World of Shadows: Timeline, Faction Tree, and Network Map
This is the reference page. It is intended to be the post you bookmark and come back to whenever the books cross-reference each other or the wider Raven Universe. I will keep it updated quietly over time as the corners of the universe expand.
Series Chronology
The trilogy spans roughly four months of present-day in-world action, with significant flashbacks running back thirty-one years. The numbered events below are presented in absolute chronological order, not in the order the books reveal them.
Pre-trilogy events.
1. Year minus thirty-one. Father Leopold Glasser, a parish priest at Saint Mary of the Pines on the Oregon coast, discovers a girl named Maria Estefan with telekinetic gifts. Three weeks later, a Vatican team takes her. Glasser begins a private investigation into what he later confirms is the Vatican Children program — a centuries-old catalog of children with measurable supernatural abilities.
2. Years minus thirty-one through minus seven. Glasser ascends through the diocesan hierarchy, eventually becoming Bishop of Everett. Throughout this period he conducts his investigation. He identifies, by the seven-year mark, a Vatican file naming three hundred and twelve gifted children. He commits, internally, to dismantling the system from the outside. He begins acquiring resources and demonic artifacts.
3. Year minus six. Bishop Glasser establishes covert relationships with Ninth Circle financiers. The Council of Chaldea, unaware of the connection, accepts Glasser as a major donor. Within four years, Glasser's contributions account for roughly seventy-five percent of the Council's operating budget. Council member Emily Glasser, his sister, is positioned to forward Council intelligence to Glasser's network.
4. Year minus four. Bishop Glasser opens his Arizona facility, an underground compound at an abandoned water treatment site. He begins acquiring children — first one, then several, eventually seven core wards. Jeremy Caldwell is among the first. He is, Glasser believes, the second one — the most powerful Vatican Child Glasser will ever directly hold. (The most powerful, Haatim Arison, remains protected and offline.)
5. Year minus three. Arthur Vangeest's family — wife Sarah and daughter Emily — are murdered in a remote West Virginia manor by a Ninth Circle cell, on intelligence that originated from a small Vatican clerical document signed by Emily Glasser. Arthur is on a Council operation in Brussels at the time. He returns to a destroyed home.
6. Year minus three, months one through nine. Arthur conducts an unsanctioned vendetta investigation. It culminates in a single night at a second West Virginia manor — the Ninth Circle cell's gathering site — where Arthur kills more than twenty people. The Council closes ranks around him. The Vatican does not. He becomes infamous in certain rooms.
7. Year minus three, month ten. Arthur encounters Abigail. She is six years old at the time. He places her with Frieda Gotlieb of the Council. The Council assumes provisional guardianship.
8. Year minus four, Manila. (See Case File: Manila short story.) Father Niccolo Paladina conducts an exorcism in Tondo, Manila, with Sister Lorena and a young investigator named Marisol Reyes. The case ends in mixed outcome — a successful exorcism, an institutional cover-up, and a personal cost Niccolo carries into Everett. The Manila case is the seed of Niccolo's eventual willingness, in Book Three, to act against the institution he serves.
Trilogy events.
9. Day zero. Father Niccolo Paladina arrives in Everett, Washington, at the request of Father Jackson Reynolds. He encounters Rose Gallagher, the dolls in her guest room, and the doll-anchor that controls her. Bishop Glasser plays the gracious host while moving toward the launch of his Everett experiment.
10. Days one through five. (Book One, The Everett Exorcism.) Arthur Vangeest arrives in Everett pursuing his vendetta against the Glasser network. The Everett demonic outbreak escalates. Niccolo and Arthur form an uneasy alliance. The exorcism of Rose succeeds. Glasser escapes with the artifact and Jeremy. Arthur and Niccolo agree to meet in Colorado in one week.
11. Days twelve through thirty-one. (Book Two, The Vatican Children.) Arthur, Niccolo, and Desiree Portman track Glasser through Sacramento, then to the Arizona facility. Garfield Tesfay rescues them from the underground tunnels. Frieda's intelligence support is constant but increasingly risky. The trail ends at a California shipyard. Niccolo kills Glasser in the trailer with a fallen pistol. Six children are recovered from the cargo hold; Jeremy escapes. Arthur drives back to recover Abigail.
12. Days thirty-two through ninety-eight. (Off-page, between Books Two and Three.) The Council and the Vatican begin dismantling Glasser's operation. The auxiliary bishop directly above Glasser resigns. The Cardinal who funded the compound, however, remains untouched. Jeremy Caldwell goes to ground.
13. Day ninety-nine. (Book Three, The Bishop's Legacy, opening.) Cardinal Richter calls Arthur at three forty-seven in the morning. Six psychic incidents in four states. Jeremy has activated thirty of Glasser's recruited children using Glasser's phone, organized into complementary cell teams.
14. Days ninety-nine through one hundred and twenty. (Book Three.) Arthur, Niccolo, and Desiree pursue Jeremy and Megyn Willford through Akron. Frieda apprehends Curtis in Minnesota; Abigail's latent abilities surface. The trilogy climaxes at Akron General Hospital. Jeremy surrenders. Twenty-two of thirty children are recovered. Three remain missing. Eight are unaccounted for.
15. Day one hundred and twenty-one. Adoption paperwork is finalized. Arthur is Abigail's legal father. They drive away from Ohio together.
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