Timeline

"Many of us who live aboard Traction Cities like to believe that they have lasted for 'A Thousand Years'- a belief which our rulers choose to encourage, since a thousand is such a nice, round number and gives an air of such immense age and dignity to these clanking city-states of ours. Similarly, the elders of the Anti-Traction League often boast of the 'thousand years' which have passed since Lama Batmunkh first took arms against the forces of Municipal Darwinism. But history is seldom so neat, and the history of the Traction Era is no exception..."- Chudleigh Pomeroy, a London Historian, writing in 1000ᴛᴇ

The chronological history of Mortal Engines. Because of the unreliable nature of tractionist historians in the books (many of which are depicted making humorously false claims and having frequent disagreements), generally the later dates in the timeline are more accurate than the earliest.

Black Centuries

The period immediately preceding the Traction Era and the immediate aftermath of the Sixty Minute War. It is unknown how long this period lasted, contradictory traction era estimates range from a few centuries to 10,000 years. It is also unknown to what degree they overlap with the early traction era, the ᴛᴇ dating system was not adopted until after 480ᴛᴇ and is founded on an earliest estimated reappearance of archaeological engines, not an exact date. Frequently events as late as the 470s ᴛᴇ are described as part of "the lost years before the dawn of traction", leading to some confusion to both characters and among readers about how long ago traction cities were created. And the otherwise feasible origin of Anchorage could be interpreted as the Sixty Minute War itself happening as little as 800 years before the events of the book, as the city, its Winter Palace, and founding Rasmussen dynasty is repeatedly stated to have been founded then. Though this may also have originally been meant to have been its mobilization, however this interpretation is more overtly contradicted by later revelations of the timeline than the idea it refers to the legendary founding of the static city.

Unclear "Centuries" Dates More Coming Soon...

Traction Era Timeline

First Traction Boom

• 1ᴛᴇ
  • Chosen date of the start of the ᴛᴇ calendar.
  • Earliest estimated rediscovery of the internal combustion engine.
  • The First Traction Boom. Early Nomad Empires of Europa make first small steps towards motorising their homes. Over the subsequent centuries their wagons develop into primitive motor-and-bailey castles and later to larger traction fortresses and jagdschlösser.
  • Within the purported lifetime of Warrior Monk Lama Batmunkh, legendary founder of Batmunkh Gompa. Although Tractionist Historians insist that specific references to an "Anti-Traction League" do not begin until many centuries later, and the Green Storm's efforts to destroy and rewrite archives obscure the historical record, Shan Guonese legend holds that the revered founding prophet laid the first stones of the Shield-Wall, beginning The Mortar and Harmony Period among the eastern kingdoms.
  • Siege of Churlish Badger Mountain. Legendary battle with Rus landships said to occur within Lama Batmunkh's lifetime.
  • Using the Eight Trigrams and principals of overlapping fields of fire, the defense-and-cosmic-harmony alliance at its greatest extent would in the following centuries construct a network of flatland castles and wall defenses that spread from the Novosibirsk crater-clover to Kandahar.
• 124ᴛᴇ
  • The hill-climbing proto-city Autoschloss Runkelstein/Trazione-Castel Roncolo's earliest tractionization
• 200ᴛᴇ
  • Anchorage, ruled by House Rasmussen from their Winter Palace, legendary origin occur in this period at latest. Dolly Rasmussen, a high school girl living in the original Anchorage in lost America, was given visions of the Sixty Minute War, and lead a small band of followers out of North America before her home was vaporized. The last American refugees escaping on a fleet of leaky boats, they encounter a wrecked submarine with one survivor. Dying of radiation poisoning he entrusts Dolly with a document to be preserved at all costs. Following years of wandering, they built a new city on an island in the north Pacific, which would eventually be converted into a traction city in the third traction boom. The crumbling document's content was, because of the lack of paper, painstakingly etched onto food tins hammered flat. The encoded content of the tin book is undeciphered, but because of references to "Odin" it is believed to be a sacred religious text dedicated to the ice gods of the Asgardian Revival.
  • By this year the Neuvo-Mayan culture dominates South America, from Tierra del Fuego to the glass shores of the Crater Sea. However the continent is far from politically united, primarily divided above and below Rio Nuevo but also between the many rival city states in both regions.
  • The Zagwan Empire prospers greatly during the following century under the rule of the Archimandrite Zeal-of-the-Land Abimbola. They exploit rich iron veins from Slow Bomb fragments found throughout the Sahara Desert.
• 260ᴛᴇ
  • The Scriven conquer London.
• 267ᴛᴇ
  • The Movement is founded by breakaway elements of the Ostertraktionreich. One of the smallest Nomad Empires, it thrives in the subsequent centuries through highly effective technomancers supplying superior engines and stalkers.
• 331ᴛᴇ
  • Mad King Árpád begins the Scrap Decrees in Miskolc, an immense metal-collection campaign to support the construction of his iron fortress Vastorony.
• 400ᴛᴇ
  • In the following century Zagwan war galleys gain control the Middle Sea, and begin to reach their influence into Europa.
• 441ᴛᴇ
  • Nikola Quicus is born.
• 463ᴛᴇ
  • The Scriven Uprising
  • Fever Crumb is born to Wavey Godshawk and Gideon Crumb.
• 468ᴛᴇ
  • Minor Warlord Nikola Quircus defeats several rivals and becomes the Movement's Land Admiral within the next two years.
• 477ᴛᴇ
  • The Movement invade London.
  • Battle of Welcome Break. Movement landships and Traction Fortress overwhelm London's trained bands and breach the Orbital Moatway.

Second Traction Boom

• 480ᴛᴇ
  • London moves for the first time, becoming the first Traction City.
  • The Battle of Three Dry Ships.
  • The great maze-like Temple of Poskitt at Kjork becomes one of the first things attacked and eaten by mobile London.
  • The Second Traction Boom begins. London's victory triggers a response of frantic mobilization in Europa's city states, as the designs of its engines are leaked.
  • Wheeled War begins. Chaotic fighting breaks out across Europa for the next forty years as rival city states and nomad empires race to become traction cities. Land pirates attack resource convoys and newly launched cities immediately try to eat their rivals before they can flee. Cities wishing to remain static become easy targets for attack by nomads and city-builders.
  • Within the next forty years: the earliest German-speaking traction towns of equal size begin adopting the strategy of armoring themselves and ramming into each other, often destroying one or both towns. A practice that would later develop into the codified sport of Traktionturnieren under formalized Municipal Darwinism.
• 485ᴛᴇ
  • Árpád XIV, King of Miskolc, believing tractionism to be a passing fad and wanting to profit from the Wheeled War, begins dismantling the fortress of Vastorony, recycling its metal into Godshawk-pattern land engines and other components to sell to tractionists.
  • Birth of Walmart Strange, a shepherd boy from the Shatterlands who would go onto become the apprentice of painter Ruan Solent and help him paint the frescoes in London's Council Chamber, Trade and Technology Standing Guard Over the New London and Barbarism Kneeling in Chains Before the Spirit of Municipal Darwinism
  • Within the next two years years: The Uitsmijter. London ends Hamsterdam's attempt to become the second Traction City in a month long seige. London becomes inert for the next decade, driving around in circles while processing the immense amount of material acquired from eating Hamsterdam. It's failure to prevent the rise of competing traction cities would later be blamed on the unjust and incompetent rule of Charles Shallow, who would rise to Chief Engineer and later Lord Mayor of London.
  • Within the next two years years: Paris first moves and becomes the second Traction City, narrowly avoiding being eaten by London.
• 487ᴛᴇ
  • Rostok is captured by Queen Cluny's nomad remnants and converted into the traction city Arkangel
• 490ᴛᴇ
  • Murnau is mobilized by the Ritter Wulfstan von Kobold, becoming one of the first German-speaking traction turnierenstadts.
  • The first successful motor-powered Airship is launched in Neo Teoticuahan, leading to recontact between Nuevo Maya and the Great Hunting Grounds.
• 509ᴛᴇ
  • Zagwan Deluge begins. The Zagwan Grand Synod, led by Archimandrite Mbakwe, declares holy war on the Tractionists.
• 510ᴛᴇ
  • Winter: The Zebra Crossing. Invading legions of the Zagwan Empire cross the straits of Gibraltar on fleets of galleys, rope ferries and construct a giant pontoon bridge.
• 511ᴛᴇ
  • Demobilisation of Cordoba
  • The Zagwans capture and burn the traction town Brum when they find it north of the Pyranese.
  • Battle of Cahuzac-sur-Adour. London is nearly seized by Zagwan forces.
  • Summer: Bordeaux Truce. Bordeaux-Mobile calls a temporary armistice among Tractionists in response to the Zagwan threat.
• 512ᴛᴇ
  • The traction boom town Miskolc, having run out of iron and panzer-hussar mercenaries left to fight the Zagwans, is eaten over the course of three days by Bokanyiváros and Traktionstadt-Weimar.
  • Quircus dies and Chief Engineer Charles Shallow eventually replaces him as Lord Mayor of London. His unjust and incompetent rule causes the Guild of Engineers influence to dwindle.
• 515ᴛᴇ
  • La Fontaine Des Canons. The small mechanized town Ulp single handedly holds off an entire Zagwan army.
  • Summer: Battle of Ligne Soixante-Deux. Zagwan armies are annihilated by an alliance of Anglish, Frankish, and German Traction Cities.
• 516ᴛᴇ
  • Surrender of the Ever-Victorious Army. Following an order from the Great Synod to burn his siege engineers as techno-heretics for using trebuchets, Zagwan General Sobowale instead surrenders his legion to Ulp and turns tractionist.
• 517ᴛᴇ
  • Battle of the Orange Coast.
• 518ᴛᴇ
  • Siege of Nostra Senhora Movilizada.
• 519ᴛᴇ
  • Last Crusade. Ulp wins fame among its peers for leading the Automecklenburger tribes to Glory and fortune.

Third Traction Boom

• 520ᴛᴇ
  • Chesney Hallam becomes Lord Mayor of London.
  • Battle of the Pillars of Hercules. Seven Traction Cities fighting in Costa del Azahar, including Ulp, Murnau and London, distract the catapults of the Algeciras long enough for the raft city Marseilles to destroy the Gibraltar pontoon bridge, cutting off the enemy from Zagwa.
  • The end of the Zagwan Deluge, begins a long decline of the Zagwan Empire, which is no longer to suppress rebellions in its vassal states such as the Tebesti Calaphate or defend its northern borders from Tractionism.
  • Signing of the Diet of Ulp leads to the formal adoption of Municipal Darwinism A month long conference among tractionists held by Ulp, refining the rules of engagement between Traction Cities and ending the Wheeled War, redefining the former battlefields as a Great Hunting Ground.
  • After being chased for two weeks by London, Ulp is the first town devoured under the new system.
• 525ᴛᴇ
  • The Anti-Traction League is formally announced in recognition the global threat posed by Traction Cities after the Zagwan defeat. It's member states contribute soldiers and weapons to a collective military called the Eighty-Seven Banner Army.
  • The London Guild of Historians is founded. Formed by Historians and tech-hunters wishing emulate the prestige of the Guild of Engineers.
• 550ᴛᴇ
  • Before the end of the 6th century, traction cities are violently introduced to the Indian Subcontinent by Panjandrum. The early cartwheel town used rocket boosters during chases, which greatly increased its speed at expense of steering, leading to it to uncontrollably bouncing over the Safēd Kōh mountains to the outskirts Peshawar. Previously dominated by the powerful Indian Railways nation state, along with other rail republics and castle-building kingdoms that moved armoured trains between fortified station-cities, the railways quickly became conveyor belt snack bars to India's first Traction Cities.
• 572ᴛᴇ
  • Death of Walmart Strange, greatest artist of the Traction Era who painted many of the leading figures of the third Traction Booms, and the huge historical paintings Quirke Oversees the Rebuilding of London, The Battle of Three Dry Ships and The Death of Cluny Morvish.
• 578ᴛᴇ
  • The experimental Pogo-City Borsanski-Novi's, maiden voyage. Its travels two hundred yards before crashing and is eaten by Xanne-Sandanski.

Golden Age of Traction

• 600ᴛᴇ
  • Approximate beginning of the Golden Age of Traction
  • By this century, the Anti-Traction League's collective military has been reduced to the Nineteen-Banner Army. The eastern flatland wall and castle networks devoured by cities or abandoned, the Shan-Guonese retreat the more defensible mountains the Altai Shan.
  • Following the example of the Great Hunting Grounds, a full-scale Municipal Darwinist food-chain emerges in Neuvo Maya among the motorized gauchos of the great pampas lowlands by this year.
  • In the next century, Australia is recontacted by Air-traders. Tractionism is enthusiastically embraced outside of the northern coasts, which had previously been recolonized by Anti-Tractionist settlers from the Hundred Islands, developing bizarre and higly specialized varieties of cities such as bunyips and kookaboroughs, the proud citizens of which believe are the truest expression of Municipal Darwinism.
  • In neighbouring Aotearoa, Wellington has difficuties building large enough engines to escape the Cook Strait, and so instead becomes the first sail-powered raft city.
• 612ᴛᴇ
  • Havercroft is launched by the Mathematical Order of Brightstowe. It hunts fishing smacks for three months before sinking off the Cymric Archipelago.
• 675ᴛᴇ
  • London launches the first of a string of suburbs from its wombs.
• 677ᴛᴇ
  • London's Guild of Engineers push a motion through council to declare the traction city's founder, Nicholas Quirke, a deity. He quickly becomes London's chief god.
• 700ᴛᴇ
  • The Tractionists and Anti-Tractionists accept a stalemate. Most cities accepting they were unable to breach defenses at the Tien Shan Shield-Wall or Los Libertadores Muro Grande, and the League never attempting to reclaim the old fortified frontier.
  • Traction Cities begin displaying large posters, known as Bumper Stickers, on their rearward skirts, often declaring recent catches or allegiance to a local deity. They soon come to be seen as vulgar, and cities with self-respect instead begin hanging giant furry dice.
  • The jousting sport Traktionturnieren falls out of fashion, and the smaller German-speaking cities instead begin the process of Traktionstadtanschlus, combining into conurbations or Traktionstadtballungsraum
  • Following the decline of traktiontunieren, Murnau ends its long and noble history of jousts with other towns and begins to turn to trade and hunting. Throughout the following century it would expand to become a major traction city known for wood-carving and string quartets.
• 726ᴛᴇ
  • Quirke worship reaches such popularity in London that the midwinter festival is renamed "Quirkemas".
• 800ᴛᴇ
  • During the following century a class of specialized Slider-Towns develop to take advantage of the many fatburgs washing up on the Longshore, which are mined to extinction within a few decades.
  • During the following century the Guild of Engineers return to prominence in London politics. They replace their white canvas coats with rubberized canvas, build a new Engineerium, a modernistic glass tower on Top Tier, and begin operating many different departments, including a security section which would develop into effectively a private military.
• 840ᴛᴇ
  • London launches its twenty-second suburb.
• 850ᴛᴇ
  • Wooloo-Mooloo Smith, an explorer from Sydney, popularises Australian culture in the Great Hunting ground during the late 9th Century. Bringing his three airships, Woomara, Yara-ma-yha-who and Banjo Paterson to the northern Great Hunting Grounds, his outlandish dress and wild sales pitches capture the popular imagination, paving the way for increased trade and tourism to Australia. Smith returned to Sydney with an immense fortune in old tech, but disapeared on a return trip to the Great Hunting Grounds, allegedly shot down by the White Pointers, a nortorious gang of air-pirates.
• 867ᴛᴇ
  • Crawley, a London suburb, is found motionless and devoured by Motoropolis. Its entire population are found dead and missing their right hands
• 870ᴛᴇ
  • The last remains of Murnauer Traktiongeburtsmauer Stadtnester hatchery is nibbled to bits with oxy-acetylene torches by scavenger suburbs hunting for scrap within a decade.
• 879ᴛᴇ
  • A riot breaks out at the Paris Salon, caused by an exhibition from Traction Action Painters who threw blank canvases in front of their city tracks in commentary of the speed and motion of cities' moving parts.
• 880ᴛᴇ
  • Birth of Chung-Mai Spofforth, from a long line of aviators.
• 882ᴛᴇ
  • Gabriel Strega assassinates Mayor Amadeus Angmering III and takes over the city of Thorbury.
• 883ᴛᴇ
  • Daisuke Ishiwara's first expedition to the west coats of the Dead Continent.
• 886ᴛᴇ
  • The Red Pigs, an air pirate band, steal Venice's bronze horses, which end up in Tienjing's Museum of Barbarian Cultures after a convoluted series of transactions.
• 890ᴛᴇ
  • Daisuke Ishiwara's second expedition to the west coast of the Dead Continent (lost).
• 899ᴛᴇ
  • La Rochelle is wrecked on the east coast of the Dead Continent.
  • The Jenny Haniver, Anna Fang's airship, is known to be present in Khamchatka. (This is likely a repeated error in both books, as the airship wouldn't be built by Anna for another 86 years. It is however unclear whether it is meant to mean 989ᴛᴇ, 998ᴛᴇ, an entirely different year, or if it's a purposeful mistake reflecting the inaccurate mythology surrounding the aviatrix.)

Decline

• 900ᴛᴇ
  • Approximate ending of the Golden Age of Traction
  • Mini Ice Age begins
• 910ᴛᴇ
  • Lefaucheux expedition to the east coast of the Dead Continent (lost).
• 914ᴛᴇ
  • O'Toole expedition to the west coast of the Dead Continent.
• 919ᴛᴇ
  • Iron Winter
  • Grimsby is sunk by pack ice in the North Atlantic, though some dark rumours suggest saboteurs from Dun Laoghaire were responsible for the sinking.
  • Malbork is torn apart and eaten by two of its own suburbs.
  • In order to protect their city from the Iron Winter's icicle-storms, the Ingenery of Vyborg build a winter-dome from frozen wood pulp. In the following False Spring the shell of the "cardboard city" break the jaws of Kronstadt, allowing Vyborg to escape.
• 926ᴛᴇ
  • Mini Ice Age ends
• 933ᴛᴇ
  • The shell of Vyborg disintergrates during a chase with Novy Novy Sad, leaving the city helplessly upended in a vast confusion of wood slush. The surviving members of the Ingenery would later help build the storm-hulls of Schwimmstadt Emden and Vossevangen, but would never fulfill their hopes of rebuilding Vyborg as an ice-pulp raft city.
• 936ᴛᴇ
  • Birth of Magnus Crome.
• 941ᴛᴇ
  • Niccolo Tornatore and his followers seize power in Venice, by then primarily a slave market and gambling resort nicknamed Doge City, overthrowing the old Council of Four Hundred and Forty-One and empowering the Turisma Venezia oligarchy as the city's new iron-fisted ruling organization, the Consiglio del Turismo. Tornatore manages to restore some of his city's former prestige through a rigorous programme of entertainment reform, rebuilding the Campanile, throwing mimes and political dissenters into the middle sea without trial and succesfully attracting art exhibitions, much to the dismay of Brighton.
  • The Drop-Borough Buzzcut lands on Sydney's upper decks and attempts to steal the famous Opera House, but its dismantling crews are beaten off by soprano Flimsy Harkaway, Baritone Folderol Grist and their furious audience. Sydney's Mayor Bruce Runham credits the attack with repopularising Sydneysider Opera, "The Ballad of Buzzcut's Bite" spreading among tractionist music halls.
• 942ᴛᴇ
  • Death of Chung-Mai Spofforth, explorer and author of A Season with the Snowmads, Off the Beaten Track in Nuevo Maya, and In Search of the Stalkers.
• 950ᴛᴇ
  • In the late tenth century, pioneer air rustler El Condor's flotilla of beef-thieving airships led by the Black-enveloped Sorpressa, become the silent scourge of the western pampas.
• 956ᴛᴇ
  • Birth of Minty Bapsnack, daughter of the renowned scavenger Black Jack Bapsnack, owner of Peripatetiapolis' popular Old-Tech emporium "Black Jack Bapsnack's Old-Tech Knick-Knacks"
• 957ᴛᴇ
  • 2nd March or 22nd September: Alleged dates of birth of Nimrod Pennyroyal; actress Tilly Pennyroyal gives birth in a hamper behind the scenes of Brighton's Marlborough Theatre.
• 961ᴛᴇ
  • Snori Ulvaesson's alleged expedition to the Dead Continent.
• 963ᴛᴇ
  • Birth of Tadeusz Wallenstien.
  • Smoke Jaguar, a formerly anti-tractionist tribesman who had overthrown the jefe of El Hambrón at seventeen, links the hulls of fifteen Piranha Suburbs to resemble a beached raft town. Luring the immense nine-tier city Nuevo Tlaxcala into an impassable marsh, the piranhas strip it to the chassis in a mere hours.
• 967ᴛᴇ
  • Birth of Stilton Kael, either this year or the previous
  • Birth of Anna Fang, either this year or the next. (Though some speculate she was born as early as 962ᴛᴇ, but suprisingly little is known for certain about the famous aviatrix and Anti-Tractionist intelligence agent.)
• 975ᴛᴇ
  • Tadeusz Wallenstien, an Outcountry Scavenger, joins the London Guild of Historians under the support of Chudleigh Pomeroy. He changes his name to Thaddeus Valentine.
  • In the mid-970s, the family of Anna Fang is caught making airship repairs aboard a town devoured by Arkangel. Her mother is killed and Anna and her father are enslaved, becoming Thralls of the Kael corporation. Her father later starves to death smuggling Anna his rations.
• 981ᴛᴇ
  • Mayor Auguste Twingo of the articulated city Traction Avant, which has it's engine district as a separate satellite town avant-arrondissement which hauls the main body, orders his city's direction reversed to put an end to the main body being engulfed in exhaust fumes. The cities axles snap attracting predators en masse which devour the jackknifed city.
• 985ᴛᴇ
  • At 17, Anna Fang is becomes the assistant of Stilton Kael, the youngest son of the corporate family, in order to help him build an Airship the Golden Arrow to compete in the Boreal Regatta race.
  • High Summer, a year before Anna encounters the Collector in London: Anna steals the airship Golden Arrow and escapes, renaming it the Jenny Haniver.
  • Anna is aided in the Ice Wastes by a mysterious White Lady.
  • At 18, Stilton Kael is arrested for assisting a slave escape and banished from Arkangel, sent into the Ice Wastes on foot. Finding himself with a group of Snowmad scavengers looting the wreck of Grimsby, he kills them one by one and uses their submarine to begin reinhabiting Grimsby.
  • London begins hauling itself through the passes of the Shatterlands in order to devour the small cities of the Italian peninsular.
• 986ᴛᴇ
  • Roughly a week before 10th May: London crosses the Shatterlands, unknowingly worsening structural problems caused by over-expansion and shortages of maintenance materials. While it is crossing the Shatterhorns, the Collector boards the city and begins its killing spree.
  • Friday 10th May: The body of Sidney Simmonds, Track-Plate Cleaner 3rd Class, is recovered from number fourteen axle housing in Bermondsley, London, badly mangled and missing his right hand. It is written off as an accident.
  • Roughly a week after 10th May: Anna Fang arrives in London pursuing the Collector, she is arrested for carrying a demolition charge and is initially suspected of being the culprit behind the Collector's murders. With the help of the London Police, she kills the Collector.
  • Marseilles devours several Anti-Tractionist harbours on the northern coast of Australia. Fearing the city will next attack the Hundred Islands, it is sunk by Anna Fang.
• 987ᴛᴇ
  • Soon after the death of his mother, Nimrod Pennyroyal vanishes from Brighton. He is speculated to have thrown himself into the sea out of grief and poverty.
• 989ᴛᴇ
  • The Great Town Robbery. The Traktiongrad Kid pulls his most famous heist on Zurich, rerouting the city's pneumatic tube networks to fire canisters of cash from the city's stern for associate Mr. Cardiac to catch in a funnel mounted on their airship the Three-Legged Dog. They manage to escape after a three-day pursuit by Zurich gunships with an estimated 98,000 gold francs.
  • Spring: Nimrod Pennyroyal resurfaces, announcing that he had embarked on a remarkable adventure in Neuvo Maya detailed in the first of his later bestselling books Ziggurat Cities of the Serpent God (Fewmet & Spraint, 989). However rumours were spread by less successful writers that a man of Pennyroyal's description had been living aboard Barcelona with exotic juggler Concepción Zipsky.
• 990ᴛᴇ
  • Thaddeus Valentine's expedition to the east coast of the Dead Continent. Hester Shaw was likely conceived during this, as Valentine's assistant was Pandora Rae (who later became his lover).
• 991ᴛᴇ
  • Spring, before 14th April: Tom Natsworthy is born to David and Rebecca Natsworthy on London.
• 992ᴛᴇ
  • Anna Fang is sent to strangle the Sultana of Pulau Pinang, Ibu Khadija Suprupta Panggaban, for allowing amphibious raft-cities refuel at her island. Initially reluctant to asassinate the Sultana, Anna discovers that she is luring raft towns into ambushes set by the submarine city Fastitocalon. After helping the small raft town Dalkey escape by deceiving the city into eating a decoy boat rigged with explosives, Anna kills the Sultana.
  • On her return trip from Pulau Pinang, Anna stops to repair the Jenny Haniver at a squater camp in Kerala. A week later she discovers she had picked up a stowaway, Sathya Kuranath. Returning to Tienjing, Anna pays for Sathya's training as a Anti-Traction League aviator. Sathya is soon promoted to a wing-commander in the Northern Air-Fleet.
• 994ᴛᴇ
  • London again crosses the Shatterlands, further weakening its tier supports.
• 995ᴛᴇ
  • Nimrod Pennyroyal's alleged expedition to the east coast of the Dead Continent. He claims to have travelled to the lost city of Detroit, where he met savage surviving Americans and fought bears and wolves.
• 997ᴛᴇ
  • The Jenny Haniver is blown off course over the west coast of the Dead Continent
  • 14th April: The Big Tilt London's structural issues culminate in a large section of Tier Three collapsing onto Tier Four, causing the deaths of more than five hundred people, including David and Rebecca Natsworthy orphaning their six-year-old son Tom.
  • Following heroic efforts to rescue survivors trapped in the wreckage by firefighters and salvage teams lead by Thaddeus Valentine, it is discovered that Purkiss & Watson, the company hired by Lord Mayor Waverly Egg to maintain that section's tier supports, had instead been saving money by filling in rust-holes with a mixture of boot-polish and grease.
  • Ousting the disgraced Waverly Egg, Chief Engineer Magnus Crome has himself declared Lord Mayor of London, despite some speculation he was behind the Big Tilt.
• 998ᴛᴇ
  • Following the election of Lord Mayor Magnus Crome, he has the hero Thaddeus Valentine appointed Head Historian.
  • The Icelandic-speaking predator raft Reykjavik is caught on shore making repairs and is devoured by the suburbs Snørk and Wolverinehampton.
• 999ᴛᴇ
  • Inspired by a meeting with Anna Fang in Nuevo Maya, Madzimoyo Khora enlists in the Royal Zagwan Flying Corps.
• 1000ᴛᴇ
  • By this year Airhaven is the last surviving flying town.
  • By this year all that remains of the Zagwan Empire is a small upland kingdom concentrated around the city of Zagwa itself, only propped up by the air-power of the Anti-Traction League.
  • Pandora Shaw and her husband David are murdered in their home near the ex-traction city Dunroamin' on Oak Island. Their farm is attacked by Pandora's friend and former partner Thaddeus Valentine and his men, sent by London to retrieve the computer brain of the weapon MEDUSA recovered from the Dead Continent. In the struggle David Shaw and his dogs are killed, Pandora is killed by Valentine while trying to prevent him from taking the weapon component, and their daughter Hester is seriously injured but escapes the island in a skiff.
  • Hester is discovered, half-dead and suffering amnesia, washed up on the shores of the Great Hunting Grounds by the scavenger town Strole. She is taken in by Shrike, the stalker bounty hunter now having taken up an interest in collecting and repairing broken toys and automata which he houses on the town.
• 1002ᴛᴇ
  • Controversial historian Nimrod Pennyroyal releases his book on Ancient refuce sites, Rubbish? Rubbish! (Fewmet & Spraint, 1002).
• 1004ᴛᴇ
  • The Dortmund Conurbation begins formation through the Traktionstadtanschluss of a large group of small towns.
• 1005ᴛᴇ
  • Disobeying standing orders, Captain Khora takes the gunship Mokele-Mbembe, attacks and immobolizes the Pirate Traction City Bamako. Rather than punish him, the government of Queen Abeni instead transfer him to the Anti-Traction League's Northern Airfleet at Batmunkh Gompa.
  • Hester Shaw, having recovered her memory, abandons Shrike and her home on Strole in order to hunt down London and Valentine.
  • Shrike sells his collection and begins to hunt Hester Shaw. He charters an airship to London.
  • Eighteen Months before Hester Shaw arrives on London: Shrike, secretly taken to London's Engineerium, makes a bargain with Magnus Crome. In exchange for cooperating with the London Engineers research into his construction, the resulting technology will be used to resurrect Hester once she is captured and killed.
• 1006ᴛᴇ
  • Motoropolis gives an ill-conceived final chase attempting to eat Newtown-Fenner, draining its fuel reserves. Immobilized and starved, it is gradually devoured by swarms of scavenger suburbs.
• 1007ᴛᴇ
  • By this year the seats held by the Trade Guilds of London's council were distributed: 50% Engineers, 15% Historians, 15% Navigators, 10% Merchants, 10% "Lesser Guilds" (e.g. Lawyers, Gut Operatives, Physicians, Manufacturers)
  • Spring, before Tom Natsworthy's birthday: Hester Shaw attempts and fails to assassinate Thaddeus Valentine.
  • MEDUSA is rebuilt inside London's St Paul's Cathedral. After Katherine sacrifices herself to save her half-sister, she falls on the superweapon's controls, punching in the wrong code. This, alongside the overheated engines and Tom fighting the 13th Floor Elevator, causes London to explode.
  • After the disastrous MEDUSA Incident, a radical movement in the Anti-Traction League calling itself the Green Storm demands all out war against the remaining traction cities.
• 1008ᴛᴇ
  • Winter: Left under-defended after the burning of the Northern Airfleet leads to ships being called away to other duties within Anti-Traction League territories, the Spitzbergen Static is devoured by Arkangel.
  • Rogue's Roost, an airbase built by pirate Red Loki on a bleak north Atlantic island, is attacked by the Green Storm. They defeat Loki and his pirate crew and use the base to prepare for their takeover of the Anti-Traction League. Rumours spread that the station is used for Old-Tech research, air-patrols tracking the movements of raft cities, or as a bird observatory tracking the migration of seabirds in the north Atlantic.
• 1010ᴛᴇ
  • Nimrod Pennyroyal publishes Predator's Gold (Fewmet and Spraint, 1010).
  • The Green Storm perform a military coup in the Anti-Traction League. A hardline group of young officers seize power and begin radically reorganizing the entire Anti-Traction League, driven by fanatical hatred of tractionism and a dream of "the world made green again". Tractionists do not take them seriously, especially following rumours they had elected a mummified corpse as their war-leader.
  • Wren Natsworthy is born to Tom and Hester Natsworthy in Anchorage-in-Vineland.
• 1012ᴛᴇ
  • The Traction War breaks out. The Green Storm launches its assualt on the Great Hunting Grounds, fleets of white airships sweeping out of Shan Guo, rocketing cities indescriminately. Initially tractionists are driven west by the Green Storm's airfleets onslaught, however the Traktionstadtgesellschaft, an alliances of traction cities, begins to push back. Initially Twelve German-speaking industrial cities, lead by the burgermeister of Traktionstadt Weimar, choose to unite instead of driving west or being individually targeted by Green Storm lightning attacks, pooling their resources and areeing to consume no rolling town until the war against the Storm was won.
  • The Rustwater Marshes is overrun by the Green Storm, but control of the region changes many times over the following decade of war, becoming a graveyard of wrecked cities and war machines.
• 1014ᴛᴇ
  • The Red Winter. A large battle involving the Green Storm landing squads of stalkers on Murnau's upper decks. Under the leadership of Kriegsmarshal von Kobold, whose family had long upheld the martial traditions of their ancestors, Murnau becomes a bastion of the fight against the Green Storm, winning a string of victories.
• 1019ᴛᴇ
  • Battle of the Bay of Bengal. A large aerial engagement between Green Storm Airships and the first large scale use of tractionist heavier-than-air craft defending the targeted Raft City Pefume Harbour. Several mercenary airforces were involved, including Richard D'Astardley's Flying Circus and the Junkyard Angels, and the resulting loss of three Green Storm air-destroyers and the bombing of "Perfume Harbour" leads to claims of victory from both sides.
  • Puerto Angeles, which although neutral in the war had been misidentified as Perfume Harbour by the Green Storm and suffered heavy damage at the Battle of the Bay of Bengal, is sunk by Green Storm hydrofoils in the Sulu Sea a few months later.
• 1022ᴛᴇ
  • Despite fruitless attacks launched by both sides throughout the winter of '22, stalemates stabilize along The Rustwater Salient and the Altai front during this year and the next.
• 1026ᴛᴇ
  • Tom dies from heart failure. Hester commits suicide soon after.
  • The Traction War ends.
• 1032ᴛᴇ
  • Death of Minty Bapsnack, genteel explorer, author and romantic partner of Nimrod Pennyroyal, who lived with him in his final years but never lent him the money to publish his final book Ignorant Armies.

The World To Come

At the end of the final chapter of A Darkling Plain, Shrike is unearthed and awoken in a far future beyond the Traction Era. It is unclear exactly how far beyond, but is the latest event depicted in the series. In the time Shrike was innactive, Tom and Hesters bodies decompose, an oak sappling sprouts from Hester's ribs and grows into a tree, sheds accorns which grow into a wood and dies, falls and decomposes itself. He is slowly awoken when he first notices a human figure flash in front of him, eventually greeting a young boy and girl, who take him to their village. The villagers had presumed Shrike was an old statue, and had traditionally for luck hung flowers around his neck each summer when they brought their goats to his high pastures since "their mothers' mothers' time", at least two generations. Shrike notes that the sun is redder, the air clearer and the climate around Zhan Shan kinder.

The villagers tell Shrike that cities only move in fairy-tales, and laugh at the notion they ever did, however Shrike notices that the rusted metal walls of their village (situated near Zhan Shan in Shan Guo, implying at least one traction town eventually reached here) are the tracks of a mobile city. Initially imagining the villagers have no machines at all, Shrike finds the villagers now use delicate airborne ships made out of glass and wood, powered by silvery disks, a development of the Mag-Lev technology used by London. Asked what he is for, Shrike tells the villagers that he is a Remembering Machine, and tells them stories of the Traction Era.

Differences in 2018 film adaptation

The 2018 film adaptation, though largely based on the original book, features major changes to the plot, characters and events of the immediate timeline related to the backstory. Promotional material for the film also referenced a timeline of events in many ways incompatable with the timeline of the books, chiefly that London first moved in "0ᴛᴇ", 480 years earlier than it did in the book canon. The film was released in 2018 and had been in development since before 2007, before many of the above details were published in the book series. As the Fever Crumb books are set before the ᴛᴇ calandar system was adopted, it was originally unclear when they were set, only later established as 480ᴛᴇ in the Traction Codex, an obscure 2011 ebook packaged with omnibus editions of the quartet, which may have escaped the notice of the creators of the film's promotional material, although the film itself contains references to the codex in its set design, such as Chesney Hallam's Tomb being visable in the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral in the film.

It is unclear to what degree the film timeline would have been further altered or made to further match the subsequent books if they had also been adaptated. Though documented here it is not considered canonical to the books.

• 2118ᴀᴅ
  • The year a Twinkie later eaten by Hester in 1007ᴛᴇ expired, stated by Tom to be "over a thousand years old".
• 3018ᴀᴅ
  • The 60 Minute War. Humanity annihilates itself in a single hour.
• 865ʙᴛ
  • The Dark Centuries. Nuclear clouds and ash block the sun causing a black age.
• 1ʙᴛ
  • From the ashes civilizations rise and fall on several continents.
• 0ᴛᴇ
  • The Traction Era begins. Nicholas Quirke mobilizes London to better hunt resources over greater distances.
• 40ᴛᴇ
  • Airhaven established. To escape the wheeled cities some communities find safe harbor in the skies above.
• 857ᴛᴇ
  • Victory over Paris. London Conquers Europe and becomes the most powerful Traction City. It advances through the Great Hunting Grounds to prey on other cities.
• 962ᴛᴇ
  • The invention of the Gogglebox. Londons engineers unlock the ancient tech of basic video telecomminication
• 1000ᴛᴇ
  • Rise of the Anti-Traction League. Anna Fang becomes leader of a rebellion seeking to restore dominance and peace to static cities.
• 1007ᴛᴇ
  • Attempted assassination of Thaddeus Valentine. A mysterious woman in a red mask infiltrates London and attacks one of its most prominant citizens.

External Links

• Events - Peter Jackson's Mortal Engines wiki