TImeline | Riftmoor

1st Age

2nd Age

Era	Approx. Period	Geographic Scale	Defining Developments
Age of Wardens Era	0–400	The Vale	The surviving Wardens consolidated their rule after the First Age. Their domains increasingly separated into distinct cultures, philosophies, banners, and political blocs. The Heirs passed from the authority of one King into competing Warden societies.
First Shaping Era	400–1,000	The Vale	Reshaping and Bioweaving transformed Warden civilization. Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, Dragons, and numerous early created peoples emerged as the Wardens increasingly treated life itself as something to redesign.
Great Banners Era	1,000–1,500	The Vale	The great factions matured. Imperial and Alliance identities hardened, frontier societies developed, the Virborne became a major force, and centuries of territorial pressure prepared the Vale for its first truly catastrophic Warden war.
Great Siege Era	1,500–1,600	The Vale	The Alliance launched the Great Siege. The Empire survived, but Warden casualties were unprecedented; their numbers fell from thousands to estimates below one hundred. Azure Guard independence and the recognizable eight-domain political order emerged from the aftermath.
Great Expansion Era	1,600–2,200	Riftmoor	The surviving factions expanded beyond the Vale and across Riftmoor. Continents became new heartlands, frontiers, ports, fortresses, and contested territories, extending the ancient struggle for the Throne across the entire planet.
Second Shaping Era	2,200–2,700	Riftmoor	The military lessons of the Great Siege triggered another Bioweaving arms race. Giants, Gnomes, Merfolk, Minotaurs, Centaurs, Beastfolk, and many other later peoples appeared as factions sought biological advantages against their rivals.
Early Reach Era	2,700–3,000	Riftmoor → nearby moons	Vord’s Star Arks carried Kelek and Eleos to Riftmoor’s moons. Asteroid mining and interplanetary freight developed to supply them, while Kelek and Eleos pioneered artificial atmospheres and water cycles. Permanent settlement beyond Riftmoor became possible.
Terraforming Race Era	3,000–3,700	The Reach	Paith expanded planetary engineering; Zurn developed thermal regulation; Arzu and Medu solved self-sustaining ecological seeding. Rival civilizations stole and combined one another’s discoveries until stable terraformed worlds became reproducible.
Expansion of the Reach Era	3,700–4,200	The Reach	Colonies, asteroid industries, trade routes, piracy, and permanent military positions spread throughout the system. Vord pushed into the distant Outer Reach, while the system increasingly divided into Alliance inner worlds and Imperial outer worlds around contested Riftmoor.
Terraforming of Arzad Era	4,200–4,300	The Reach	Arzu undertook the most ambitious planetary-engineering project yet attempted, deliberately using impacts to collapse subterranean voids, alter mass distribution, and stabilize an otherwise unusable planet before beginning conventional terraforming.
Battle for Arzad Era	4,300–4,320	Arzad	The Empire attacked the newly valuable world. Zurn drew Kelek away and died fighting him, while Arzu killed Eleos and Vord before Kelek escaped. The deaths of three major Wardens in one battle permanently altered the balance of the Reach.
Wars of Arzad Era	4,320–5,000	The Reach	Arzad became a permanent contested world of fortifications, occupations, blockades, and shifting borders. The broader Reach matured into an established interplanetary civilization whose political geography was increasingly governed by planetary position and orbital alignment.
First Jump Era	5,000–5,050	The Reach	During an attack on a Vah-Yu ark, Hep and her Wardens accidentally discovered that compressing space ahead of a vessel while displacing it behind could produce an instantaneous jump across enormous distance.
Warp Revolution Era	5,050–5,300	Reach → nearby stars	Vah-Yu refinement turned the accident into reliable Warden warp travel. Orbital alignment ceased to be an insurmountable strategic barrier, and the technique rapidly spread among all Warden civilizations.
Interstellar Expansion Era	5,300–6,700	Nearby stars → galactic arm	The Wardens began settling nearby systems and then progressively more distant stars. Worlds beyond the Reach often proved easier to terraform than its difficult original planets, accelerating settlement and allowing every faction to establish new worlds, sanctuaries, and colonial populations.
Warden ______ Era	6,700–7,200	~33 million ly²	Warden civilization reached roughly 150 settled or terraformed systems distributed across an approximately 33-million-square-light-year portion of one galactic arm. Distant homeworlds and regional powers flourished, but all remained ultimately subordinate to the ancient contest centered on Riftmoor and the Throne.
Late Second Age Era	7,200–7,500	Mature interstellar civilization	Warden civilization existed at its greatest geographic extent. The Vale remained its ancestral battlefield, Riftmoor its political center, the Reach its ancient interplanetary heartland, and the stellar colonies its vast outer civilization. This was the world that ultimately collapsed with the Vanishing, ending the Second Age.

3rd Age

Era	Approx. period	Defining factor	Society & technology	Knowledge of other worlds	Warden legacy	Interworld activity
Living Memory	0–500	Long lived people still remember the interstellar civilization and the Wardens.	Civilization reorganizes around whatever peoples, resources and institutions were stranded together. Magic remains the dominant sophisticated technology.	Other inhabited worlds are accepted as historical fact. Some long-lived individuals may personally remember the Second Age.	Historical fact. People remember the Wardens, their rule and their ability to carry mortals between worlds.	Effectively none. Without Wardens, space travel is considered impossible for mortals. Inhabited moons may remain visibly known.
Kingdom Era	500–3,000	Immediate concerns overwhelm ancient history	The great fantasy age: kingdoms, empires, tribes, swords, wizards, dragons, magical orders, trade and war. Worlds develop independently for thousands of years.	On isolated worlds, ancient accounts gradually become legend, religion or disputed history. Worlds with obviously inhabited moons preserve the truth much better.	Wardens range from accepted ancient rulers to gods, demons, legendary kings or outright mythology. Occult traditions continue claiming contact with them.	Mostly confined to individual worlds. Visible inhabited neighbors may experiment with lights, mirrors, enchanted optics and deliberate signaling.
Industrial Magic	3,000–3,700	Industrial technology catches up with sophisticated magic	Nonmagical industrial development—precision manufacturing, machinery, chemistry, computation, engineering—merges with centuries of advanced enchanting. Riftech emerges.	Astronomy improves dramatically. Ancient records and claims about other inhabited worlds receive renewed scholarly attention.	Warden ruins increasingly become objects of archaeology and engineering rather than merely legend. Some supposedly impossible stories begin looking technologically plausible.	Planet–moon signaling becomes increasingly sophisticated. Some civilizations can clearly establish that their neighbors are intelligent even before true communication.
Communication Era	3,700–4,000	The worlds can finally talk	Half-magical Riftech radio and related communications make reliable long-distance information exchange possible. Research accelerates explosively as isolated civilizations begin combining discoveries.	Moon → planet → system → stars. Extraterrestrial civilization changes from ancient legend to an observable, conversational reality.	Huge portions of Second Age history are vindicated. The Wardens increasingly become accepted as historical again, although enormous arguments remain about what they actually were.	Moons reconnect first, followed by other inhabited planets in the same system, then nearby stars. Diplomacy, espionage, propaganda, scientific exchange and proxy involvement explode.
First Spaceflight / Fourth Age	0	Mortals physically cross the interstellar gulf	Riftech finally makes independent mortal interstellar travel possible.	Other civilizations are no longer merely voices from unreachable worlds.	Mortals demonstrate that traveling the stars was never inherently restricted to Wardens.	Physical reconnection begins. Trade, migration, warfare, diplomacy and exploration rapidly transform the old Warden-settled region.