A "Timeline" for Andre's expansive
Multi-verse: pt 5 of 5
By Maureen S. O'Brien
NOTE: Due to the size of this document we have split it into 5 parts.
Index to Multi-verse part 01
- Forerunners, Star Lords, and Ancient Ones
- Circa Napoleonic Times
Index to Multi-verse part 02
- AD 1957 - 1975: The Space Age Begins
- Time Travel and the First Starships
Index to Multi-verse part 03
- The Big Blow-Up, Central Control and the Pre-Solar Queen Era
- The Second Atomic War
Index to Multi-verse part 04
- From The Solar Queen to the Dipple on Korwar
- From the Dipple on Korwar to the Second Galactic Empire
Index to Multi-verse part 05
Four sectors rebel against the Confederation; the war lasts ten years and causes the Confederation to withdraw so many forces from frontier worlds that many are lost to it.
(“Dark Piper”): Beltane, a rim world settled 105 years ago to serve as a biological research station, is unprepared for the chaos that follows the Four Sectors War. The few surviving veterans who come home from the war are resented as militarists, so their warnings of danger go unheeded. One, Sector-Captain Griss Lugard, takes his veteran's land-pension in the form of an abandoned fort and sets it up as a refuge. When a shady ship full of 'refugees' arrives and the Beltane Committee lets it land, he is unsurprised when later the 'refugees' turn out to be Jacks looking for a safe base who have signaled their find to many friends - friends who won't take no for an answer. The children of the settlement, whom he has taken on a field trip, survive the ensuing bombing run and use of a biological weapon, but the rest of the humans on the planet do not. [This story is a re-telling of the Pied Piper of Hamelin.]
At this time, recruits learn the saga of The Cry of Yamar (a prophet of soldiers) to learn the difference between soldiers and civilians. Beast teams fought in the war.
[The Confederation and Council both disintegrate into smaller units. One such unit is the South Sector Empire, which apparently includes Terra, Sargol, Volsper, and Spica.]
Two years before (“Eye of the Monster”):
In a reaction against colonialism, the Council of the South Sector Empire decides that the frontier worlds, especially those inhabited by intelligent species, should be set free to set up their own governments. Therefore they begin to withdraw the Patrol from these worlds. [This seems to compare to the British Empire instead of the Roman Empire; possibly (“Eye of the Monster”) is inspired by the Mau-Mau revolt?]
(“Eye of the Monster”) When the Patrol begins to withdraw from Ishkur, Rees Naper is sure there will be trouble. However, his uncle and the other mission people do not agree, seeing his views as racist and hysterical. [If it is a religious mission, we never learn which religion. It seems to be more of a scientific\diplomatic mission.] The mission people, the Salariki traders, and most off-worlders are slaughtered. By luck, however, Rees manages to rescue the Terran child Gordy Beltz and the Salarika child Yannah; he is joined by Isiga, an adult Salarika whom the slaughter made Name-Head by Salariki law. They journey together to Wrexul's, a mining camp with heavy defenses; there they signal the few remaining Patrol members and fight off the Ishkurians until a robo flyer arrives to take them to the port. There is foreshadowing that Isiga brings them all to Sargol, where she calls on the Truce Court to help her bloodfeud against Ishkur and takes Rees and Gordy into her clan business.
The Services are hereditary businesses - children begin training at birth and enter cadet Academy at age 12.
Planets: Ishkur, Terra, Sargol, Volsper, Spica.
Communications: com unit, guide beam, recorder-reader, recorder (mental key words activate re-run beam into mind), mind-touch (humans can't do it with Ishkurians, but they can with each other), record tape box, field guide beam, ride-beam, Basic.
Transport: 'copter, robo-control of vehicles, jungle roller, hopper, spacer (ship).
Weapons: blaster, flamer, force beam, beamer.
Misc: sonic net (bug repeller), foam plasta mattress, survival kit, py-ri-ration, plasta bubble tent, sonic screen, spider silk, dura-steel, proxlite, hummer (lulls things to sleep), sense detector (detects intelligences above a set quotient), inhalant (powder which intensifies sense of smell temporarily), Viv-ra-packs, lift platform [anti-grav?], persona- locks (species' body-heat activated version), lift beam, time lock, floods.
(“Breed to Come”) 500 years after the First Ship arrived on Elhorn II, the “Pathfinder” (Elhorn's first starship) arrives on Terra. Its crew learns the fate of Terra's people and is confronted by sentient animals. The local animal tribes (the Folk, the Barkers, and the Tuskers) unite against their common human enemy (called the Demons), but the Rattons (rats) attempt to ally themselves with the Demons to get their technology. One crewmember goes mad (possibly he caught the disease), but others help to hold off a Ratton invasion. The “Pathfinder” crew returns to Elhorn II, promising not to return and warning the animal tribes not to follow the tech path.
(“The Iron Cage”) Rutee, a colonist kidnapped from Ishtar by aliens, and her son Jony manage to escape from the aliens' ship onto a strange planet - Earth. They are aided by the People, a tribe of intelligent animals. Eventually Rutee dies of the coughing sickness. Jony and the twins Maba and Geogee grow up among the people. Then a human ship arrives seeking Forerunner artifacts. They capture Geogee, Maba, and several of the People. Volney, an unethical sensitive, convinces Geogee that the People are just animals; Geogee helps them to find ancient artifacts. Jony rescues Maba and the People, destroys the artifacts and the ship, and allows Geogee and the humans to live as best they can. The People work to be ready for the next ship.
'Sensitive' is the term used for espers.
Alien tech: sleep gas, hyperdrive ship, controllers.
Human tech: grav-shaft, blaster rod, mind-control collar, flyer, stunner, visa-screen, laser.
[As the inner worlds grow in strength once more, they are shocked by the anarchy which has destroyed the frontier worlds in only a few hundred years. They dream of unifying the Galaxy into one peaceful, impartially ruled unit.]
(“Forerunner”): Simsa, from the Burrows of Kuxortal, meets Thom Chan-Li Yun, a ranger seeking his brother Thom T'seng, when she tries to sell artifacts to 'the sky men'. They run afoul of Lord Arfellen and the Kuxortal Thieves' Guild and end up following T'seng's route into the Hard Hills. There they find a hidden Forerunner city, where a Forerunner war fleet still sits on the field, plundered by Jacks and Lord Arfellen's Guildsmen. Simsa and Thom send a warning to the Patrol; Kuxortal and the League are saved; and Simsa is mentally joined with a dead Forerunner priestess.
The League rules many worlds. X-Arth is the term for things which came from Earth - only a few believe that Earth ever existed. Free Traders wear winged hats again. Zacathan Histor-Techneers work for the League. The Patrol still battles Jacks.
Communications: visa-picture, persona detect, distant vision charger, espers.
Transport: gravity nullifier, anti-grav belt, ship (hyperdrive).
Weapons: tangler, blaster, nuclear weapons.
[The League's Chain Worlds grow overcrowded, so the League begins to colonize empty planets again. Helman Horris Voor, a First-In Scout, finds an inhabitable planet. Since it is his last tour, Survey names the planet "Voor".]
70 years before (“Voorlooper”):
First Ship on Voor lands at Portcity.
6 A.L. (After Landing); 64 years before (“Voorlooper”):
The first babies born on Voor.
30 A.L. 40 years before (“Voorlooper”):
Lausur's expedition does an edge sweep of the Tangle. This reawakens the Shadows. That same year, Sanzor becomes the first human outpost to fall to the Shadow Death.
50 A.L. about 20 years before (“Voorlooper”):
The first major strike of the Shadow Death.
51 A.L. about 19 years before (“Voorlooper”):
More deaths from the Shadow.
52 A.L. about 18 years before (“Voorlooper”):
Voor's Grove struck. Three children and one old woman survive, including Illo.
54 A.L. about 16 years before (“Voorlooper”):
Mungo's Town struck. 220 die; 3 children survive including Bart s'Lorn.
Bart s'Lorn, a “Voorloper” (wandering trader), and Illo, a Healer, both survived major attacks of the Shadow Death as children. When they meet, they end up searching out the cause of the Shadow Death and defeating the Shadows.
Planets: Voor, Astra, Arzor, Kerdam, Slotgoth, Limbo, Zacathans, Trystians.
Circa AD 5054?:
The First Galactic Empire is founded as the whole of the Galaxy comes under Central Control's dream of impartial rule. [This date is based on Zinga's remark ("The Last Planet") that 'this empire' had lasted about three thousand years. He's a Zacathan; he ought to know.] It would seem to be an empire without an emperor, but with the cosmopolitan ideal of citizenship.
AD 8054:
(“The Last Planet”) The First Galactic Empire was breaking up. Dictators, Emperors, Consolidators wrested the rulership of their own or kindred solar systems from Central Control. Space pirates raised flags and recruited fleets...Here and there...a group of men tried vainly to dam the flood of disaster and disunion... among these last-ditch fighters who refused to throw aside their belief in the impartial rule of Central Control were the remnants of the Stellar Patrol, a law enforcement body whose authority had existed unchallenged for almost a thousand years ....Jorcam Dester, the last Control Agent of Deneb, who was nursing certain ambitions of his own...summoned the half dozen officers still commanding navigable ships and ordered them - under the seal of the Control - ...to locate...and re-map forgotten galactic border systems no-one had visited in at least four generations. One of these ships was the Vegan Scout “Starfire”.
The “Starfire” crashes on Terra.
Central Control falls, and the galaxy descends into barbarism.
Civilization rises again.
The Second Galactic Empire Begins!
[End of Norton Timeline!]
The following books have been excluded from this chronology:
all the Witch World books (except when they touch on Earth)
Black Trillium and Golden Trillium
The Elvenbane Trilogy
Magic in Ithkar 1,2&3 (at least until I figure out what kind of spacecraft it was whose landing began the fair....)
Atlantis Endgame
Bertie & May
Beast Master's Ark
Beast Master's Circus
Beast Master's Quest
Caroline
Day of the Ness
Dragon Mage
Echoes in Time
Forerunner: The Second Venture
The Hands of Lyr
House of Shadows
Ice Crown
The Jekyll Legacy
Knave of Dreams
The Knight of the Red Beard
Knight or Knave
Maid at Arms
Mark of the Cat
A Mind forTrade
Mirror of Destiny
The Monster's Legacy
Moon Mirror
No Night Without Stars
Return to Quag Keep
Ride the Green Dragon
Serpent's Tooth
The Scent of Magic
Seven Spells to Sunday
Sneeze on Sunday
Stand and Deliver
the Star Ka'at books
A Taste of Magic
Ten Mile Treasure
Three Hands for Scorpio
Tiger Burning Bright
To the King a Daughter
Wheel of Stars
Wind in the Stone
The X Factor
Yankee Privateer
Year of the Rat
Yurth Burden
and all anthologies edited by her.
The Witch World chronology is easily found in several sources - most completely (and with information found nowhere else and given by Andre Norton) in the game supplement “GURPS: Witch World”
The following persons contributed information to the chronology: John George Brown, Henry Churchyard, Theresa Ann Wymer, Peter Donald, John C. Wenn, Ethan A. Merritt, Audrey Dorofee, and Mary McKnapp. They have my utmost thanks.
All quotes and information taken from Andre Norton's books are her property - if they weren't, why would you want to read this sucker?
The previous posts and the timeline arrangement they contain is copyright to me, Maureen S. O'Brien. If you want to use my chronology, you should send me some e-mail and ask me. (If anyone has a current e-mail for Maureen please contact me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)
First posted January 29, 1995. Archived in the sf-lovers ftp site at Rutgers for many years.
Maureen S. O'Brien
ej613@ cleveland.Freenet.Edue (no longer active)
mobrien@ dnaco.net (no longer active)
