Behind the Scenes: Timeline & Map Reference

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This is a paid-tier reference for Graveyard of Empires. Bookmark it as you read. Spoilers for all five books.

Behind the Scenes: Timeline & Map Reference

This is the chronology, factional architecture, and geographic shape of the Graveyard of Empires universe in one place. The series jumps decades, splits POVs across sectors, and doubles back on itself in Firelight. If you have ever lost track of where you are on the map, this is the page that fixes it.

Nothing here replaces the books. It is meant to live alongside them — opened in another tab while you read.

The Master Timeline

Dates are given relative to Year 0, defined as the year of the Tellus rally that opens Book 1. Negative numbers are pre-series. Positive numbers run forward through the five books and a small distance beyond.

Pre-series

Year	Event
−623	The Arcadia VII enters an unmapped pocket of deep space and is lost with all 700,000 crew. Chief Medical Officer Elena Voss records the final log. The Harbinger consumes the ship's consciousness over a 48-hour window.
−300	Republic salvage mission recovers alien wreckage in Sector Six. The wreckage will, over the next century, be reverse-engineered into the Vanguard implant program. The Harbinger begins broadcasting on the implant frequency.
−240	Vanguard program goes operational. First generation of surgically enhanced soldiers deployed in Sector Three border conflicts. Surgical mortality exceeds 60%.
−180	Grand Archivist Solomon Krey identifies the alien origin of Vanguard implants in a classified Ministry document. He is executed for the finding. The document survives in deep archive and will be recovered by Traq Lain in Book 3.
−45	Maven Ophidian assessed as psionically negligible during Vanguard candidate selection. Redirected to Ministry intelligence work. The damage to her lungs from the assessment procedure is permanent.
−40	Darius Gray expelled from the Ministry's Order of Mens Rea after castrating a nobleman who was abusing a toddler on Barlen. He goes into hiding in Sector Six and begins the work that will become the Outcast rebellion.
−6	Argus Wade is fully Ministry. Vivian Drowel has been retired from active Shield duty for two years. They are best friends. Neither has yet had to decide what they are for.

Book 1: Graveyard of Empires (Years 0–11)

Year	Event
Year 0	Darius Gray's Declaration Rally on Tellus. Five-year-old Alaina Naylor attends with her family. The Republic responds with mass detentions. Five-year-old Traq Lane manifests his first telekinetic event in the Geid woods. Argus Wade intervenes. Vivian Drowel becomes Traq's guardian.
Year 1	Argus shares the Republic's deployment grid with Captain Grove of the Denigen's Fist. Outcast forces begin using the grid data; the Kherson Gate ambush kills 7,400 Republic sailors. Argus's complicity becomes specific and unfixable.
Year 2	Jayson Coley arrives at Silvent Academy. Robertson's combat assessment leaves him on the marble floor. The Order of Mens Rea begins recalling operatives to Axis.
Year 4	Pass of Command on the Denigen's Fist. Mikael, Rodriguez, and Sister Portia die. Abdullah Al Hakir is promoted into the resulting vacancy. Eight-year-old Alaina builds her first surveillance map of the Ministry compound.
Year 5	Vivian discovers the Graveyard of Empires hull fragment on Mali. Maven Ophidian establishes her independent supply network near Jaril. The Trevmarch detentions reach 312 confirmed children, including Alaina's brother Dominic.
Year 7	Ten-year-old Traq trains under Brother Theron at Vivian's converted compound on Noria. He privately learns to operate below sensor thresholds. Captain Grove executes 5,847 prisoners by venting Hangar Four to space.
Year 8	Eleven-year-old Alaina cracks Series Seven encryption and discovers her parents' execution. She begins planning her escape.
Year 11	Alaina escapes the Ministry compound across the Hinterland Plains. She delivers the Trevmarch evidence to the Union summit on Alderson. The summit votes 289-131-39 in favor of tribunal. The Republic-Union war begins in earnest. Vivian discovers the coordinates of the Graveyard via the hull fragment.

Book 2: Convergence (Years 11–14)

Year	Event
Year 11	The war moves to Eldun, Regamon, and the Republic-Kingdom border. Vivian kills General Coley on Eldun. Maven launches the Wyrm Facility revelation — bioengineered children as Republic weapons.
Year 12	Jim Crater marries Margaret Cortet. The Battle of Carthage Gap forces a Coalition ceasefire. Hektor Menschen withdraws. Jim takes 209 names on the Infinity.
Year 12	Traq receives the black-market Thalweg implant. Anomalous frequency. Untraceable to Ministry monitoring. Vivian and Traq's corridor confrontation about what she has built him to be.
Year 13	Jim Crater crosses the Meridian Line. Morrison's sacrifice. Breakthrough into Republic space.
Year 13	Jayson's team infiltrates the Axis Ministry compound. Traq dissolves the control signal and liberates 30,000 Order members in a single act of psychic surgery. Maven begins drafting the FRAMEWORK for post-war governance and recoils from her own analytical reflexes. The book ends with Alaina, fourteen, watching her father come home.

Book 3: Echoes of Time (Years 14–22)

Year	Event
Year 14	Traq, age 19, lands on the Arcadia VII for the first time. Encounters the Harbinger. The implant is partly compromised. The first cycle of nightmares begins.
Year 14	The base camp attack on Parwen. Vivian dies of a stomach wound at age 47. Traq's grief triggers a psychic explosion that kills 63 and breaks 47 minds.
Year 15	Captain Kristi Grove's strike on Tellus. Three Emperor's Blood soldiers deployed. Twelve billion of Tellus's thirteen billion population die. Darius Gray and Alyssa Ophidian survive.
Year 15–18	Traq's lost years on Daer. The Petticoat brothel district. Myra. Lefelenzo's recruitment. The Oppenheimer assassination. Traq refuses the children's contract and walks away.
Year 18	Alyssa poisons Darius on Daer. The Union throne quietly changes hands behind the scenes.
Year 18	Traq returns to the Arcadia, fights an alien scout, descends to the core chamber, and steals the network knowledge from the Harbinger by psychic attack. His implant burns out. He escapes with Adeline. The Harbinger marks him for retrieval.
Year 19	Maven Ophidian's fleet is gutted in the Jaril ambush. Three million civilians on Jaril die in the orbital bombardment. Maven escapes with four ships. Emperor Gaius receives the same broadcast Traq pushed onto the implant network and begins quietly pivoting the Empire toward the cosmic threat.

Book 4: Firelight (Year 19, with embedded flashback to Year −300+)

Year	Event
Year 19, present timeline	Dr. Alonso Quentin's expedition arrives at Novum. Sara Chen, Desmond Chen, and Elena begin the survey. They will discover the Greenwood Research Facility, the Ferals, the Archive Seven evidence, and the truth about Project Prometheus.
Year 19, present timeline	Ailana Patrick's protégée, daughter of Patrick Geid begins her sixty-day march south after Patrick dies of Variant Nine. She intercepts the Quentin expedition at the Greenwood ruins.
Year 19, present timeline	Haven Settlement falls to an Imperial midnight strike. Desmond Chen dies shielding a child. The survivors march to the southern coastal facility. They broadcast the Prometheus data during their escape.
Year 19, present timeline	The Galactic Council vote fails (847 green, 523 red, 630 yellow against the 1,334 supermajority). The Empire walks out and threatens war. Forty-three research labs volunteer for open-source peer review. The Coalition for Novum Truth forms. Eighty-three governments sign within hours.
Year 19, present timeline	Cassius Vane orders Iron Hand. Senator Okafor's daughter is targeted as political leverage. Emperor Gaius confronts Vane in the war room and activates the Imperial Guard through a pre-Ministry terminal.
Year −280 to −250 (flashback layer)	Project Prometheus runs at Greenwood. 47,000 colonists used as test subjects. The Ferals are the result. The sterilization bombs were the plan.

Book 5: Traq's Resistance (Year 19, late through Year 20)

Year	Event
Year 19, late	Traq recovers from the Arcadia confrontation at Meridian Station. The implant is surgically removed. He plans the Sanctum mission with Oliver, Jim, and Adeline.
Year 19, late	Galactic Council votes to investigate the Empire. Emperor Gaius secretly engineers the outcome. Empire and Union begin unprecedented cooperation. Corinne Vasquez recovers the Sanctum coordinates.
Year 19, late	Admiral Vashar refuses Emperor Gaius's order to fire on the Meridian research vessels at Novum. Every captain in his fleet stands down. Vashar is arrested.
Year 20, early	Traq and crew enter lost space beyond the rim. They find the alien wreck whose hull confirms the builders fought back. The entity sends a curated vision and gives itself away by what it omits.
Year 20, early	The Sanctum. Three days inside. Traq absorbs the cognitive defense protocol at the cost of permanent neural damage. The builders' presence withdraws when he leaves.
Year 20, mid	Traq negotiates the Empire-Union ceasefire on the Galactic Council Station. Vashar is released as a condition of the truce. The cognitive defense protocol is rolled out to 60,000 Vanguards over 31 days.
Year 20, late	The entity's organic fleet arrives at the Vaalin system. Nine days of combat. Station Gamma-Seven falls; 143 die. Traq sacrifices his connection to the builders by broadcasting raw human consciousness through the entity's network. The fleet retreats.
Year 20, end	The first time the Harbinger's organic fleet has ever withdrawn from an inhabited system. Humanity has survived first contact. The thing on the other side of the Harbinger has not arrived.

Faction Tree

Empire (Republic)

Emperor / First Citizen — nominal civilian leadership; weakest of the three centers in the early books, decisive by Book 5 (Gaius Benedict).
Ministry of Truth — intelligence, propaganda, archives, child conscription. Run institutionally by Givon Mielo, then Cassius Vane.
- Order of Mens Rea — Ministry-trained operatives. Source of Darius Gray. Source of the operatives Maven and Alyssa later turn.
- Project Prometheus — Ministry biological program. Source of the Greenwood disaster on Novum and 17 documented continuation sites.
- The Hammers — special-activities Vanguards. Used for political assassinations.
Imperial Military — sword to the Ministry's hand. Mistrustful, mostly obedient, capable of cutting either way.
- Vanguard Corps — 60,000+ surgically enhanced soldiers. Implant-dependent. Receivers for the Harbinger's broadcast.
- The Shields — Vivian Drowel's former specialty. Psychological combat training. Smaller and older than the Vanguard program.
- Emperor's Blood — armored super-soldiers. Three deployed to Tellus.
- Imperial Guard — pre-Ministry institution loyal to the throne directly. Activated by Gaius in Book 4 to break Vane's coup.

Union / Outcasts

Darius Gray's leadership — nominally the Outcast rebellion. Decapitated by Alyssa Ophidian in Year 18.
Maven Ophidian's network — independent supply networks, intelligence cells, Silvent Academy. By Book 3, the actual operational core of the Union. By Book 5, the architect of the post-war framework.
- Silvent Academy — Maven's training program for Outcast operatives. Brutal, effective.
- The Cortet Fleet (later Crater Fleet) — Jim Crater's warships, originally Margaret Cortet's dowry. Crosses the Meridian Line.
- Alyssa Ophidian's faction — quietly takes control of the Union throne after Year 18. Aligned with the Harbinger via Vanguard implant.

Coalition for Novum Truth (Books 4–5)

Civilian academic alliance — formed after the Galactic Council vote fails. 43 research labs, 83 governments. Led by Dr. Alonso Quentin, Sara Chen, Ailana, Elena, Senator Okafor (Belkan Worlds). Operates from Union Station Libertas.
Survivor witnesses — Ailana, Alonso, Sara, Elena. The Galactic Council testimony team.
Patrick Geid (deceased) — Variant Two prototype. Ailana's mentor. Dies of Gray Death four months before Book 4 opens. Architect of the long plan.

Independents and edges

Indeil Kingdom — Mali Orbital Station political asylum. Minister Cole. Walks the line between Empire and Union.
Belkan Worlds — Senator Okafor's home. Breaks from government instructions to vote green at the Council.
Galactic Council — political-diplomatic body. 2,000 delegates, 1,334-vote supermajority threshold.
The Lefelenzo Syndicate — criminal information broker. Traq's employer during the Daer years.
Haven Station — neutral-space black market. Outside Imperial and Union jurisdiction.

Cosmic

The Harbinger — ancient alien intelligence imprisoned on Arcadia VII. Source of the Vanguard implant frequency. Has been broadcasting for 600 years.
The Builder civilization (extinct) — left the Sanctum. Encoded the cognitive defense protocol. Their presence ends with Traq's exit from the inner archive in Book 5.
The Peer / The thing the Harbinger signals to — unnamed, off-page, the fleet at Vaalin is its emissary. Series ends with this entity's true presence still ahead.

Sector Map

The galaxy is administratively divided into eleven Sectors. The series ranges across all of them. Locations roughly correspond to where the major events of each book take place.

Sector One — Imperial core. Axis (capital), the Citadel, the Imperial Palace. Heavy Ministry presence. Most Ministry decisions are made here. Argus Wade's home posting.
Sector Two — Imperial buffer. Daer (Traq's lost years), Bateria (the volcanic battlefield where Book 3 opens), Parwen (Vivian's death).
Sector Three — Imperial military strongholds. Heavily populated. Patrol-route dense. Most of Convergence takes place here.
Sector Four — Mali Orbital Station. The Indeil Kingdom's anchor. Late-game political asylum.
Sector Six — Frontier. Outcast territory. Geid (Traq's homeworld), Mali (Vivian's discovery world), Jaril (the trading hub that breaks), Phargus and the Vaalin system (Arcadia VII). The Sanctum lies in lost space beyond the rim of Sector Six.
Sector Eleven — Union political infrastructure. Union Station Libertas. Coalition headquarters in the late series.
Lost Space (no Sector designation) — beyond the galactic rim. Builder civilization remnants. The Sanctum. Ancient alien wreck.
The Vaalin Defensive Line — final battle of Book 5. Region in Sector Six, anchored by the orbit of Arcadia VII around Phargus.

Worlds and stations referenced across the series

Location	Sector	Significance
Tellus	unspecified	Site of the rally and the bombardment. Thirteen billion dead in Year 15.
Geid	6	Traq's homeworld. Agricultural. Light gravity.
Jaril	6	Frontier trading hub. Site of Book 1's armistice fracture and Book 3's mass orbital bombardment.
Mali	6	Impoverished desert world. Source of the Graveyard of Empires hull fragment.
Daer	2	Hot desert world. Traq's three lost years. The Petticoat.
Phargus	6	Gas giant. Arcadia VII orbits here.
Novum	unspecified	Imperial-classified. Three centuries of silence. Site of Project Prometheus.
Alderson	unspecified	Site of Silvent Academy and the Union summit in Book 1.
Eldun	2	Major Book 2 battleground. Vivian kills General Coley here.
Regamon	unspecified	Convergence point of four POVs in Book 2.
Bateria	2	Volcanic battlefield. Book 3 opens here.
Parwen	2	Vivian's death. Yeol's first command.
Hundren	unspecified	Oppenheimer's estate. Traq's pivotal contract refusal.
Concordia	unspecified	Galactic Council Chamber.
Meridian System	6	Maven's regroup point. Critical convergence in Books 4–5.
Kepler System	unspecified	Civilian command hub during Vaalin. Alonso's coordination base.

How to use this page

If you are reading the series in order, the most useful section is the timeline. Bookmark it and check back when a flashback in Firelight leaves you wondering when in the Prometheus arc you are.

If you are trying to remember which faction did what to whom in Convergence, the faction tree is the answer. Maven's network and Darius's leadership are both Union and they are not the same thing, and the difference matters.

If you are tracking Traq across the lost years, the Sector map is the page that helps. He moves from Bateria to Daer to Hundren to Daer again to the Arcadia, and the geography of those moves is part of how grief reshaped him.

This is the only page on the site that has all three on it. Save it.

The full series — start reading here. Public-facing world guide is at Graveyard of Empires World Guide.

Behind the Scenes: Timeline & Map Reference — Graveyard of Empires

Behind the Scenes: Timeline & Map Reference