Timeline (AOS)

Just as the world of the Age of Sorrows doesn't resemble the world it (possibly) became, so its history has no precise touchstones for determining when its events happen, relative to the present. There are, however, several distinct eras pre-dating the "present" time of most Exalted chronicles:


 * The time before history began when the Primordials formed Creation in the midst of the Wyld, and ended with the Primordial War. How long it lasted is unknown, but likely to have been centuries if not millennia.
 * The First Age of Man began with the departure of Autochthon, the works of Gaia being given to the Celestial and Terrestrial Exalted to administer, and the other surviving Primordials being confined in Malfeas. It ended with the Usurpation, a little over three thousand years later.
 * The Shogunate era lasted about six hundred years, beginning in the aftermath of the Usurpation and persisting until the twin blows of the Great Contagion and the Fair Folk invasion brought it down. The calendar developed by the Shogunate is still used in Lookshy. Savants debate whether the Shogunate era properly belongs to the First or Second Age.
 * The Second Age of Man is the era at whose (apparent) ending the events of most Exalted chronicles take place. The earliest year that is unquestionably part of it is Realm Year 1, when the Scarlet Empress crowned herself after destroying the Fair Folk armies and defeating the Seven Tigers. (By the Shogunate calendar, it was the year of the Quicksilver Siaka, in the Fourth (or possibly Fifth) Epoch. In Autochthonia, it was DA 4111.)