The Graciousness includes 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 A.D. / 40 V
(A.D. 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 A.D. / 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 A.D. / 38 V
The Cherishing. Under Hierophant guidance, Earth recolonized 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 countrysides. 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 A.D. / 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 A.D. / 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 multigeneration 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 A.D. / 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.
• 36th Millennium A.D. / 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.
(A.D. 35400) First ignition of the deceleration starbeam 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 A.D. / 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 starbeams which power interstellar sailing.
The Third Sweep worlds are colonized as Hierophantic world 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 A.D. / 32 V
End of the Isolation. Starfaring Guild removed to December of Tau Ceti, declares independence from Jupiter’s control.
(A.D. 37400) Second ignition of the deceleration starbeam 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 socioeconomic developments to capitulate, and embrace Laresianism.
The Crusades. Covenant and other anti-Domination 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 A.D. / 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 A.D. / 30 V
(A.D. 39024) Arrival of the Penultimate White Ship.
News reaches Earth of a 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 to become 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 A.D. / 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 A.D. / 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 A.D. / 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 star Siegfried of 61 Cygni converted, becoming the Sixth Power named Vonrothbarth.
• 44th Millennium A.D. / 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.
• 45th Millennium A.D. / 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 starfare 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 A.D. / 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 noninterference 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 A.D. / 23 V
Mars moved into a serviceable orbit by Shcachlil.
Shcachlil removed from the sun by the Domination 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.
(A.D. 46400) Third ignition of the deceleration beam directed at M3.
The Photinine Heresy reemerges 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 A.D. / 22 V
The Beautification
(A.D. 47000–47300) The beautification of man takes 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 1,400 still looks like a fourteen-year-old, and can live to 1,600.
THE INTERSTELLAR WAR
(A.D. 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.
(A.D. 47500) Revisionism spreads to other worlds.
(A.D. 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.
(A.D. 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.
(A.D. 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.
(A.D. 47900) Beginning of the Fox Hunts, the Lector-led genocide of the Kitsune.
• 49th Millennium A.D. / 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 A.D. / 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, becomes 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 the time of the Sculptured Lifeways are found and revived and rise to power. The Chimera, 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 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 A.D. / 19 V
(A.D. 50822) Arrival of the Ultimate White Ship.
Snow wars. Abundance of snow (antimatter weapons) 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 7,000 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.