until the 37th Millennium, Jupiter is in direct control of all interstellar trade and traffic.
—Polaris is again the Pole Star
- 27th Millennium AD / 43 V
Rust, a system of chaff clouds and superhighspeed nanotools (including small atoms spun at lightspeed, colliding with antimatter to discharge the energy back along the path of attack) is found to be a partial defense against snow—the snow-weapon is still formidable, but no longer unstoppable.
Discovery of Nerve-Mandala and Nerve-Mudra techniques. Warfare now formed by neural symbols. Nations break into smaller psycho-morphically similar sets. Note that only species practicing neural uniformity, Locusts, Melusine and after, are vulnerable.
—Alrai is the Pole Star
—Hierophant Era—
- 28th Millennium AD / 42 V
After centuries of Nerve Wars, the Hierophant Cohesion forms. First and Second Mankind form one psychomorphic set of man-swans called the Hierophants. The Swans can use their man-brains to defend against nerve-mandala techniques, but employ aesthetic logic and xypotechnology as swans.
Myrmidons migrate to 82 Eridani, the planet Cyan.
- 29th Millennium AD / 41 V
Under pressure from Cahetel, Hierophants enter this symbiosis with Ghosts, which mitigates their natural love of isolation, and produce a social system based on a flexible series of highly individualized rules, known as the Gracious Acts.
The Graciousness including the removal of large-scale weapons, and the reintroduction of a dueling custom. Women subjugated as several misogynistic philosophies and sects gain predominance. The Graciousness reduces Firstling humans into fawning servility.
Interstellar slave trade begins.
—Iota Cephei is the Pole Star
- 30th Millennium AD / 40 V
(AD 29024) Launch of the Penultimate White Ship toward the Omega Nebula, there to establish a permanent colony and a Second Empyrean Polity of Man.
Cahetel departs. Hierophants left without calculation power which had been loaned to them (at interest) by Cahetel. The Hierophant Cohesion lost forever.
- 31st Millennium AD / 39 V
Hyades signals detected at 82 Eridani, thought to originate from a descendant or revision of Cahetel. (The Cyanese loyalty to the Hyades dates from this early period).
The Gracious Acts ended in a year widely hailed as the Matriculation of Man. The Servants of the Spirit of Man enforce anarcho-libertarian covenants on Earth, for perhaps six months, before falling apart into factional grief and strife. The Holocaust of Northern Hemisphere.
Spiritualists clash with Sacerdotes. The Sacred Wars reduce the biosphere of Earth to partially uninhabitable. Ghosts, Locusts, and Troglodytes wiped out by mandala techniques.
—Alderamin (Alpha Cephei) is the Pole Star
- 32nd Millennium AD / 38 V
The Cherishing. Under Hierophant guidance, Earth re-colonized from Mars, Proxima, Cyan, Splendor, Covenant, Nocturne and Gargoyle. Establishment of the Castellan system: Arcologies at various points, well defended against snow and murk attack forms, dominate local country-sides. Human training techniques nullify mandala and mudra impositions added to posthuman consciousness.
At about this time, Cerulean, a second Power after Jupiter, is born in the 82 Eridani system, constructed by the Cyanese.
- 33rd Millennium AD / 37 V
Spread of the Oneness: biotechnological archangels inhabit the local biosphere, and revive the Living Empire. Battle of the Trees: invulnerable tree-monsters slowly uproot and destroy the arcologies. Hierophants flourish in the environment, surfeited by ambrosia, nectar, and sweet dreams. Technology forgotten by humans.
Splendid engineers convert the outer three asteroid belts of the Delta Pavonis star system into a cognitive matter entity called Peacock, a third Power.
- 34th Millennium AD / 36 V
Starfarers from Splendor use weather control technology to decimate the Oneness, and return Earth to a technological footing. Rise of the Ninety-One-and-Nine Realms. Labor market for slaves both on and off Earth is abetted by a return to plantation and factory work.
Epsilon Eridani creates a Power called Atramental. Under his guidance, the Sacerdotes of Nocturne, in advance of the Third Sweep, launch a voluntary multi-generation colony ship toward Rigel, and colonize Orphan.
The Splendids prevail upon Jupiter to take closer control of mankind.
—Deneb is the Pole Star
Third Sweep — The Long Golden Afternoon
- 35th Millennium AD / 35 V
The Long Golden Afternoon of Man—Earthly society, under the gentle guidance of the Jupiter Brain, using Cherished technology and Oneness Edenwork (a type of biotechnology), produces a stable yet flexible genetic caste system.
Widely regarded as a near-Utopia, the Long Golden Afternoon endures from the 35th to the 53rd Millennium, over eighteen thousand years, one of the most stable forms of society in human history. Wars are contained as small and local, executed with punctilious chivalry on all sides; disease is unknown, except as a weapon; poverty is unknown, except as a voluntary spiritual discipline. Sacerdotalism persecuted.
Atramental, perhaps due to malign influence from Jupiter, suffers psychotic spasms, and commits suicide.
Ross 248 becomes the closest star to Sol.
- 36th Millennium AD / 34 V
The Great Revival. Under the pressure of Hierophantic persecution, Second and First Sweep Sacerdotalism transformed into an intolerant, exclusive religion, as Judeo-Christian elements in the lore absorb or render moot other, less coherent, elements such as ancestor worship. Much of this set in motion by a martyr named Purewater.
Under pressure from the Sacerdotal Order, Jupiter grants certain rights and immunities to First and Second Humans.
(AD 35400) First ignition of the deceleration star beam directed at M3.
A Hierophant named Photinus proposes a different calculation of the first ignition date, due to changes in Earth’s orbit, and the unreliability of records. The matter, at first academic, gathers all dissatisfied elements of society to question the entire basis of cliometry, and all planned history.
Onset of the Ahistorical Wars. Mutiny, tumult, and the highly ceremonial, tournament-like, but still deadly warfare of the Golden Era spreads to all worlds.
Immaculate, a Fourth Power, created by Covenant of Altair by gathering all the material of their Oort cloud together into a single superjovian mass.
- 37th Millennium AD / 33 V
THIRD SWEEP.
The plasma-based Virtue called by astronomers Shcachlil but popularly called The Salamander takes up its position inside Sol. This time, the Hyades does not bother to bring ships to transport the weeping millions to their fates, but merely orders the construction of them, and directs solar-prominence powered energy-discharges at any who defy or delay. Jupiter no longer possesses control of the star beams which power interstellar sailing.
The Third Sweep worlds are colonized as Hierophantic worlds contingents. At the same time, Myrmidon populations are deracinated to Second Sweep worlds, which now have the technological base to support them. The Myrmidons compel these worlds to enter the tight cliometric controls of the Golden Lords.
Shcachlil commands the resumption of M3 deceleration beam. Photinine heresy suppressed. Rosycross and other First Sweep worlds are taken under the command of cliometric planners, local Hierophants called Golden Lords.
The Isolation. Human-based starfaring suspended due to lack of resources.
- 38th Millennium AD / 32 V
End of the Isolation. Starfaring Guild removed to December of Tau Ceti, declares independence from Jupiter’s control.
(AD 37400) Second ignition of the deceleration star beam directed at M3. Energy budget of the Empyrean Polity impoverished by this extravagant uses of energy. Economic collapse.
Photinine controversy revived under the prophetess Lares, who claims to be in communion with extragalactic cherub named Dorado, alleging that the Monument mathematics, and all cliometric calculations, are false.
The Grand Duel of Time. Orthodox Golden Lords challenge those of their order who are disciples of Lares to reorganize history, in order to see whose cliometric calculus is more accurate.
Unexpectedly, in less than four hundred years, the Orthodox Golden Lords are compelled by socio-economic developments to capitulate, and embrace Laresianism.
The Crusades. Covenant and other anti-Dominion worlds still ruled by Swans or Myrmidon Potentates raise troops to send to Earth, to make war upon the Golden Lords.
—Vega is the Pole Star
- 39th Millennium AD / 31 V
Establishment of a short-lived Crusader Kingdom under Prestor Pfin Aiven Bromion on the surface of the terraformed moon.
Laresianism persecuted.
—Kitsune Era—
- 40th Millennium AD / 30 V
(AD 39024) Arrival of the Penultimate White Ship.
News reaches Earth of an Second Empyrean polity of ninety stars in the Sagittarian Arm spreading outward from the Omega Nebula. Decryption of signs from the interior of the Second Monument found at the Omega Nebula leads to a revolution in cliometry, nanobiology, and terraforming praxes.
Tellus is revived by techniques discovered from the Second Monument, and emerges from Halt-State (Entered in the 24th Millennium).
FOURTH HUMANS: KITSUNE
Rise of the Fourth Humans, the totipotent Kitsune, also called Fox Maidens. These nanobiological shapechangers are able to alter organs and neural configurations at will, adopting different personalities as need arises. Every cell can carry neural charge, allowing the entire body mass becomes as if a brain mass, which is standardized to interlink with other Kitsune and compatible systems. The race is monosexual, reproducing by parthenogenesis. There are no male Kitsune.
Legend names their founder Cazi Regina.
- 41th Millennium AD / 29 V
(A.D. 40522) Launch of the Ultimate White Ship by Peacock, the Power of Delta Pavonis.
The Kitsune aid the Covenant crusades on Earth, but then establish their own hierarchy under Cazi the Fox-Queen (whether the same immortal individual, or her remote descendent, history does not say). Kitsune upset the genetic balances of the Golden Afternoon caste system.
Kitsune create the ‘psychic spinal’ system of pluripotent cells in Swans and Firstlings, allowing them multiple personality appliances, with the associated benefits of temporary expertise.
Tellus damaged during a Kitsune experiment, and disintegrates, returning to subsuperposthuman levels of intellect and organization. Further Kitsune activity, allegedly attempts to repair Tellus, spread the insanity.
Oceans fill with alcahest, a nanotechnological waste product. Demeter, a near-surface archangel used for Earthquake control, begins a Telluric reclamation project.
(This is the predicted last Noösphere, had Jupiter not been brought into being.)
- 42nd Millennium AD / 28 V
Renaissance of the Golden Lords: Jupiter intervenes. A new balance is struck within the Cliometric dynamics of the Golden Afternoon, allowing the Hierophants to retain power despite ever growing turbulence from the Kitsune and Myrmidon underlings.
Sacerdotalism becomes the established religion of the Hierophants. Laresianism lingers among military units for several generations, and is finally wiped out.
Terrforming Terra: Hierophants begin sea reclamation.
[This is the predicted last generation of civilization, had Jupiter not been brought into being.]
- 43rd Millennium AD / 27 V
Shcachlil the Salamander creates a shepherding moon for Venus to move the world into a cooler orbit.
The Gas Giant Twelve of Tau Ceti converted to sophont matter, becoming the Fifth Human Power. The failed dwarf star Siegfried of 61 Cygni converted, becoming the Sixth Power named Vonrothbarth.
- 44th Millennium AD / 26 V
Industrial growth on Earth leads to restoration of space colonies. First colonists on Venus are Pantropists, with genes evolved to track the progression of the terraforming due to the shepherding moon’s action.
Ross 248 recedes. Proxima becomes the closest star to Sol.
- 45th Millennium AD / 25 V
Colony fails on Venus due to unexpected solar activities.
Second colonization attempt at Venus, this time, with human terraformers attempting to modify Shcachlil’s result.
The Sacerdotal Order issues an invitation for Splendids from Delta Pavonis to star-fare to Venus as an act of religious merit, leaving homes and kith to be lost to the relativistic passage of years.
—Alpha Draconis is the Pole Star
- 46th Millennium AD / 24 V
Venus occupied by a Splendor-dominated theocratic order devoted to the subjection of all human freedom to ecological interests. Venusians send a fleet toward earth, which is wiped out by a single, scalding beam from Shcachlil.
Splendid Venusians betray their strict code of non-interference in the gene plasm, and produce a race of space-flying disease-spreading anthropophagic predators called Vampires. These entities are able to cross the distance between worlds during conjunction without vehicles.
Onset of the Plague Years.
- 47th Millennium AD / 23 V
Mars moved into a serviceable orbit by Shcachlil.
Shcachlil removed from the Sun by the Dominion of Hyades — perhaps in order to avoid some ever-mounting debt.
SALAMANDER DEPARTS
Shapetaker’s Millennium: Humans organize into permeable-barrier clades of fertile Nyctalops Melusine called Skulks, beneath the protection of totipotent Kitsune.
Beginning of the Tribulations, when no cliometric plans unfold as expected.
The Golden Lords are not overthrown, but reduced to ceremonial figureheads. Hierophants dwindle sharply in number.
(AD 46400) Third ignition of the deceleration beam directed at M3.
The Photinine Heresy re-emerges under the leadership of a Heresiarch named Lemur, who demands a simplification of the cliometry calculus, and the creation of a race with a simpler psychology than man to make the calculation easier, creatures called Eidolons.
Lemur is assassinated and replaced by a Fox impersonator, but the Lemurian movement nonetheless fragments and mutates into a bewildering variety of revisionists and counter-revisionists.
—Beta and Gamma Ursae Minoris are the Pole Stars
- 48th Millennium AD / 22 V
The Beautification
(AD 47000 to 47300) The beautification of man take place during these years. Eidolons restored to full humanity. Fox Maidens meddle in the gene stock of firstlings, whose 350 year lifespans are quadrupled, and who retain their youth and beauty well into their later years, so that an earthwoman of 1400 still looks like a fourteen-year-old, and can live to 1600.
THE INTERSTELLAR WAR
(AD 47400) Cliometry Revisionists demand the halt of life-extension biotechnology and the destruction of all tomb slumberers older than nine hundred ninety-nine years. Starfaring ports and strongholds attacked, as well as biosuspension tombs.
(AD 47500) Revisionism spreads to other worlds.
(AD 47600) Immortalist colony at Odette attacked and destroyed by Crusaders from Odile. Surviving Immortals flee offplanet, including to Sol, suppress the Revisionists, and establish hegemony.
(AD 47700) On Venus, the Splendids are eaten by their creations, the Vampires. Vampires imitate Jupiter’s internal personality control system for their social order.
On Earth, rise of a class of land-owning peasants born of recently-humanized Moreaus in Baltica overthrow the Immortalist hegemons and erect a communal form of Vassalage called the Five Thousand Fiefs. Some ceremonial functions are restored to the Golden Lords.
(AD 47800) The Fiefs grow corrupt, and yield power to various charismatic tyrants, gathered into a single alliance under Myrmidon control. These tyrants, called Lectors of the Analects, enforce a set of strict honor codes, prohibiting humanism and trans-humanism.
(AD 47900) Beginning of the Fox Hunts, the Lector-led genocide of the Kitsune.
- 49th Millennium AD / 21 V
Parthenocracy established, a Fox-Swan hybrid social order created in imitation (some say mockery) of the Hierophants, who were Man-Swan hybrids. The franchise is limited to virgin girls and unwalled cities.
Skulks, with Jupiter’s aid, gain predominance over the scattered Lectors. End of Lectorship. End of Fox Hunts.
Fox attempt to restore humanity to the Myrmidons fails. In disgust, Myrmidons sever all ties with biological life, becoming a spaceborne form of machine life called Megalodons.
—Polaris is the Pole Star
—Patrician Era—
- 50th Millennium AD / 20 V
FIFTH HUMANS: PATRICIANS
The Megalodons cooperating with the Gam City-Mind of the Ocean Palace (whom they oddly resemble) gain supremacy over the Parthenocrats. The Palatials take up the perquisites and forms of Golden Lords.
Meanwhile, the Vampire kings of Venus breed a race of men, called the Overlords, immune from all biological attacks, but who are so heavily modified that the Eco-theocracy of Splendid is discredited and forgotten.
Patricians Born.
Foxes return the humanity to the vampire kings of Venus, a race now called the Fifth Men, or ‘Patricians’. This a monosexual species able to reproduce with any female human or Moreau. The resulting hybrid, called a Plebian, is self-aware, and possesses a Patrician-compatible nerve configuration, sanity, stability, and integrity.
End of the Crusader kingdoms. Moon loses atmosphere, become uninhabitable. Lunars migrate to the Chimerical penal Colony on Mars.
Veneric ecology placed under interdict by the Patricians, forcing a return to Terrestrial norms. Timed extinctions, known as the Ineluctable Curses, are bio programmed into xenophilic life.
Long-slumbering Eventide patriarchs hidden at the Martian core since time of the Sculptured Lifeways are found and revived and rise to power. The Chimerae, the Lunars and the Eventides form The Anachronism, a system of life based on the ancient precepts of the Cryonarchy combined with Cliometry, which encourages migration via hibernation to various foretold eras of time.
Martian terraforming begun by the Anachronistic Council (and completed in later years by the Conservator of the Museum of the Future History of Man). Earthly creatures, many of Veneric decent, dependent on xenophilic life migrate to Mars, in order to escape the Ineluctable Curses.
—Alrai is the Pole Star
- 51st Millennium AD / 19 V
(AD 50822) Arrival of the Ultimate White Ship.
Snow wars. Abundance of snow (antimatter weapns) leads to an expansion of Ecological Militia and Armiger Orders. Melusine Palatials disband.
Rise of the Summer Kings or Aestevals, a caste (later, a subspecies) of terraformers biotechnologically and psychologically adapted to entering mental union with ghosts in order to perform otherwise impossible feats of chaos mathematics, needed for precise weather control.
The Summer Kings dominate the worlds of the inner solar system. Suprastratospheric weather-control clouds circle Earth and Venus. Poles heated and tropics cooled by engineering the world ocean currents. Mars is crisscrossed with a series of vast canals, an ancient myth at last come true.
Eventide Life-Sculptors occupy Laurasia, the Eastern continent of Earth. Earth becomes famed for the beauty of its women, the perfect tropical charm of its nearly-seasonless environment.
SECOND POWER of SOL
Birth of Neptune, a second Power of Sol, the Seventh Power of Man [Neptune is roughly 7000 miles in diameter at this time, 90^4 IQ]
Neptune Brain establishes forward bases on Uranus, makes contact with isolated elements of the Patrician sovereign-mind named Cnaeus.
- 52nd Millennium AD / 18 V
A final attempt is made to assimilate Fox cliometry into the base line of predictive history, without success, with the Fox Maidens serving as an Amazon soldier class in the place of the now-extinct Myrmidons.
The Summer Kings, awash with wealth of dubious origin (energy funds meant to be set aside to ignite Rania’s deceleration starbeam), re-establish the old Golden Lord racial caste system with Patricians occupying the ranks once occupied by Hierophants.
Patrician Golden Lords reclaim power over crucial nodes of the cliometric model on Earth and other worlds, while allowing the Summer Kings to seem to retain control. This marks the end of the Tribulations. Course of predictive history restored.
Neptune enters a period of external inactivity and internal reorganization, thought to be akin to REM sleep.
TREASON OF JUPITER: Jupiter refuses to ignite the deceleration laser for a fourth burn of the returning lightship of Rania the Vindicatrix. Jupiter attempts to use the energy budget instead to copy itself into the Hyades Concentric at 20 Arietis.
AD 51554—Jupiter slain.
Jupiter commits ritual suicide with a solar beam weapon when its avatar on Earth falls in a duel.
(AD 51600) Fourth and final ignition of the deceleration star beam directed at M3. Economic collapse follows the liberal expenditure of energy beyond forecast.
The Summer Kings retreat into fictional dreamscapes. Those not altered by Fox Maidens into Swans soon divaricate.
Judge of Ages, with a picked crew of Rosicrucians of the Brash archetype called the Sons of Cazi, hijacks the starship Emancipation and departs from Sol, allegedly to seek for a lost colony of Houristan at Epsilon Boötis.
—Iota Cephei is the Pole Star
Fourth Sweep — The Long Twilight —
- 53rd Millennium AD / 17 V
FOURTH SWEEP
Sol, 82 Eridani, Tau Ceti visited by two Virtues from Ain and 20 Arietis, named Lamathon and Nahalon, who commandeer all Guild Starships and O’Neil colonies and worldlets, and compel the construction of many others. It is many centuries before another sailing vessel is lofted.
December, Wintertide, Yule, and Samhain (terrestrial planets of the Tau Ceti system) are elevated and aided by these Virtues, and evolve without moral guidance to a higher intellectual topology, and embrace an erudite form of Eudaimonism as its foundation (basically a dishonest form of r-strategy).
The predictive models of history are shattered by the calamities surrounding the Fourth Sweep. The Patrician Golden Lords renounce the Darwinian Law, and embrace a philosophy called the Noble Compassion.
Manmade gravitic-nucleonic distortion pools (star beams) created at Tau Ceti. Starfaring Guild Admiralty removes its seat from Tellus to the moons of the living ice giant Twelve, which becomes the main port of the Guild.
Under pressure of historical crises engineered by Twelve, the Patricians retire from cliometric longrange planning.
End of the Long Golden Afternoon.
(This is the end of mankind, if Jupiter had not been brought into being.)
- 54th Millennium AD / 16 V
The Anachronists expel all Patricians from Mars.
Four-armed green Martians called Ougres created by the genetic meddling of Solomon Eventide, and thin white graceful creatures called Sworns by Melchisedech Eventide.
Merciless and highly intelligent creatures called the Loricates are created by Napoleon Eventide, which he uses to conquer the other two Martians: all three artificial races later fall extinct, despite heroic attempts by the Foxes to humanize them.
For reasons unknown, Foxes drop in population, many preferring to become human, removing the complex molecular engines that allow for their metamorphosis. End of the Fourth Human Race (save for remnants lingering on reservations or in archives).
Twelve, Cerulean, and, traitorously, Peacock combine in league, and use the Starfarer’s Guild to gain control of potentates of other systems, most importantly Tellus and Mars, in a league against the Patricians and Selene. Cyan and Nocturne staunchly, and Gargoyle with less enthusiasm, combine with Eurotas and Venture Prospect to form a longrange cliometric hegemony called the Exarchy.
Venus is desecrated, and never against regains Potentate intelligence levels.
Long Twilight begins. The Desecration of Venus is regarded as the instigation of the Long Twilight. Revision of longrange cliometry to serve the needs of the potentates and powers plunge Earth into another Dark Age, which decimates the Hierophant population, driving the remainder deeper into isolation.
— Alderamin (Alpha Cephei) is the Pole Star
- 55th Millennium AD / 15 V
Dark Age spreads to colonies, due to Exarchy manipulation of history.
Planet Penance of Rasalhague undergoes a dramatic expansion in wealth and power, and rapidly sophotransmogrifies its star system.
Megalodons die off as infrastructure to maintain such large systems fail. End of the Fourth Human Race (save for remnants lingering on reservations or in archives).
Penance of Rasalhague forms the Holy League with other Potentates (which, at his time, consists of Rosycross, Odette and Odile, Covenant, Albino, Walpurgis, Euphrasy.) Some of the civilizations living on the surfaces and hydrospheres of these worlds are in favor of this alignment, some against, but most are indifferent, as the issues far outlast the expected lifespan of a civilization, even of long lived strains of humanity.
- 56th Millennium AD / 14 V
A vast multi-generation treasure ship crewed entirely by women of surpassing beauty arrives at Sol, allegedly sent from the Lost Colony of Houristan at Epsilon Boötis. (This will later be revealed to be a fraud perpetrated by the Judge of Ages, as the ship was launched from Penance). The wealth and fame of these amazons vaults Patrician Abolitionists to predominance, and act as a powerful influence turning opinion against the continuation of the slave trade.
The slave trade is now no longer an economically viable source of long-term investment, since the labor market has vanished with the large-scale industrialization and nanotechification of the colonies. The concubine trade, however, continues.
Neptune emerges from his somnolence. [Neptune is roughly 14000 miles in diameter at this time, and 70^5 IQ]
Mars declares for the Exarchs, despite the objections of Neptune.
First attempt to abolish the concubine trade leads to a rebellion by the Starfaring Guild to sustain it. To aid the rebels, the Anachronists of Mars revive the extinct races of Ougres (Green Martians), Sworns, (Sorns),Loricates (Wells Martians), Summer Kings, Overlords, Vampires, Spiritualists, collectively known as Atavists.
Relaxation of the Absolute Rules when Twelve is discomforted by Neptune. The two Powers enter an uneasy détente, which returns control of human history to the Patricians and Atavists.
The Judge of Ages arranges a covenant between Neptune and the Exarchy [This era of liberty will last 6000 years, until the Advent of Achaiah].
The War between the Atavists and the Patricians is prohibited by the Neptune Brain: a long, slow era of bio-ecological struggle ensues, with each side carefully attempting the reterraformation of Earth toward mutually incompatible ecologies: but not a single shot is fired, for fear of the Retaliation.
- 57th Millennium AD / 13 V
Atavists follow the path of ecologically simple logic, and attempt to herd humans, across generations, into biologically singular ecologies and tightly-controlled Arcologies.
For reasons obscure to historians, many long-extinct forms of life deadly to humans are reintroduced, as Atavists seek to make the forest and seas more lethal for human beings to cross: the Five Families are resuscitated from biosuspension, and Abraxas Eventide designs fanciful monsters to prey on a disarmed mankind.
The Five Families are driven from Tellus, and starfare to Arcturus. The immortal Phaens of Nightspore are extinguished, and younger races of peculiar design introduced as an attempt to revive the Summer King style Climatocracy.
—Deneb is the Pole Star
- 58th Millennium AD / 12 V
White Earth: Atavists Ecological simplification policy triumphant during a small ice age. Retreat into underground cities.
- 59th Millennium AD / VC 11 V
Blue Earth: Patrician revolts inspire mass migrations away from the underground cities. Sea levels raised. Mankind returns to sea environment, now abundant with copper-based nanomachinery able to produce material goods, limited only by available sunlight. Orbital Mirrors make it a time of Everlasting Noon.
[Neptune is roughly 28000 miles in diameter at this time, and 50^6 IQ]
- 60th Millennium AD / VC 10 V
Red Earth: Mirrors destroyed. Arcologies opened and sea-population returns to land, to find it infested with a hierarchy of microscopic and nanoscopic tools based on murk technology, called Blood. The Blood can be formed into nearly any tool or chemical or useful substance, if given the correct orders.
The Seventy-One Advocates are created by remote control from the Neptune Brain, and their attempts to advise and govern the populations of Earth, and impose peace upon the Atavists and Patricians. This attempt miscarries badly, leading to the Blood Wars.
- 61st Millennium AD / VC 9 V
Advocates aid in the de-radioactivation and re-creation of Earthly biospheres after the Blood Wars.
Using means unknown, the Advocates obliterate all traces of Blood from human civilization.
Green Earth: also called Obdurate Years. A form of non-programmable matter and mute tools (collectively called Obdurate Matter) become predominant. Nuclear and steam and primitive forms of power make a renaissance, as well as robot-made handicrafts.
ACHAIAH ARRIVES. At about this time, an entity known as Achaiah the Beast travels from Ain in Hyades to Tau Ceti. Tau Ceti becomes the entrepot for trade goods and trinkets from Hyades, including a demand for slaves. Alien goods (mostly weapons) begin to appear in human hands or (mostly information tectonics) in human potentates.
The deadly virtue is called ‘The Beast’ as he has no concern for biological life, and may have been unaware of it. His only communications are with Powers and Potentates, requiring them to begin construction on Principalities, the next stage of mental topological evolution.
Infliction of the Absolute Rules by the Exarchs now supported by Achaiah, including centralized economic control and the removal of all weapons. Women reduced to chattel status in a society where brute strength and skill at fence is paramount.
Private Ownership of Sailing Ships. Atavists usurp the Starfaring Guild, and close membership to Patricians and their clients.
In retaliation, Neptune arranges to have the Patrician-backed Interstellar Faring Company grant private ownership to interstellar-strength launching lasers and sailing vessels.
—Vega is the Pole Star
- 62nd Millennium AD / 8 V
[Neptune reaches plateau maximum of 10^7 IQ, far less than Jupiter had been.]
Signals from Tau Ceti provoke new activity from Atavists and Starfarers to revitalize the waning slave trade. Neptune attempts interference, supports the Patrician opposition to slavery.
Achaiah starfares from Tau Ceti to Earth. Neptune suppressed. Interstellar Corporation disbanded. Private ownership of interstellar travel forbidden. Slavery flourishes.
Lethe, the first of the Cold Potentates, is created from a cold archangel drifting between Altair and Sol, as a port and aid to navigation. Styx, halfway between Arcturus and Sol is born soon after.
Ecological catastrophes on Earth: the Compassion broken up in to rival Protectorate states. End of Patrician hegemony.
End of the Long Twilight. Beginning of the Midnight of Man.
- 63rd Millennium AD / 7 V
Atavists triumphant. Cliometric attempts made to force history into stable and unbreakable cycles. Except where hindered by benevolent but unpredictable interference by Potentates and Powers, civilization on all worlds ossifies into stereotyped forms preferred by Vampires, Loricates, Summer Kings.
The Advocate of Mars rebuilds and resupplies the Earth, in return for six thousand years of servitude. Aeacides Leafsmith of the Five Families is either resurrected or recreated, some say by the Neptune Brain, some say by the Dominion of Hyades itself, to supervise the restoration of Earth’s biosphere.
Aeacides can mitigate some damage, but many species are extinct, never to rise again, and xenobiotic creatures from Second Sweep worlds occupy the evolutionary niches.
Cocytus created between Tau Ceti and Sol.
- 64th Millennium AD / 6 V
Solemn Years: On Earth Atavists create a post-catastrophe political philosophy called the Fraternal Solemnity, in hopes of curing the madness of Tellus, now called Eden, and reconciling the scattered branches of man without resorting to Patrician honor currency.
After centuries of gross mismanagement, the personalities and memories of the Solemnity, as well as their physical possessions, pass into the hands of the Conservator of the Futurity (who is an immortal from Odette, also an Atavist).
Acheron created between 61 Cygni and Sol.
- 65th Millennium AD / 5 V
FIRST and SECOND PRINCIPALITIES
Human history enters somnolence and decay; mankind first on one world then on all becomes clients, underlings and serfs of the Powers and Potentates, who direct the energies of history toward macroscale engineering.
Twelve of Tau Ceti directs the dismantling of the gas giants in his system to complete a ring world of sophont matter called Catallactic, a Principality.
Catallactic downloads a kenosis into the empty volume of Jupiter, called Apparitor. (Whether this being had sufficient independence and volume to be classified as a Power is disputed.)
Neptune demoted. Catallactic declares himself Epitome of Man, but Achaiah does not depart.
Expansion of the Absolute Rules under Apparitor into a regime system called the Teleological Conspectus. This new form of the Absolute Rules embraces many of the foolish errors of the first, but exceeds them in scope and damage done. It includes a longterm eugenic program for all the sub-archangelic races of man.
Under Catallactic guidance, interstellar concubine trade reaches its height: most world income of Earth now depends on receipts from trade deals first made during the Solemn Years.
Birth of Consecrate from material mined and cooled from Altair. Consecrate patronizes the Patricians, and creates the Stability of Man, and directs opposition to Catallactic.
Office of the Epitome held in abeyance.
Petty Sweep — The Midnight of Man
- 66th Millennium AD / 4 V
Patricians grow in wisdom and power.
Mars releases Earth from her world-debt into the hands of a Receivership. Time of the Tyranny of Tomorrow: Actuaries, operating through the Conservator of the Futurity, organize all human life for the benefit of far future generations, whose population numbers are planned in advance: all this is based on the Tables of Stability of the now-vibrant interstellar trade.
Rosycross, borrowing materials from Achaiah, embarks on the construction of vast arcs of a Dyson sphere of sailcloth, which ushers in an ‘infinite energy’ economy. The ever-growing intelligence of the sailcloth library is called Toliman. When completed, it will be a Host. Toliman remains carefully neutral in the many disputes between Consecrate and Catallactic.
Neptune, no doubt acting at the direction of Consecrate, employs a logic set or legal argument implied by the negative spaces of the Omega Monument notation, persuades or manipulates Achaiah the Beast by means unknown, and arranges his retreat.
Achaiah starfares to a position half a lightyear in the lee of Arcturus, that is, a point along the trailing orbit about the galactic core, beyond heliopause, and maintains his position for a century, brooding.
PETTY SWEEP
The “Petty Sweep” occurs when massive numbers of Atavists are abducted by Achaiah from Arcturus and 44 Boötis to found new colonies at Kappa Coronae Borealis and Iota Draconis, and some say, the lost colony of Vayijelal. Four lesser agencies and emissaries emitted by Achaiah starfare to 107 Piscium (Eurotas) , Regulus (Here Be Monsters), Gliese 31.5 in Tucana (Shumisen) and Pi Mensae (Onwardness), create orbital cloud masses, and compel deracination ships toward HIP 10301 in Eridanus (Perioecium), Gliese 1137 (Terra Pericolosa), HR 6 (World of Willows and Flowers), Vindemiatrix (feast of Stephen). Half these colonies form potentates, known as the Outer Potentates.
Achaiah Departs.
Neptune inflicts the life-laws on Earth, severely limiting the biotechnological transformations permitted there.
Aesculapius achieves selfawareness as a Potentate.
THIRD PRINCIPALITY
Guild fails on Second Sweep Worlds, turns honors over to the Stability.
Toliman the principality creates Althalimain the power as a helpmeet in the Alpha Centauri system.
- 67th Millennium AD / 3 V
FOURTH PRINCIPALITY
The fire giant Vonrothbarth of 61 Cygni extends the beanstalks of exotic material issuing from his globe into orbit, forming a semiringworld style megascale engineering work called Zauberring of sophont matter (arguably still a Power, not a Principality due to its impoverished and decentralized levels of consciousness).
During the dark ages caused by the economic disruptions of the Teleological Conspectus, the Atavist and Conservator wards are scattered, and the elevation of a squaloid race of seagoing Moreaus to super-intelligence forces all cetacean human races to the surface (This is later discovered to have been done by Catallactic).
Zauberring, offended at this interference with Solar history by Tau Ceti, declares for Consecrate. Apparitor commits suicide by radical self-divarication. Effective end of the Teleological Conspectus. Atavists dwindle in numbers
Stability Lords rapidly replace the Starfaring Guild in Third Sweep Worlds.
- 68th Millennium AD / 2 V
End of History
Pyriphlegethon, last of the Cold Potentates, created between Sol and Proxima. Lethe, then Styx fall into senility. Radio traffic between the Powers and Principalities reaches an unparalleled maximum, fully one sixth the total energy output of the Empyrean.
(66366 AD) Great Silence Falls. All long-range communications systems throughout the Empyrean Polity of Man are disabled for 1733 years. Scholars suggest this was the outcome of a power struggle between Tau Ceti, Altair, 61 Cygni and Promixa. Others suggest it was the birth pangs of the interstellar self-awareness of the Local Cloud as various potentates and powers interrelate through the Library Protocols.
Massive cliometric crises erupt as all human civilization is decapitated from its artificial planetary minds. For many worlds, the only institutions maintaining continuity with civilization are the Sacerdotal Order and the Lords of Stability.
No large-scale cliometric planning is done on any world for thousands of years. Mankind grows wild.
Interstellar trade continues, despite the extreme poverty and confusion of the host worlds.
Cocytus starfares to Luyten 726-8 in Cetus, a flare star, and welcomes emigration.
— Alpha Draconis is the Pole Star
- 69th Millennium AD / 1 V
Rebirth of History
(AD 68010 or 790 V) Theonecromancers from Covenant arrive on Earth, bearing tales of War in Heaven, and the destruction of the Catallactic at Tau Ceti. The scientific and technical secrets they bear usher in a century of rapid progress. The Holy League worlds support the claims of the Sacerdotes to temporal power.
Neptune begins an engineering project to break Jupiter’s now empty husk into a belt of small, earthlike worlds. Eventually there will be 300 such worlds, called Deodate, subjected to rapid terraforming.
(AD 68050 or 750 V) Radio signals from Rania’s Authority level (First Order, or Attotech) supership, the Solitudines Vastae Caelorum reach receivers at Iota Draconis and Arcturus, outlining a new plan of Cliometry for the smooth transition of the human race into the Collaboration matrix.
(AD 68100 or 700 V) End of the Silence: It is announced that Powers and Principalities will no longer interfere in human affairs, either for good or ill. End of the Slave Trade.
(AD 68300 or 500 V) With the slave trade abolished, Stability Lords replace the Starfaring Guild in Fourth Sweep Worlds and beyond. Anti-hierarchic vectors (collective called the Benevolence of Subsidiarity) are interpolated into the cliometric calculations of parishes, regions, worlds, and the Diaspora radii.
(AD 68700 or 300 V) Through this Benevolence, Patricians impose universal manumission, and revive the authority of the Sacerdotal Order and the Lords of Stability, and force all local secular authority to restore ancient rights and liberties. Mankind enters a golden age of peace and plenty.
(AD 68800 or 200 V) The Deodates, Three hundred earthlike worlds quickened to life in the solar system, of which roughly a third are elevated to Potentate status.
(AD 68900 or 100 V) Consecrate, Toliman and Zauberring agree on protocols, and form one continuous library system across a single topology, called Triumvirate, a very small Dominion, lesser in strength, majesty and power, but equal in dignity to Hyades.
(aboard Errantry from Nightspore)
—Vindication of Man — End of the Endless Night
- 70th Millennium AD / 1 UV (+1 to +1000 Ultravindication)
She Returns. (25 May, AD 69396 = Raniaday of Month 1 of Year 1 U.V.)
Rania decrees Triumvirate to be the Epitome of Man
(AD 69426) Master of the Empyrean weds Rania; Judge of Ages departs for Aesculapius aboard the Errantry.
(AD 69600) Judge of Ages arrives in exile on Torment.
(AD 69670 = Raniaday of Month 1 of Year 1 U.V.). Radio signals from 20 Arietis received, agreeing to a covenant with Hyades called the Provisional Concordat. From this period dates the Second Matrix of cliometric calculations demanded by Praesepe.
(aboard Errantry from Nightspore)
—Gamma Ursae Minoris (Pherkad) is the Pole Star
- 71st Millennium AD / 2 UV
(AD 70700) Rise of the Last Men, also called the Uthymoi, or the Men Without Chests.
(AD 75000) The Shattering: Cliometric crises erupt on many worlds. There is an inexplicable failure of the universal peace.
— Polaris is the Pole Star
- 72nd Millennium AD / 3 UV
The Schedule of the Stability is corrupted. Revival of the weapon laws and dueling customs on many worlds. Revival of the chivalric custom of interstellar war.
(AD 71200) 2nd Emancipation: Ximen del Azarchel arrives at Torment. Torment leaves orbit, utilizing the Attotechnology supership Solitudines Vastae Caelorum fields as sails. First interstellar dirigible planet departs for Ain.
— Alrai is the Pole Star
Note on calendar reckoning:
The star in M3 where Rania tarried was 33440 lightyears from Sol. Hence while AD 68580 was the earliest possible calculated return date, which was used for the original, unreconstructed (or Optimist) version of the Vindication Calendar, this was later corrected to AD 69211 during the calendar reform controversy of the 38th Millennium. This is known as the Lauresian Vindication Calendar, also called the Pessimist Calendar.
Between time lost at V886 Centauri preparing Thrymheim for ignition, and velocity lost when passing through NGC 6939 in the constellation Cepheus, and time lost attracting the attention of the Authority at M3, her real date of return was AD 69396. This left a gap of 185 intercalary years called the Interregnum.
To the exasperation of scholars, for romantic reasons, and at the insistence of the Judge of Ages and the Master of the Empyrean, Year 1 Ultravindication is dated from May 25th of AD 69396, the year she emerged from the descending himation, assumed human form, and first set foot on Earth.
Were it not for this difference in dates, the conversion from the Julian Calendar to the Vindication Calendar could be easily calculated by the addition of seven hundred thousand years, because after this date the Vindication calendar increments as does the Julian calendar.
The same consideration applies in reverse to the Julian calendar BC reckoning dates compared to the Precountdown calendar.
*** *** ***
Large Scale Time Line
(by Millions of Years)
- 900 Million BC
(850,000,000 BC) Disaster of the Forerunners: tensions caused by the dispute over resource allocation strategies leads to uncoordination of formats, and divorce. Galactic Mind fails to achieve true self awareness and deteriorates, and the constituents turn on each other savagely. Galactic civilization is broken.
- 800 Million BC— Praesepe/Hyades collides with a smaller cluster, absorbing it.
- 700 Million BC
(635, 000,000 BC) Rise of the Instrumentality in the neutron stars of the Core. Circumincession arises in Sagittarius, vows itself to the restoration of the Forerunners.
- 600 Million BC — the Hyades and Praesepe star clusters emerge from each other.
(541,000,000 ) Under Instrumentality and Panspermian inspiration, civilization re-knit. Beginning of the Patronage System. Second Collaboration initiated.
(525,000,000 BC) Discovery of malignant interference in galactic history. Galactic civil war breaks out.
- 500 Million BC
(488 000,000 BC) War. Panspermians are scattered to Sagittarius. The Orion Arm falls into confusion. End of the Second Collaboration.
(444 000,000 BC) End of the Panspermians. Rise of the Austerity in the Outer Arm. The Third Collaboration forms, this time along crueler and swifter lines.
(416 000,000 BC) LMC establishes bases throughout the Orion Arm. Under Austerity and Symbiosis inspiration, the Indenture system adopted.
- 400 Million BC
(359 000,000 BC) Andromeda induces the Symbiosis to redact the Universal Syntax mathematics, and from them to create the Monuments, and scatter them throughout the Orion Arm and beyond, in hopes of stirring up resistance to the Indenture System of sophotransmogrification.
M3 begins its self elevation to Authority.
- 100 Million BC
(99,000,000 BC) A Dark Matter object the size of a Dwarf Galaxy (later called the Widrow Dwarf Galaxy by human astronomers) intersects with the Milky Way. This creates disruptions in the orbits of stars surrounding the galactic core, delaying the rate of rise of technical civilization in the affected star systems.
Hyades organizes itself into a single mental structure, elevated from an alliance of hosts and principalities to a Dominion.
- Current Millennium
(2112 AD) First Contact: Pre-Ascension Tellurians send expedition to the Diamond Star, discover the LMC Monument, and are seduced by the redacted cliometric mathematics into the Concubine Vector, delaying cooperation with the Collaboration while their pretension to the dignity of a starfaring race is tested.
(2403 to 70000 AD) The Long Wait. See Middle Scale Time Line.
(70000 AD) The Vindication of Man. She returns.
(71200 AD to 73040 AD) Torment starfares to Ain.
(73727 to 79474 AD) Torment, now called Tormentil, weds Ain and broadcasts human minds to various dissenting and nonjuring civilizations in the Orion, Sagittarius, and, later Perseus and Cygnus Arms.
The Dominion of Triumvirate flourishes for a time as a Praesepe servitor, before being superseded by the Benedictine Dominion of Ain, which becomes the Epitome of Man.
(79474 to 80100 AD) Solitudines Vastae Caelorum star fares to Vanderlinden 133 in Praesepe, escorted by an ice giant.
(91917 AD) Wreck of the Solitudines Vastae Caelorum.
(92000 to 96900) Montrose is adrift. At nearlightspeed, he travels 3400 lightyears from Vanderlinden 133 over a period of 3500 years
(95500) Montrose passes SAO 82846
(100,000 AD) The shockwave of the hyper-supernova is bright enough to be seen during daylight hours on Earth.
(102,500 AD)The shockwave reaches the wreck of the Solitudines.
(103,000 AD) Solitudines uses the force of the nova light to starfare to TX Canum Venaticorum. Montrose forced into somnolence.
(103,000 to 133,000) TX Canum Venaticorum system engineered.
(133,000 AD to 163,000 AD) Montrose starfares to M3.
(Circa 163,000 AD to 164,000 AD) Menelaus exists as a minor pattern of mental energy, enslaved, impoverished and vagrant, lost in the vastness of the M3 Noösphere. Slowly he grows in wealth and station, achieving Dominionhood.
(164,000 AD) Audience with M3.
(164,000 AD to 200,000) Montrose elevated to Authority of M3.
(200,000 AD to 300,000) Due in part to his tenacity, Montrose becomes the standard base ambassadorial template, and, later, Archon of Orion.
(400,000 AD to 800,000) Various forms of Montrose become Warlord of Milky Way, Imperator and Nobilissimus. Conquest of Lesser Magellanic Cloud.
(802,701 AD) Montrose commands sufficient resources to encompass his own departure. He transmits himself to Andromeda.
(802,701 to 3,341,000 AD) Montrose in transit to Andromeda.
*** *** ***
Very Large Scale Time Line (by Billions of Years)
Timeline of Northern Universe (beyond Alphecca):
- Twelve Billion BC
Corona Borealis sent out its message when the early galaxies condense out of the primal nebulae. Since this message disturbed the background radiation distribution, it statistically tilted the local universe toward galaxy formations of the type favored by Corona.
The message passed from Hercules to Centaurus and Coma.
- Eleven to Nine Billion BC
Centaurus passed the message to Pavo-Indus, (11 billion) who, in turn, sent it to Virgo (9 billion).
- Eight Billion to Seven Billion BC
Hercules rejected the message (8 billion), and became the first Malthusian, and drew Centaurus into its influence (7 billion). Pavo-Indus, an Amalthean, regards itself as the mother of Virgo civilization, and is particularly offended at the apostasy of Centaurus, it own mother.
The Malthusians determined that they could copy the technology and practices of the hypothetical Ulteriors, and create a small and local continuum that was negative-entropy.
Andromeda drawn into the influence Hercules and Centaurus.
Centaurus (which was further from Corona Borealis, and able to risk defiance that Hercules could not) began construction on the Great Attractor. The Great Attractor was an energy windfall. Negative Entropy (extropy) was proven to work in the ultrasmall scale of merely clusterian distances.
- Six Billion BC
The client became the patron: Centaurus dominated and prevented Hercules, now reluctant and miserable, from returning to the Amalthean party (6.5 billion).
Coma became apostate (6 billion)
- Five Billion BC
Centaurus influenced the development in the young and aggressive (at that time) Hydra supercluster (5 billion). Hydra became a Malthusian.
At about this time, Pavo-Indus, offended at the apostasy of Centaurus, sought for its own protection to become the client of Sculptor.
- Four Billion BC
At 4 billion, influences from Hercules and Centaurus swung the newly-formed Shapely Cluster to the Malthusian side. The psychology of Shapely is influenced by the fact that it had never been an Amalthean, and ergo was not apostate. The current density of the Shapely Supercluster is a result of preliminary preparation to create a second Great Attractor.
Virgo is torn between Hydra (for the Malthusians) and Pavo-Indus (for the Amaltheans), but currently favors Malthus.
Onset of the Throne War in Milky Way.
Timeline of the Southern Universe (beyond Achernar):
- Twelve Billion BC
At the opposite end of the visible universe, 12 billion years ago, a supercivilization arose in the vast Horologium Supercluster, also received the message from the Ulteriors, but, unlike the Corona Borealis, rejected it, and entered into a philosophy which is neither Malthusian nor Amalthean, neither Extropian nor Entropian, but fatalistic and self-destructive. The Malthusians wish to survive by sacrificing the weak; the Amaltheans wish to survive by surrendering to the Ulteriors; the Horologues wish only to live out their allotted time in a closed and entropic universe, and die. They are thus willing sacrifices and enablers of Malthusians, and so can be considered members of the Malthusian faction, albeit passive.
- Ten Billion BC
Sculptor, colonized from Horologium around 10 billion years before current time, but disdaining of the passivity, independently adopted a Malthusian philosophy, and began the construction of its own Extropy Engine, which lead to the Sculptor Wall.
- Nine Billion BC
At 9 Billion before present, Sculptor received the teaching of the Ulteriors and become convinced of the validity of the message (albeit in a more strict and ruthless version than Corona Borealis). Sculptor holds that neutrality is treason: hence it right and proper to use force to compel the contraction of the Eschaton Directional Engine.
- Eight Billion BC
Sculptor at about 8 billion years before current time became the patron of the unwilling Capricornus Supercluster, which pulled Sculptor’s attention the away from the Northern Universe.
Pisces-Cetus underwent sophotransmogrification by the fierce and active Sculptor, and seeing the ruthless treatment afforded Capricornus, abrogated its indenture, turning to the large and somnolent Horologium for aid.
- Seven Billion to Six Billion BC
Horologium was briefly (between 7 billion and 6 billion years) stirred from its lethargy, and used its influence to fund several hundred billion local wars and millions of years of engineering efforts, to sever relations between Pisces-Cetus and Sculptor. Eventually it was done. Pisces-Cetus is considered a client of Horologium, even though that great, dark power is not an active player in the Eschaton Directional Engine War.
- Five Billion BC
At about 5 billion, Pavo-Indus, offended at the apostasy of Centaurus, sought for its own protection to become the client of Sculptor. Only at this point did Sculptor recover to its prewar level of Noösphere intellect and pan-superclusterian environmental control. It has recently become active in the Northern area of the Universe, even so far as to influence the philosophy of Pavo-Indus and hence Virgo.
The militant nature of the Collaborations within Andromeda and Milky Way, including the scheme of indentured Sophotransmogrification, is a Sculptor intellectual artifact.
Timeline of Local Group Events
- Nine Billion BC
(8,800,000,000 BC) The galactic ‘thin disk’ of the Milky Way formed.
(8,500,000,000 BC) Rise of the Colloquium in the Perseus Arm. Eldest of all surviving Forerunner races. The Colloquium assists the rise of high-metallic Population One stars, a very early example of astrocultural husbandry.
- Five Billion BC
(4,500,000,000 BC) Rise of the Magisterium in Scutum-Crux Arm.
(4,300,000,000 BC) Contact with Canis Major Dwarf satellite galaxy (on behalf of Pavo-Indus) inspires the Magisterium and Colloquium civilizations to collaborate. First evidence of mass Sophotransmogrification.
(4,100,000,000 BC) Magisterium and Colloquium cooperation gives rise to the Panspermians, who occupy a favorable position linking Cygnus, Perseus and Sagittarius.
(4,000,000,000 BC) Panspermians begin cultivation of terrestrial and subterrestrial worlds in the Orion Arm.
- Four Billion BC
(3,600,000,000 BC) Suspected date of earliest infiltration by Andromeda. Symbiosis in Lesser Magellanic Cloud assisted to Archon-wide sapience.
(3,200,000,000 BC) Symbiosis attacks Canis Major Dwarf galaxy. The Monoceros ring forms as debris as stars are abducted. (NOTE: that current science places the formation of the Monoceros Ring at nine billion year ago. This estimate would be correct if the formation were natural.)
- Three Billion BC
(2,050,000,000 BC) The First Awareness: Under Colloquium – Magisterium leadership the tentative galaxy-wide collaboration attempted a more complete unity, verging on self awareness. Symbiosis and Panspermians are part of the Collaborative effort. A golden age. A local strand of the Eschaton Direction Engine is threaded through the core of Milky Way at this time.
- One Billion BC
(1,000,000,000 BC) The Throne of Milky Way briefly wakes, immediately begins to decline. First evidence of Andromeda interference in the cliometry of Milky Way and to discourage cooperation between large scale mind systems.
- Current Billennium
First phase of the Throne War. Andromeda by stealth interferes with the Second Awareness. See Large Scale Time Line.
- One Billion AD
(1,000,000,000 AD) Orion Arm grows to predominance, conquers the Lesser Magellanic Cloud. Cold Equations abandoned in favor of Infinity Count Equations. Time of the Second Awareness.
- Two Billion AD
(2,000,000,000 AD) Andromeda and Milky Way begin to exchange longrange fire. Globular clusters of both riven away.
- Three Billion AD
(3,000,000,000 AD) Andromeda and Milky Way enter mental war, mutually destroy each other. Milky Way recovers first, enters a time of Third Awareness.
- Four Billion AD
(4,000,000,000 AD) Andromeda capitulates. Local Group destroyed by spacetime singularity collapse. The Interior Continuum created. Montrose and Rania, escaping the disaster, are summoned to the audience of Virgo, and are granted strangely glorified bodies.
- Four to Nine Billion AD
(4,000,000,000 AD to 9,000,000,000 AD) Interior Continuum War. Montrose, with other dissatisfied servants of Virgo, rebels against Del Azarchel and his thrones. The opposing forces, operating on intergalactic scale, each use the local segment of the Eschaton Engine to bend spacetime and organized the maneuver of flotillas of galaxies and satellite galaxies. The Interior Continuum destroyed.
- Nine Billion AD
(9,000,000,000 AD) Representatives of Hydra (for the Malthusians) and Pavo-Indus (for the Amaltheans) manifest themselves and halt the Interior Continuum War. Del Azarchel exiled to Horologium.
Horologium Supercluster warps timespace to propel the beam information carrying all incoming versions of Del Azarchel, Montrose, and Rania into the remote future.
- Twenty-One Billion AD
(21,000,000,000 AD) Pancosmic Dyson Surface completed. Onset of Big Rip conditions. Big Rip is being caused by influx of entropy from the Ulteriors.
- End of Time.
Final Duel between Del Azarchel and Montrose. Operation of the Eschaton Directional Engine.