In the beginning, because there had to be a beginning. It can’t have been this way forever. It may have been. It is simple to imagine a thing that never ends, to imagine something that never began is another challenge entirely. Following the timeline backwards should reach a point when there was nothing, and then there was one thing; this is not the case.
There never was just a single thing in the Infinite Ocean. No real point of origin. Nonetheless, its beginning is called One. Naturally, it could not stay One and quickly split apart. The first two forms, at least for the purposes of this very narrow scope, were Wax and Wane. They were the push and pull of the tides.
Long after the beginning
Wax and Wane both leave the most recent of their rippling impressions in the ocean’s waves. These ripples intermingled. Pull and push became stillness and change, protection and plague, Iel and Ios. This incarnation marks the beginning of an era.
1918
November 2nd
Malcolm Almagro, 14, sees an apparition of Ios as the Spanish Flu in a fevered stupor. The two make a deal, Malcolm is granted magical secrets and freedom from disease. In exchange he allows half of Ios into his body and swears to sire only male heirs to the Plague King’s power. He continues his life emboldened by Ios’s Ambition.
1927
March 6th
Malcolm flees from Spain following a guilty verdict. Formally, he is accused of murder and witchcraft. The embarrassed judges neglect to mention his habit of sleeping with the wives of men in positions of power. He escapes to the Americas.
August 3rd
Iel grants her Preservation and Purity to two newborn twins, Claire and Caius Estrada.
December 8th
Malcolm, having discovered the existence of the blessed twins through means of ritual, tracks the two down and steals them away from their family. Being unable to harm the two due to their inhabitation by his god’s counterpart, he brings them both to a small island in the Pacific to be raised by an associate of his. The boy is groomed and trained to become a servant of Iel, and the girl is locked away in a tower.
1940
June 23rd
Claire manifests her aspect of Iel as a purifying rage. He destroys the tower and kills the man training Caius. He escapes and spends the next century of his extended lifespan tracking Malcolm and covertly killing any heirs he leaves behind. Caius establishes a quiet homestead in the wreckage of his old life.
1965
April 7th
Caius and his wife, Miranda, have a child they name Oren. Caius’s claim to Iel’s Purity is passed down to Oren. She flees home at an early age, tormented by nightmares about a close friend who had disappeared mysteriously.
1978
July 4th
A man named Harrison Vaughan is caught performing a ritual to bind the remaining half of Ios to his wife Laurian by Malcolm. He kills Harrison and breaks the binding. Malcolm is chased off before he can take Ios’s Deception for himself, being badly injured by police while fleeing the scene and spends several months hiding out in the woods nearby.
December 23rd
Sacha and Arthur Vaughan are born to Laurian Vaughan.
December 31st
Malcolm kidnaps Arthur and uses the infant as a sacrificial anchor to bind the other half of Ios, his Deception, into himself. Having fully incorporated the Plague King into his body, Malcolm undoes the effects of his advanced age and adopts the identity of Arthur Vaughan both nominally and later in appearance.
1981
March 10th
Lucinda Wiessman, 16, meets Arthur in the midst of an overdose. Arthur saves her life and grants her vampiric abilities in exchange for her servitude. She becomes a pawn in his quest to take back an aspect of Iel into his control.
1984
March 12th
Diane Joy Weissman is born to Charlie Weissman and Oren Estrada, both 19, following Lucinda's introduction of the two. This would mark the climax of Lucinda’s manipulation of her brother, who would take his life shortly after. Oren readily takes up Lucinda’s offer to raise the child in her stead. Oren passes down Iel’s Purity to her daughter.
1993
October 31st
Arthur returns to the home of Laurian and Sacha Vaughan, claiming to be Sacha’s long lost brother as a ruse to ensure Vash has no residual power from the short time they were connected to Ios. Sacha begins to have nightmares of constant surveilance.
November 3rd
Sacha reinvents themselves as Vash and runs away from home, disturbed by the impostor claiming to be their brother. Arthur lets them go. Soon after, Arthur kills Laurian and returns to surveilling Oren.
1996
May 1st
Vash kills the eye that watches over their dreams and is finally freed from the circumstances of their birth. No longer beholden, they flourish.
1997
June 5th
Arthur properly meets Oren for the first time, though he is much younger than when he first learned of her. The two get along very well, to Arthur’s dismay. They begin to date, and are eventually married in the small town of Ashalot.
2001
April 7th
Josephine Vaughan is born to Oren and Arthur Vaughan. Oren dies of sepsis shortly thereafter, an unintended victim of Arthur's dealings with Ios. Devestated, Arthur gives up on his quest to control Iel.
2002
January 1st
Arthur founds The Grey Institute with the goal of one day bringing Oren back to life. Many of the experiments he conducts involve Josephine as a focal point and source of genetic material.
August 16th
Diane is finally consumed by her isolation and is pulled into a realm of void, a Hell of endless pressure. Her being is compressed down and merged with the endless forms of herself within the mercury pool, but she remains intact, all thanks to her blessing.
2005
June 5th
Arthur attempts to recreate Oren by creating a clone of Josephine and subtracting all of the elements of his own being from her. Instead, this creates a version of Josephine with a great nothing within her, a half-person. Arthur places the half-person in Lucinda’s care, who names her Cecelia.
2016
November 14th
Diane’s singularity of self becomes complete enough that her being is finite in a way few others are. She sits in the Underworld with her new absolution, still immune to the conceptual digestion the realm exhibits.
Outside of this cloud, the first of the Centurions is killed by Louis Écrivaine using a Quantemagnifica.
2021
August 28th
Claire in her advanced age forcibly rounds up many people who Arthur’s power has touched (Including Josephine, Cecelia, and Vash) in an attempt to draw him out. Arthur does arrive and Claire strikes down Josephine, finalizing a ritual Arthur had attempted and dragging the group into Hell. The group is trapped in the Underworld, where they meet Diane.
September 8th
In the absence of any notable powers, Lucinda takes over the abandoned Grey Institute to use new incoming residents and employees as livestock for the sliver of Ios she carries.
November 16th
All connection to both Iel and Ios is stripped from those in Hell that had it. Diane accepts Iel’s Preservation and all of Ios to unify them into One within her. Vash is slated to be destroyed by the Underworld instead due to their lack of connection to a power, Diane preserves their being as the Quantemagnifica. Diane leverages her newly granted One-ness to free the group from the Underworld. She is tasked by this title to maintain the Prefectorium, a symbolic temple of unification for the Centurions as one Limit.
November 17th
Arthur sends the young Cecelia to live in the Grey Institute in order to strip Lucinda of her power and tie up the last loose end Ios left. Having no more resources to leverage, Arthur gives up on his search for Oren. Josephine stays with the elderly Claire in her poor health, no longer preserved by Iel's blessing.
December 10th
Claire Estrada passes away quietly.
December 23rd
Josephine reinvents themselves, becoming Jo Vash. Around this same time, their former band SCRUBS disbands for good.
2022
January 10th
With help from Diane, Cecelia succeeds in stripping the last sliver of Deception from Lucinda. Not willing to put her back into the care of the woman who orchestrated both of their lives, Diane takes the responsibility of her half-sister for herself.
April 15th
Louis kills the Auxiliary Centurion, causing the infinite ocean to collapse. Many clouds sink into the Underworld unharmed, vast and largely untouchable. Expended, The Quantemagnifica ceases to be Vash.