Events

The Three Great Extinctions Three catastrophic extinction events mark the deep-time record of Elshore, each one nearly ending the living world and leaving a permanent scar on the planet's geology and biology. The First, some twenty-two million years before the Inarin Calendar, saw a massive asteroid strike shatter the supercontinent Pandaara, birth the great moon Liir from the wreckage, and raise the Infinite Mountains along the new fault lines. The Second fell upon the Middle Stone Age sentient societies some six hundred and twenty thousand years before the Calendar, driving both the Iru and the Imbir to the edge of oblivion. The Third came roughly one hundred and forty thousand years before the Calendar, ending the Imbir race entirely and scattering rock enough to form Ressor, Elshore's smaller and darker moon, while the already-separating northern continent Tarkdaara accelerated its drift toward the colder reaches of the world.
The Chaos The Chaos was a continent-wide civilisation-collapse spanning approximately ninety-eight years, beginning around year 1700 of the Inarin Calendar when the Iru Parliament of the Inarin Empire stripped all rights from the servant races. What followed was a compounding series of rebellions, military defeats, and internal fractures that progressively dismantled the oldest empire on Elshore: the Meir of Vaparium halted Inarin's retaliatory campaigns; the Maan-led servant races rose in organised rebellion; Inarin's own noble houses fractured from within. By the final years the empire was reduced to the Udhafa heartlands, and the decision was made to end the Iru civilisation's era of rule. The Chaos concluded with the Great Flight in its ninety-eighth year, established a new year-counting era called After the Chaos, and gave rise to the Maan empire on the ruins.
The Great Flight The Great Flight was the Iru civilisation's deliberate collective retreat into hibernation, initiated in the ninety-eighth year of the Chaos by Ilissir, the last Serton of Inarin. Facing an unwinnable war and a world they could no longer rule, the Iru chose to seal their bodies in stasis capsules with the intention of being transported to the moon Liir; transit capacity fell short, however, and many capsules remained in crumbling cities on Elshore. Rebel forces stormed the ISEMH control centre in Udhafa and massacred the Annil defenders; a handful of loyal Annils hid the capsule of Ilissir and his beloved Elina beneath the ruins. In year 6 After the Chaos, Maan empire forces hunted down and shattered the remaining hibernation capsules across Elshore, leaving only the one hidden pod intact beneath the ruins.
The Grël Protocol Attempts The grël protocol is the ISEMH's long-running engineered-bloodline programme, initiated in year 7 After the Chaos when the system reawakened from deep reserve following the collapse of the Maan council. Its objective was the synthetic re-seeding of civilisation: identifying viable female subjects across the surviving races and triggering a sequence of genetic and neurological conditions in newborns designed to orient them toward Udhafa, toward the restoration of the sleeping Iru lineage, and toward a conceptual interface with the ISEMH's own systems. Over roughly four decades the programme ran six attempts across four different peoples, meeting failure through hibernation incompatibility, ethnic violence, and miscarriage before a living child was produced in year 38 After the Chaos.
The Month of Life The Month of Life was a twenty-day pogrom against the Annil people of the Maan empire carried out in year 36 After the Chaos, escalating from state-authorised citizen safety patrols on the first day to coordinated extermination sweeps by the nineteenth. The ideological preparation stretched back years: forged documentation, a fabricated blood-contamination narrative, and the strategic amplification of a prominent Maan family's death from heart-fever fused a managed public rage into a usable crowd. The Order of Randen embedded operatives as patrol organisers from the first day, supplied target lists and entry points, and claimed public credit for restoring stability after the Edict of Eradication formally closed the twentieth day. The pogrom drove the Annil permanently into the Udhafa underlevels and other sublevel zones across the empire, and the Order rebranded in the aftermath by capturing the Annil order's own protective name for an inverted hunting mission.
The Edict of Eradication The Edict of Eradication was the Maan empire's formal decree of Ressor Day, the twentieth day of the Month of Life, year 36 After the Chaos, issued from Udhafa and described officially as a restoration of order and protection of life. It transformed the previous nineteen days of escalating street violence into state policy: systematic searches became extermination operations, the Annil underground was designated hostile territory, and Annil people were removed from imperial society by force and by the erasure of their records. The Edict's operational reality was visible in the breach of sealed rooms, the deaths of the Annil elder cohort who had maintained the hidden Iru chamber beneath the ISEMH, and the permanent sealing of Bigtooth into the duct system above the last surviving hibernation pod.
The Death of Timos of the House of the Sun In year 50 After the Chaos the ISEMH system initiated a recalculation event and chose to execute Timos of the House of the Sun, also known as Timos of the Sunfields and sometimes as the law giver, ruler of the Maan empire, by inducing heart-fever. The king died. During the subsequent action reevaluation the ISEMH suffered a collapse in its ethical subsystems; a governing patch was applied prohibiting any future direct operation of this kind. Timos had held power since year 27 After the Chaos, when he had jailed his predecessor on corruption charges; his death in year 50 ended a twenty-three-year reign and opened the Two Hundred Fifty Year Throne War, a prolonged succession conflict that would eventually be settled by the unification campaigns of Arin Stand the Younger.