Era 0 — The Threshold Years
ECR 1 — The First Song
Magic is discovered and the first spells are sung. :contentReference[oaicite:2]{index=2}
ECR 2 — The First Miscast
A widely witnessed working collapses into Substitution, teaching early practitioners that intent and outcome are not identical.
ECR 4 — The First Canticles
The earliest repeatable spell-forms are compiled into chantable patterns; “apprenticeship” becomes a recognizable social role.
ECR 6 — The Candle-Surge
A brief “easy season” of magic ends overnight; the first recorded mass-Compensation event follows.
ECR 9 — The First Anchors
Names, vows, and place-rules are discovered to stabilize outcomes; early anchor-rites spread by imitation.
ECR 12 — The Oath of Ash and Ink
The first known attempt to bind spellwork to written notation; failures and accidents are common.
ECR 16 — The Dawn Reckoning
Multiple independent accounts note dawn as a settlement point for debts and reversions; apprentices begin timing their trials accordingly.
ECR 21 — The Silence Rite
A counter-tradition emerges: hiding a working from witness-recognition becomes a deliberate practice, not an accident.
ECR 24 — The First Ward Marks
Boundary-sigils appear on doors and roads; the earliest public “civil” magic begins as basic hazard prevention.
Era I — The Age of Learning
ECR 27 — The First Schools
Local circles and teacher-houses formalize instruction; competing methods appear.
ECR 34 — The Apprentice Oaths
Teacher-houses adopt oath-binding to reduce catastrophic substitutions and codify responsibility for debt.
ECR 47 — The Concordance Debates
Rival schools argue whether outcomes persist by force or by alignment with existing patterns; the first “orthodox” curricula form.
ECR 58 — The Ley Census
Surveyors begin cataloging stable working-sites; early conflicts arise over who may publish maps.
ECR 63 — The Measure of Ley
Surveying practices emerge to locate reliable working-sites; early “ley-maps” begin as guild secrets.
ECR 74 — The Ink-Plague
A copying fashion spreads flawed canticles; a wave of repeatable miscasts forces the first large-scale standardization attempts.
ECR 89 — The Counter-Formularies
Correction-codices circulate: books written explicitly to undo common spell-errors and reverse accidental bindings.
ECR 110 — The Codex Tradition
Portable spell-compendia spread; copying errors create divergent “dialects” of magic.
ECR 121 — The First Archive Vows
A neutral repository is founded with strict rules for handling dangerous patterns and “too-repeatable” mistakes.
Era II — The Age of Cities
ECR 180 — The First Chartered Cities
Permanent civic charters (or their equivalents) appear; civic law and magical practice begin to regulate each other.
ECR 195 — The Witness Ordinances
Cities begin regulating public demonstrations after repeated witness-tax spirals; “licensed performance” becomes a civic category.
ECR 218 — The Stonewright Guilds
Specialist builders formalize the craft of ward-stones; civic defenses become infrastructure, not priestly favor.
ECR 244 — The Quiet Districts
Certain neighborhoods adopt “soft-silence” customs—ritual behavior designed to reduce recognition and suppress runaway Δ.
ECR 260 — The Ward-Stone Era
Cities adopt standardized defensive works (wards, stones, boundary rites), enabling larger stable populations.
ECR 292 — The River-Lantern Pact
River cities standardize beacon-rites for safe passage; navigation becomes as much metaphysical as geographic.
ECR 318 — The Market of Names
True-name theft and forged oaths create an urban underworld; courts begin treating names as a form of property.
ECR 340 — The River Compacts
Trade and mutual-defense treaties form along major waterways; early regional blocs appear.
ECR 372 — The First Confluence Almanac
A practical calendar of “dangerous days” spreads among merchants and healers, disguised as folklore to avoid panic.
Era III — The Age of Crowns
ECR 520 — The First Imperial Claim
A single polity (or alliance) asserts continent-scale authority; historians disagree whether this is “empire” or “hegemony.”
ECR 540 — The Coronation Rite Wars
Competing claimants weaponize anchors and public recognition; legitimacy becomes a contest of witnesses as much as armies.
ECR 603 — The Oath-Courts Founded
Imperial administrations establish courts for vow disputes, patron-terms, and ritual fraud.
ECR 650 — The Temple–Guild Settlement
A negotiated settlement establishes boundaries between priestly rites and professional spellwork (often violated in practice).
ECR 690 — The Licensed Orders
State licenses emerge for major schools of practice; unlicensed workings become punishable as civic endangerment.
ECR 735 — The Road-Shrine Network
Imperial roads gain standardized shrines that stabilize travel and reduce path-borne substitutions.
ECR 780 — The Coin and Road Reforms
Standard coinage/weights and maintained roads accelerate migration, taxation, and administrative reach.
ECR 812 — The Census of Souls
An attempted registry of practitioners triggers backlash; the first “false-name” movement begins.
ECR 888 — The Great Standard of Measures
Weights, coins, and contracts are unified; magical services become commodified, priced, and litigated.
Era IV — The Age of Fracture
ECR 940 — The Shattering Dispute
A doctrinal schism (magical, religious, or political) causes long-running instability; splinter schools proliferate.
ECR 952 — The Splinter Codices
Breakaway schools publish incompatible “definitive” codices; the same rite begins producing different outcomes by region.
ECR 990 — The Siege of Three Gates
A border fortress falls when ward-stones settle their debt all at once; “maintenance doctrine” becomes militarized.
ECR 1012 — The Border Wars
A series of conflicts normalizes fortified borders and standing forces.
ECR 1044 — The Grey March
Refugees carry working-dialects across borders; cities experience sudden substitutions as foreign patterns collide with local anchors.
ECR 1078 — The Broken Coin Panic
A currency crisis intersects with oath-contracts; debts become enforceable by rite, not only by law.
ECR 1106 — The Indenture Revolt
Bound laborers break covenant-terms en masse; patronage institutions tighten control and trigger further unrest.
ECR 1120 — The Black Ledger Years
Debts, indemnities, and resource monopolies reshape power; “peace” becomes financial as much as martial.
ECR 1162 — The Archive Schism
A major archive splits over what may be copied at all; one faction favors containment, the other favors controlled dissemination.
ECR 1193 — The Quiet Tongue Accord
A fragile peace treaty includes speech restrictions on certain “high-weight” claims to reduce witness-tax escalation.
Era V — The Age of Veils
ECR 1210 — The Witness Edicts
A cross-city legal framework limits public rites and performances that reliably amplify recognition and cost.
ECR 1265 — The Confluence Calendar
Authorities publish an official confluence calendar; merchants comply, rebels weaponize it, and archivists worry.
ECR 1318 — The Collegium of Anchors
A supranational body forms to audit ward-stones, oaths, and civic rites—part scholarship, part enforcement.
ECR 1380 — The Dawn Tribunal
A court convened only at dawn begins adjudicating “settlement disputes,” when evidence behaves most consistently.
ECR 1442 — The Veilworks Program
Cities fund large-scale concealment infrastructure to suppress recognition; unintended substitutions create new urban legends.