The last year before the Fall
The Astronomer Thale records a new star in the western sky, and a night later her tower floods.
Events
Chronology
Key events in the history of Vesperlight.
Before 0 AF
Before the Fall
The isles under an ordinary sky, when the sea was whole and the stargazers of Thale watched the heavens.
0–94 AF
The Kindling
The star falls, the cindrels light the isles, and the first Vespertide teaches them what the dark costs.
0 AF
A star breaks apart over the Ostrel Isles. Its shards, the cindrels, scatter across the islands and the sea.
15 AF
The sun reaches its low point. The cindrels fade before dawn, and the Sallowkin come ashore for the first time.
16 AF
The first keepers take their oath to keep every lighthouse in the isles burning through the dark.
95–334 AF
The Long Watch
Three Vespertides weathered behind the lighthouses, while the cindrel trade makes the Combine rich.
95 AF
The lights hold. The isles learn that the sun keeps an eighty-year rhythm.
175 AF
A hard Vespertide on the outer islands. The price of cindrels triples.
212 AF
The isles charter a merchant house to weigh and price cindrels fairly. The Weighhouse opens in Caerlune.
255 AF
The Combine sells cindrels on credit through the dark. Half the isles end it in debt.
335 AF–now
The Waning Light
Four islands lost, a lighthouse gone dark, and the next Vespertide three years away.
335 AF
Four outer islands go dark and are lost to the Sallowkin.
400 AF
The Skerrow Light fails, and its keeper, Old Pell, cannot relight it.
412 AF, ninety days after the landing on Skerrow
The herald of the Vespertide: the sun goes dark at noon, and the Slackwater have promised to act when the lights go out.
415 AF
The next Vespertide begins. The isles are not ready.