Timeline

Every dwarf who had signed on for the great crossing goes down with it. None of them comes back, and for a long time nobody on Askenon knows why.

Everything Askenon later becomes is the work of his descendants, and god of the runes is a title given to a dead man. His dwarves come to accept his death, but do not learn how he died or who killed him for seventeen centuries.

A young dwarf who knows from birth what he will be is spared the question, and Mentin had watched what the question did to a people already grieving. The rest follows: a society that moves faster because nobody hesitates, and trades that never go unfilled however unpopular they are.

Dwarves inside a caste fight for the right to have no choice but to stay. The nobles fight to get back the flexibility every dwarf had before Mentin.

The nobles are not killed. They keep their titles and lose every real power they had over the society, and it will be more than a thousand years before one of them takes any of it back.

The work inside each discipline becomes extraordinarily precise, but knowledge rarely crosses a caste boundary. Askenon gains stability and mastery without growth: few discoveries transform society, and every caste guards its improvements from the others.

On the dwarven side this is the caste of merchants breaking out. They are the only dwarves allowed to leave as part of ordinary life, so they are the ones who reach the barbarians of Brazzant and, far more importantly, the wizards of Cerberus. They come home holding the two things Askenon cannot make: weapons it did not forge, and healing that works in the middle of a fight. The caste everyone despised becomes the strongest in the empire.

Twelve centuries of no caste ever gaining on another, and then one does.

His father held the title and the castes held the country. Merenin comes home from Brazzant, from Cerberus and from a vampire's dungeon, beats the caste leaders, and keeps what he takes. He relaxes a few of the restrictions and the population is delighted, which tells you what twelve centuries of them had been like.

His father sent him away for that purpose. Merenin later took the initiative of joining a merchant ship bound for Brazzant, and everything else followed from that.

Perennus decides his class will take it from Sobiesansky. Jean Morin nearly dies in the procedure. In the same season Perennus confronts Frolix and wakes his Psychic power.

Sent to audit Alfred Varanov's contribution, they save the dwarven engineers Balin and Bolin from bandits. Aldor defends a village of the province against a giant. They kill Vorac the Alchemist.

Perennus sets them to raise him a luxurious residence on distant land he bought cheap. A jealous baron beats Gyllyn and locks him up; Aldor and Vidock come for him, and Aldor massacres the baron and his whole court.

Perennus takes Frolix to meet the creature. He comes out of it deeply damaged.

Apprentices and dwarves build the residence and its village together. Aldor survives an assassination sent by the dead baron's family.

Lucie and Charlie Stoneheart, Alice Luther and Tristan Softpaper find an old Loubreton temple dedicated to the Partage. Varnois Loubreton offers Viviane to the spell and receives the Investiture he spent his life seeking. Charlie saves her; Lucie kills Varnois minutes after his transformation.

A class of commoners and second sons beats the Academy's noble elite. Their opponent is Rossini, a wizard wearing his own son's face to win the tournament and lift the family name.

Perennus leads Aldor in. He meets the elementals of fire, and spends years afterwards learning to attract greater ones.

The class sails for the flowers of intelligence and comes back with them — and with the white dragon Brisé, who kills Gyllyn there before losing and trading his own life for Aldor's. During the mission, Glandir receives an urgent message from Eden and leaves the Academy for good.

, then reminds his students not to think about money.

Perennus orders the flowers poured into it. At the last minute Aldor refuses and burns them. Master and student are enemies from this day.

Cosimo Leblanc notices Gyllyn's divination and offers him his granddaughter Mathilde. Gyllyn Bardlac becomes Gyllyn Leblanc. The wedding costs a fortune and Aldor advances him most of it.

Gyllyn's way is Perennus's restaurant, months of unpaid service, and almost nothing at the end of it. He takes an intelligent object out of the professor's study as payment: a strange suit of armour.

, and a prestigious one. Aldor wins it; Frolix takes second. Randall Blackwater defeats Vidock, but the troll inside Vidock's medallion destroys Randall's body and leaves Vidock the victor in critical condition.

Months later, Jérôme the Radiant uses Randall's grimoire to spy on Vidock and kills him in his laboratory. Vidock escapes into the troll's medallion at the last moment. Frolix later carries his mind back inside his own with Dual Mind.

The apprentices investigate the deaths of 128 villagers. The killer is Skarde, one of the six original Psychics, driven into a violent delirium by the mushrooms he uses against his pain. Glandir tries to kill him; the others stop the fight and deliver him alive to Sobiesansky.

Researching on their own, they fight the beholder Qormuza — and Cauchemar uses them to put it to sleep so he can take it for himself.

Vidock uses blood taken from Qormuza to alter Frolix's heart and spine. Gyllyn and Armure grow new Beholder eyes for him. Frolix keeps his Psychic power and gains several of the creature's abilities.

Gérard Alois comes to them himself. They take the identities of deckhands on the Victis Moralis, the only ship that may leave the Ark and return, and they go in.

They fight the cyclops and climb the ranks of Archean society under their false names. Polymarch dies there and Aldor takes his armour.

On Telus, the creature kills Frolix in its labyrinth before it falls. Armure restores him with Aldor's mana and a resurrection diamond. The survivors return with the Minotaur's head, receive the blessing of Markus Telus, and spend their reward on Florentus Telus's land bill.

They sabotage the Partage's barrier and kill Flavius Marcus, the censor's general. Frolix's telekinesis destroys the seventeen amphorae powering his transformation. Marcus Crassus escapes into the Underdark; Frolix takes the peninsula.

They follow Crassus underground. A Time Sphere left by Gérard Alois gives them twenty days to prepare: Aldor creates Battlefield, Frolix and Vidock create Coherent Story, and Stoneheart learns Shroud. They destroy Jerax and defeat Sobiesansky, but Crassus escapes.

Gérard Alois and Alfred Varanov both die against Markus Telus. Ivana kills the censor.

Valin, Merenin and Portin bring down Lucius Cornelius Sylla with Daviau Morin's help.

He puts them inside an epic illusion, the tool he uses to break people. Their intelligent objects and Frolix get them out of it.

Daviau Morin, bought with dreams, kills Frolix. Aldor kills Daviau for it.

Broken by torture, Lucius Stoneheart nearly kills Gyllyn — then takes himself back for a moment inside his own Destruction Sphere and teleports Gyllyn to the Underdark instead, to break a ritual Cauchemar's drow are preparing.

Gyllyn sees Glandir again after a long time. They come back to Cerberus through a portal.

, by all of them together.

Aldor and Armure spend their last resurrection diamond to restore him. He comes back stronger, and not quite the same.

They reach the Central Ark and find the god's body in his study, motionless and suspended. Polymarch died inside Soul Odyssey, beginning the year-long delay before his second self could return to this body. Aldor feels the conjuration still holding it and shuts the spell down.

Deactivating Soul Odyssey ends the delay immediately. Polymarch's life and memories return to Archon, who awakens stronger for the reunion.

He is looking for Manatar, who made humanity on this world and left. The Partage was how he meant to gather power enough to see him again. In good faith he teleports the foreign armies off the Ark rather than kill them.

Both sides hunt Manatar. Cerberus wins it on the divination of Gyllyn and Cosimo Leblanc, and finds him on Brazzant. Manatar merges with Gyllyn, Frolix and Aldor. He considers them his successors.

Resurrection has never needed a body. It reads what a place remembers of the dead, and everyone in that room knows exactly where Archon fell. Armure is the only source of the spell in the world and does not say so. Neither Aldor nor Gyllyn understands the working well enough to ask, and what Armure wants is Gyllyn on a throne.