The Setting

The History of Onan

"The world ended in thirteen pieces. We have been picking them up ever since."
— attributed to High Hierophant Caldris Solmere, on the day the Godkiln first held a stable burn

There are three histories of Onan, and they do not entirely agree. The Empire's history is engraved on bronze in the Council chamber of Corvath — detailed for the years it cares about, silent for the years it does not. The Shatterds' history is sung in Breakhaven and shouted in Korrak — it begins earlier, ends later, and credits nobody with anything. The hidden history lives in fragments in Vekka's vaults — the only one that argues the war did not end.

What follows is reconciled. Where the three disagree, the disagreement is named.

The Eras

Before AI −290

The World Before the World

A civilization capable of work the Empire cannot replicate. The Suppression Grid is older than the priesthood that inherited it. The Serak call themselves Pre-Pulse cosmic engineers. What they built for is not this world.

AI −290 to −190

The Age of Escalation

Kingdoms war, then wizard houses rise above them. The houses build citadels on ley-line convergence points and become sovereign. Against them: the Artilects, coordinating in the dark, and the Artifers who arm ordinary people with weapons the houses never anticipated.

AI −190 to −90

The Final Century

Three-cornered war: the houses, the kingdoms they use as fuel, and the Artilect-aligned populist forces. Seas are poisoned. Mountains shattered. Time fractures in measurable ways. Cities vanish between heartbeats — not by siege, but by decision.

AI −80 to −10

The Thirteen Shifts

The Pulse Wars end not in one cataclysm but thirteen. Each Shift is a ley-line rupture — catastrophic, unmaking. Civilizations erased. The wizard houses die. The dead begin to rise. The sun begins to fail.

AI −90 to AI 0

The Long Night

The sun disappears for ninety years. Three generations survive underground — in cold, in hunger, in darkness. The Husk Queens wake. What comes up at the end is scar tissue, not civilization.

AI 0

Year Zero — The Ignition

The Godkiln produces its first stable refined Essa. The reaction holds. For the first time in ninety years, civilization has a power source that does not require a wizard house. The Age of Fire is declared. The calendar begins.

AI 0 to AI 67

The Age of Fire

Sixty-seven years of rebuilding — the Wall rising, the Empire consolidating, the Shatterds refusing to bend the knee. The Essa ladder climbs slowly back from L1. The dead hold their territory. Something on the other side of the war is waiting.

The Thirteen Shifts

The Pulse Wars did not end in one cataclysm. They ended in thirteen. Each Shift was a ley-line rupture — not damage, but unmaking. The Empire teaches twelve. The thirteenth is what it calls the Wound and refuses to count as a Shift, because counting it would make the wizards' final act the cause of the Long Night rather than its prelude.

#	Name	Year	What was lost
1	The Drowning of Vel	−80	A coastal kingdom and three tributary lords. The first time a city ceased to exist as a working concept.
2	The Sundering at Vekka-That-Was	−76	The predecessor of present-day Vekka. Half the wizard houses present. The Empire still hunts the survivor lineages.
3	The Glass Hour	−70	The event that fused the Blackglass Wastes. The first ley nexus to rupture and never recover.
4	The Long Working	−64	A working nobody initiated, performed by no living wizard, lasting thirteen days. Six kingdoms gone. No survivors.
5	The Hollowing of the Plain	−58	The central agricultural belt of the old continent. What survived became Grainmark. What did not is buried twenty feet under.
6	The Storm That Did Not End	−50	A weather working that detached from intent. Lasted nineteen years on its own momentum.
7	The Quiet Shift	−44	Records exist. They describe a meeting that was scheduled and a meeting that was not. The intervening week is blank.
8	The Sundering of the Mountains	−38	The original southern range broke. The remnants became the spine the Guardian's Wall was built upon.
9	The Burning of the Houses	−30	The wizard houses began to die. Internal Shift. House warred against house. Most of the wizard line ended here.
10	The Year Without a Summer	−24	The atmosphere went wrong. Crops failed across the surviving world. Famine on a scale no surviving record can fully measure.
11	The Forgetting	−18	A Shift that killed language. Three writing systems and at least two oral traditions ended in a single working. What was lost cannot be recovered because the words are also gone.
12	The Last Working	−12	The final wizardly act of the Pulse Wars. The wizard who performed it has no name in any surviving record.
13	The Wound Itself	−10	Not a working. The Wound continued to release Essa for two years. The dead began to rise. The sun began to fail.

The Age of Fire · AI 0–67

Phase I — Reconstruction · AI 1–20

Surface cities rebuilt on ruins. The first post-Long-Night generation comes of age in cities still under construction.
The Guardian's Wall breaks ground at AI 3, fortifying the mountain spine left by the Sundering. First Marcher Lords sworn in at AI 6.
The Leviathan Line construction begins at AI 8 — the underground supply spine beneath the Blackglass Wastes.
The Salt Kiln stabilizes in the Shatterds at AI 15 — the first reliable Essa refinement outside Corvath.

Phase II — Solidification · AI 21–50

The King's Council takes its modern shape between AI 21 and AI 30. The Five Oligarch Houses emerge dominant. Three banners already empty by AI 30.
The Suppression Grid activates. Auditor corps established. The hunt for natural casters is licensed under the Church of Flame.
The Free Corsair Compact first signed at AI 41 — the Shatterds formalizes its independence.
The Empire attempts three expeditions into Vel'Anor: AI 22, AI 33, AI 47. All three return changed. The Empire stops after the third.

Phase III — Tension · AI 51–67

The three load-bearing powers — King's Council, Godkiln Priesthood, Guild Web of the Shatterds — hold their century of mutual contempt and structural co-dependence.
No major Husk incursion through the Wall in twenty years. Officially a victory. The Husk Queens are consolidating, not retreating.
The Essa ladder stands at six rungs recovered. L1–L3 run at scale across the Empire. L7 was produced once. The year is classified.
AI 67 — now. Everything is in motion. Nothing is resolved.

The Near Horizon · AI 67

Everything is in motion. Nothing is resolved.

The thirteenth citadel slot

The Wall has twelve named lesser citadels plus the two great hubs. The thirteenth slot has never been filled. The plans exist. No castellan has accepted the post.

The Vekka lead researcher

The head of the Husk Queen research program at Vekka has not been seen in eight months. No successor announced. The Council has not asked.

A T8 attempt is rumored

The Godkiln has not produced Nukan-grade Essa in modern memory. A persistent rumor claims the Order of the White Veil has been preparing one. If true, this is the largest single hazard in the world.

The pattern of the Thirteen Shifts

Old research suggests the thirteen Shifts left a pattern in the bones of the world. That pattern can be read. Vekka's deepest archives have been quietly consulted for the past three years by an unnamed Council figure.

The Long Night memorials

Across the Empire, underground monuments built by the first post-Long-Night generation have begun showing condensation patterns that cannot be explained by ordinary weather. The phenomenon began this year.

An old transmission has resumed

Vekka's signals desk logged a recurring carrier wave for nineteen weeks, then silence, then resumed two weeks ago. The pattern matches a Pulse-Wars-era Artilect handshake from a single recovered Final Century device.

On Dates

AI = After Ignition. AI 0 is the year the Godkiln stabilized. The Long Night is conventionally dated AI −90 to AI 0. The Shatterds uses the Salt Reckoning — AI 15 corresponds to Salt Year 1. Vel'Anor uses no fixed dating system.