Before creation · Deep time · Mortal history · 1454 CE
SpiralWorlds Timeline
Follow one continuous history from the death of the last universe and the first cosmic distinctions through the formation of Earth, prehistoric civilisations, mortal kingdoms and the late-medieval campaign present.
Reading the chronology
Myth records events even when memory distorts them.
Exact dates mark accepted chronology; approximate dates use c.; events beyond mortal calendars follow mythic sequence. Poetry, damaged records, rival calendars, prophecy and political memory may disagree without making the underlying event unreal.
For Earth history, geology, evolution, climate, continental movement and extinction remain real. Supernatural events occur within that natural history rather than replacing it.
01 · Cosmic history
Before worlds, there were distinctions.
The earliest history establishes energy, thought, physical reality, cosmic law, the planes, magic, divine generations and the outsider peoples that later inherit those realms.
The Last Universe
An earlier creation reaches its end. Its final powers sacrifice themselves to imprison Nihros, while remnants and impossible memories survive the death of their universe.
Open the Last Universe → Between creationsThe Void Between Universes
Distance, duration, form and causation no longer possess dependable meaning. Qlippoths arise within the horror between creations while remnants of the previous universe refuse to disappear.
Enter the Void → Eons I–IVCosmic Dawn
The first distinction produces Positive and Negative, physical reality begins, the Astral Plane awakens and the first Elder Gods begin ordering an unfinished cosmos.
Explore the Cosmic Dawn → Eons V–VIIIFoundations of Order
The first great schisms appear, cosmic law hardens, the Outer Planes develop and stars and galaxies give large-scale structure to the material universe.
Explore the foundations → Eons IX–XIIRaw Power & Hidden Cracks
Magic becomes repeatable, elemental realms stabilise, mirror worlds form and the Beyond begins pressing against the increasingly connected structure of reality.
Explore raw power → Eons XIII–XVCosmic Reckoning & Recovery
Cosmic fractures become battlefronts. Elder wars scar reality, leylines help bind the damaged cosmos and the first gods gradually retreat from direct rule.
Explore the reckoning → Eon XVIDawn of the Outsiders
Planar intelligences become enduring peoples, courts, armies, institutions and civilisations within realms that are already ancient.
Explore the Outsider Dawn → Eon XVIIToward Earth and Beyond
World-bound divine generations, proto-pantheons, world spirits, fey courts and mortal afterlives develop across older inhabited worlds as cosmic history approaches the formation of the Solar System.
Continue toward Earth →02 · Earth and deep time
A magical Earth remains a natural Earth.
Earth forms naturally. Life evolves. Continents move, climates change and mass extinctions reshape the planet. Spirits, elder peoples, alien colonies and hidden survivals act within that history rather than replacing its natural causes.
The Dawn of Earth
Earth forms, oceans and atmosphere develop and native terrestrial life begins. Elder Things later establish scientific colonies during the Archean and start manipulating organisms that already exist.
c. 4.54 billion–538.8 million years ago → Earth Age 02The Age of Awakening
Complex seas fill with new forms of animal life. Reefs grow, fishes diversify and plants and arthropods establish the first great living footholds on land.
538.8–358.9 million years ago → Earth Age 03Bugs, Amphibians and the Rise of Giants
Coal forests, giant arthropods and amphibian worlds give way to Permian civilisations and catastrophe. The Shoggoth rebellion erupts during the Middle Permian before the Great Dying, Triassic recovery and the first dinosaurs.
358.9–201.4 million years ago → Earth Age 04The Age of Giants
Dinosaurs dominate Jurassic landscapes while great reptiles command sea and sky. Around 160 million years ago, a major Mi-Go colonisation and extraction wave becomes full-scale war with the Elder Things.
201.4–143.1 million years ago → Earth Age 05The Flowering World
Flowering plants spread through increasingly diverse ecosystems while the last great dinosaur worlds reach their height before the end-Cretaceous catastrophe.
143.1–66 million years ago → Earth Age 06The Ashen Dawn
Impact, darkness and extinction break the Cretaceous world. Mammals, birds and recovering ecosystems expand through the long aftermath.
66–23 million years ago → Earth Age 07The Age of Open Lands
Grasslands, steppes and changing forests reshape the continents as increasingly familiar mammal lineages spread and the long history of hominins begins.
23–2.58 million years ago → Earth Age 08The Shattered Crown
Repeated ice ages remake Earth as ancient dominions fragment and human and nonhuman peoples spread through a world of retreating ice, surviving elder powers and broken prehistoric kingdoms.
2.58 million years ago–c. 9700 BCE →03 · Ages of mortal civilisation
Settlement becomes memory, law and empire.
These ages identify major transformations without claiming that every people urbanises, centralises, adopts the same technology or changes at the same moment. Human and nonhuman societies continue along distinct regional histories.
The Dawning Age
Post-glacial warming, rising seas, enduring settlements, managed landscapes and inherited territories reshape human and nonhuman societies worldwide.
c. 9700–7000 BCE → Earth Age 10The Rooting Age
Fields, herds, villages, storage, shrines, labour and inheritance bind many communities more tightly to particular territories while other ways of life endure.
c. 7000–5000 BCE → Earth Age 11The Blooming Cities
Large villages become towns and early cities as public sanctuaries, stores, workshops, walls, trade districts and permanent authorities reshape settled life.
c. 5000–3500 BCE → Earth Age 12The Breaking Paths
Writing, migration, widening trade, sacred kingship and early territorial states separate regional political traditions and preserve increasingly different versions of the past.
c. 3500–2000 BCE → Earth Age 13The Rise of Kingdoms
Palaces, chariots, royal archives, heroic dynasties and international diplomacy create magnificent but dangerously interdependent Bronze Age powers.
c. 2000–1200 BCE → Earth Age 14The Iron Ascendancies
Ironworking spreads unevenly while cavalry, coinage, roads, written law, administration and expanding states transform political power across many regions.
c. 1200 BCE–300 CE → Earth Age 15The Wars of Dominion
Great imperial systems fracture into kingdoms, confederacies, sacred jurisdictions, fortified territories and rival powers competing over law, land, trade and inherited authority.
300–1200 CE → Earth Age 16The Age of Severed Crowns
Orc-led steppe empires, plague, revolt, artillery, gunpowder, dynastic war and new Atlantic settlements break inherited certainties and carry the world to the campaign present.
1200–1454 CE →04 · Campaign present
1454 CE
The campaign opens one year after the hobgoblin Ninefold Dominion seized Constantinople and one year after the end of the Hundred Years’ War. The Dominion and the Ottoman state remain separate powers.
The Black Death has emptied settlements and transformed labour, inheritance and burial. The rarer Red Death leaves corpse hazards, revenants and unresolved claims among the dead.
Cannon and gunpowder are changing siegecraft. Mercenary companies seek employers. Orc successor powers remain dangerous across the steppe world. Maritime powers test longer routes, while gods, spirits, monsters, ancient peoples and hidden civilisations continue to hold recognised claims over land, bloodlines, roads, graves and sacred places.
The past is not background. Every earlier age can return as ownership, danger, obligation, alliance, inheritance or adventure.
05 · Continue through the world
Follow history into place, power and danger.
The Timeline establishes sequence. These collections show where the consequences of that history survive in 1454.
06 · Further reading
Scientific chronology beneath the fantasy world.
SpiralWorlds adds gods, monsters, magic and ancient civilisations to real cosmic, geological and human history. These institutional sources are useful starting points for the natural chronology beneath the setting.
The authoritative international reference for geological periods, epochs and formally recognised boundary ages.
International Chronostratigraphic Chart ↗Formation and development of the Solar System, including its origin about 4.6 billion years ago.
Solar System facts ↗An accessible introduction to geological time and the evidence used to reconstruct the immense history of Earth.
Geologic Time ↗Research and explanatory material on human evolution, adaptation and the changing environments in which hominin history unfolded.
Climate and Human Evolution ↗Search SpiralWorlds
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