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Timeline Highlights[/big]
From Seed
A condensed overview over key events from seed ship launch to now.
Note: This timeline utilizes a very simple system. L means launch and the numbers are years. L200 is 200 years after the seed ship was launched from Earth. Whether or not the years are Da Vincian or terran doesn't matter much for the timeline as such.
Contents
1 L0: Launch from Earth
2 L150: Contact to Earth lost
3 L200: Arrival in the Beta Hyi system
4 L220: Planetfall
5 L290: The first shivers
6 L300: Moving to second tower
7 L900: First humans
8 L900-930: Environmental issues on the rise
9 L920: Construction of tower top defense system starts
10 L920: Constructing Ringlab Beta
11 L925: First blocker in use
12 L930: Sinian's Seizure
13 L930: Constructing the Garden
14 L945: The second generation
15 L960: The Dambuster
16 L968: Access Point System implemented
17 L1000: The top goes
18 L1000-1002: Need Better Name Goddamnit
19 L1002: The first murder
20 L1008: Kelner discovers his cavity
21 L1010: A second cluster
22 L1020: The killing blow
23 L1020: NOW
L0: Launch from Earth
A handful of Seed ships launched from Earth. One sets course for a promising planet discovered near the Beta Hyi star.
L150: Contact to Earth lost
Contact lost to Earth. Despite it, Da Vinci seed ship continues according to plan.
Official belief: Space dust must have blocked the signal
What really happened: What caused the loss of contact is entirely open. Could be space dust, aliens, Earth collapsing, malevolent programming or whatnot.
L200: Arrival in the Beta Hyi system
Arrival in the Beta Hyi system. Leftover iceberg from ramscoop drive method slammed into planet surface to kick off terraforming.
L220: Planetfall
Planetfall. A first tower to house the terraforming machinery is built in the iceberg crater, some three thousand klicks north of present tower.
L290: The first shivers
TAU charts a series of anomalies. Seemed iceberg ramming set off a series of planet-wide geological changes. Touchdown site becomes less and less optimal.
L300: Moving to second tower
TAU abandons first tower due to above issues and builds a second one further south and deep down in a canyon. The ruins of the first tower is still up there, stripped for much, but not all useful stuff.
Official belief: It is common knowledge that there is a first tower, and that TAU abandoned it due to suboptimal environmental conditions. Some link the fate of the first tower (bad weather) to the potential fate of the second (bad weather again).
What really happened: What really-really caused the anomalies is unknown.
L900: First humans
The first humans on Da Vinci. The terraforming is in trouble and too complex for AI to handle. First 100 humans hatched by TAU to help crack the problem. The first cluster, now known as the Habitat, is constructed to house the new humans and the planet is formally named Da Vinci in honor of the great terran renaissance genius. But the curse of the colony, too much ambition, soon rears its ugly head. Plans start messing with each other and the environmental snowball starts rolling.
L900-930: Environmental issues on the rise
Environmental issues on the rise as planetary systems keep degrading due to human interference and runaway synergistic effects.
Grazers, huge storms haunting the tundras above the canyon systems, become an increasing problem and a contributing factor to making it nigh impossible to go outside.
L920: Construction of tower top defense system starts
In L920, a massive defense system has to be installed at the top of the tower to stop rocks hurled by highspeed winds from damaging the tower hull.
L920: Constructing Ringlab Beta
Construction of Weller's Shaft starts alongside. See Mainstay: Ringlab Beta and Mainstay: Weller's Shaft for further details.
L925: First blocker in use
L930: Sinian's Seizure
Sinian's Seizure: Culmination of a very exciting year, where microbe activity upped its pace for unknown reasons. Sinian was the first human to be killed by an unpredicted strain. It's still believed the culprit was one of the first unchecked mutations of terrestrial bacteria released into the environment. The release is yet another sign of the dissension hamstringing the colony's chance of survival.
L930: Constructing the Garden
See The Hatchery: Sava's Garden for details.
L945: The second generation
In response to the increasing trouble with disease, sickness and the first deaths due to it, the first generation of Da Vincians decide to create more people. Hatch programs are started, generating a steady flow of people over the next couple of years. The colony appears in control of TAU and the hatch process at this point, but future opinions abound that this "meddling" or ordering might have had something to do with the massive hatching event in L1000-02.
What really happened: Might be true, might not.
L960: The Dambuster
An incredibly huge flash flood thunders down through the canyon systems to ram the tower. Colony caught flatfooted. Turns out a black algae designed to raised overall temperatures through greenhouse effect unexpectedly climbed a huge gletcher to the east and managed to melt it. Yet another result of not coordinating terraforming efforts. Suddenly flashfloods become an annual event and warning systems have to be put into place.
Unofficial knowledge: A report later proved the Dambuster was caused by the Black Land Project, a shared project between two small, but very ambitious rings (Green Tilt and another one). The idea was to put out black algae to help warm up the atmosphere and thus get the greenhouse effect going. No action was taken after the report was published, mostly due to the involved ring members' very strong ties with the right people. The report is buried somewhere within TAU's shattered databases these days, but might resurface at the right time.
L968: Access Point System implemented
An economically inclined colonist named Kinnick and supporters implement the access point system in response to increasing problems with too many people and too few resources (camping, stealing etc.)
L1000: The top goes
The tower buster. In a storm-of-the-century, a huge rock slams into the tower top and tears it away. People, space and machinery lost. The massive top fragment is hurled a good distance across the frigid tundra above the canyons, and here it still lies waiting for recovery.
A huge plate ("The great plate") is rushed into place to seal the gaping hole leading directly into the tower core, where everything precious to the colony is stored. Many people die securing the site, and there is doubt as to how long the plate will stay in place.
The tower defense systems are gone as well, leaving the tower at the mercy of the environment. Replacements are begun during the following years, but the colonists never manage to fully restore the former capacity. Now and then wind-tossed rocks will slam into the tower hull ripping it open and letting microbes inside.
L1000-1002: Need Better Name Goddamnit
(Formerly known as the D-Block incident)
Deep inside the tower large clusters of floatbeds quietly and unexpectedly click from Empty to In Progress. It takes a while for humans to notice, and nobody is able to shut it down. In the span of two years, roughly 40,000 people are forcibly added to the population. In the midst of heated discussion and fights over what to do, there is a mad race to up overall life support capacity as the colony rushes to the remainder of recspace - floatbed chambers and locker halls.
L1002: The first murder
Small group of determined colonists venture into the heart of the machine and start flushing floatbeds. Widely condemned, since those inside the floatbeds were likely both sentient and conscious as they died horribly. The murderers as they turned out to be called all got blockers. Some killed themselves, some are still alive.
L1008: Kelner discovers his cavity
Kelner and his team ventures further down through the tower in search of a suitable location for the planned second cluster. They stumble upon a flooded machine hall which becomes the starting point for the Dug-Out when the actual construction begins two years later. The place is dubbed Kelner's Cavity.
L1010: A second cluster
Construction on the second cluster which will become known as the Dug-Out begins in response to the massive inflow of people that began some 20 odd years ago. It was meant to function partly as living spaces, and partly as an emergency lab. The Dug-Out, plagued by fungus and environmental issues stemming from the Dambuster Incident is never a success, and slowly turns into a sinkhole for resources.
L1020: The killing blow
Almost 20 years after the first big one, another large scale disaster strikes. A storm of unexpected magnitude causes a massive flashflood, which in turn hammers through the algae reservoir membrane and floods the fusion reactor below it, causing a brief shutdown and then a massive power spike spreading through the tower.
All systems take extensive damage, an unknown number of people are killed and contact between the two clusters are severed. TAU, already damaged by the tower buster incident, shatters. Critical access to databases and control over many areas and machines are lost. Run-away emergency programmes cause extensive scrapping of microfactories, reducing production capacity to zero in the matter of hours.
L1020: NOW
Game launch (now), a few months after the second flashflood. The colony is sinkholed in trouble and have yet to get back on its feet after the disaster. Much information has been lost and it's hard to get a clear picture of how bad the situation is. In the Habitat many of TAU's databases and swarm processes are unavailable, severely damaged or malfunctioning, and many areas have been sealed off or made inaccessible. Production capacity is still very low as new administrators struggle to get things up and running.
Contact between the two clusters is still unreliable and spotty, but it seems The Habitat fared much better than the lower cluster. Many people are still trapped down in the Dug-Out, struggling to survive and deal with damages.
And a huge thanks to the creators of Seed, Runestone for making these texts available.