A WORKING CHRONOLOGY · DATES ARE PROVISIONAL
The Avarun
Reckoning
BS counts down to the Sundering. The first full year after it is 1 AS. The eras name the remembered periods; the calendar does not make every account true.
The standard modern reckoning uses the Sundering as its boundary. Dates before it count down toward **1 BS**. The Sundering itself is called **the Sundering**, with no BS/AS year number. The first full year after it is **1 AS**. This avoids requiring a year zero. Era names identify a historical period; BS/AS tells the numbered year. For example: **Year 82 AS, Age of Twin Lanterns**. The ranges below are a useful common chronology, not proof that all five continents agree. Early dates are rounded estimates. **Veiled** and **Unreckoned** spans mean records are absent, lost, or impossible to align; they do not mean nothing happened.
| Approximate dates | Era | What is remembered |
|---|---|---|
| before c. 5000 BS | The Unreckoned Dawn | Creation, the two creator entities, their seeds, and the first guardianship are remembered chiefly through myth. No reliable year count survives. |
| c. 5000–2501 BS | The Age of Crowned Wings | Dragon polities hold power across much of the connected land. Their states, alliances, and eventual decline are poorly documented; “dragon rule” is a later umbrella term, not proof of one united empire. |
| c. 2500–1801 BS | The Veiled Centuries | A major break in the surviving chronology. Ruins, copied fragments, and local traditions endure, but historians cannot securely order the events. |
| c. 1800–101 BS | The Meridian Dominion | Human civilization expands into a period of political and technological supremacy. Its reach and the meaning of “supremacy” vary by region; it does not make every human a participant in Athanor. |
| c. 100–1 BS | The Athanor Reckoning | The Athanor is built, a portion of the Higher Entity is summoned and contained, and the device is used as a power source. Warnings arrive through several media. Surviving accounts disagree on when leaders understood what the machine held. |
| Event boundary | The Sundering | The Higher Entity casts destruction and curses; the supercontinent breaks into five continents and scattered islands; peoples change. The remaining Entity fragments across Avarun. A second moon appears, associated with one of those parts, and twin goddesses manifest. Exact sequence within the catastrophe is unresolved. |
| 1–118 AS | The Age of Twin Lanterns | Two moons are visible. The twin goddesses guide people through the catastrophe’s aftermath. A soothing song about the two lights and the survivors begins as a lullaby; its original verses and the goddesses’ precise roles differ by telling. |
| 119 AS | The Missing Light | The second moon vanishes. The twin goddess associated with it disappears. Some later tellings say she was sacrificed; others say she was murdered. Neither explanation is established as historical truth. |
| 120–199 AS | The Years of Two Testimonies | Communities preserve rival accounts of the missing goddess. The lullaby gathers local verses and starts to carry religious and political meanings. This is a broad, uneven period; some regions may already be in conflict. |
| 200–267 AS | The War of Severed Crowns | Rulers fight over competing claims about the goddess’s disappearance and what her absence means for authority, relics, and the surviving moon. Armies turn the old lullaby into a war song, changing verses to accuse rivals or sanctify their cause. The song’s older lullaby form survives in households and among travelers. |
| 268–315 AS | The Ashen Interval | The war ends, but archives, roads, and institutions remain damaged. Dates are missing or contradictory. “Interval” marks gaps in the common record, not an empty stretch of history. |
| 316 AS onward | The Lone Moon Era (also the Current Era) | One moon remains. The war’s rival traditions persist; scholars compare manuscripts, communities negotiate across the five continents, and the fragments of the Higher Entity remain an open spiritual and political question. |
Major event register
- - **Before the reckoning — The First Seeds:** later traditions describe Avarun and the Higher Entity as sibling seeds born of the creators’ founding love. Their parents sacrificed themselves for Avarun. Names and details of the sacrifice remain unknown.
- - **Crowned Wings — The Dragon polities:** dragon-led powers dominate much of the single land. Their precise nature, number, and relation to later civilizations remain open.
- - **Veiled Centuries — The Lost Sequence:** written chronology fails. Manuscripts L01 and L02 in *The Leaves of the Unmade* offer clues to a guardian and a second seed, but their narrators and interpretations are uncertain.
- - **Meridian Dominion — Human ascendancy:** human institutions gain reach and power. Different regions experience this rise differently; resistance, exchange, and coexistence should not be erased by the label “supremacy.”
- - **Athanor Reckoning — The capture:** the civilization summons and contains part of the Higher Entity. The Athanor turns it into a power source. The captured portion is separated from the Entity before the Sundering.
- - **Warnings — Before 1 BS:** warnings come through different media. The surviving record suggests uneven access, interruption, disagreement, and deliberate decisions to continue. The exact order and dates are unknown.
- - **The Sundering — Year boundary:** destruction breaks the supercontinent; curses and bodily changes affect people; the remaining Higher Entity fragments and spreads across Avarun. A second moon and twin goddesses appear amid the catastrophe. The exact mechanics and whether the Entity’s fragmentation was voluntary remain unresolved.
- - **Early AS — Guidance under two moons:** the goddesses help survivors navigate the consequences of the Sundering. People preserve their guidance in a lullaby. Their names and distinct functions are not yet fixed.
- - **119 AS — The missing moon and goddess:** the second moon disappears with its associated goddess. Sacrifice and murder remain rival accounts. The fate of the moon, goddess, and fragment is unknown.
- - **200–267 AS — The Great War:** the political conflict over the goddess’s loss turns the lullaby into a war song. Each faction alters or emphasizes verses. No single surviving version is the definitive original.
- - **316 AS — The Lone Moon Era begins:** a settlement of the war becomes the conventional start of the current era. The settlement’s name, terms, and acceptance across all five continents remain to be developed.
The Twin Lantern song
The approved tradition has this development: **a lullaby older than the war becomes a war song during the War of Severed Crowns**. The war version is not a separate song; it changes an older shared melody and refrains. Household versions keep verses that armies omit. No text is fixed as the sole original until Mark approves one.
Current notes
The Sundering gives the calendar a memorable boundary; the missing moon then links cosmic loss to competing history, political conflict, and an altered oral song. Proposed dates make the sequence usable while keeping the earliest centuries and the goddess’s fate open. The blank periods are gaps in evidence rather than claims of an empty world. **Depth opportunities:** (1) later give each continent a local date for the Sundering, explaining differences through travel, seasonal reckoning, and damaged records — original worldbuilding; (2) write variant verses of the lullaby/war song once the goddess’s public roles are chosen — derived from approved song history; (3) define the postwar settlement only when its political signatories and costs are known — causal proposal, not established fact. Best next expansion: the regional calendar variants, because they let the same event be remembered differently without deciding the goddess mystery. **Canon checks:** Avarun is flat; Athanor captures one portion before the Sundering; the remaining Higher Entity fragments during the catastrophe; twin moons appear; one later vanishes with a goddess, whose fate is disputed; the world has five continents; the lullaby becomes a war song during a conflict over interpretations of the disappearance. These follow Mark’s directions. All era names, exact date ranges, events within those ranges, war name, and year 316 settlement marker are working proposals and remain adjustable. No external source was used; the calendar names, chronology, and song history are original proposals based on Avarun canon and Mark’s instructions.