K2 Timeline

From RPGS surrounding the Labcats
  • 1800: Irish Act of Union
  • 1801: Rush for the Rosetta Stone
  • 1803: Ohio is a state
  • 1805: Anne Beuchamp born to Lawrence and Emily
  • 1807: Randolph Beuchamp born to Lawrence and Emily. Slave traffic illegal in Great Britain.
  • 1809: February 12: Abraham Lincoln born. Winston Beuchamp born to Lawrence and Emily
  • 1810: University of Berlin founded. World's first research university.
  • 1811: Gates of Hades coffee house burns. Kerberos Club gradually moves to its current location. Let's call this when Dorian Gray was born.
  • 1812: Louisiana is a state
  • 1812: May 11: Prime Minister Spencer Perceval assassinated by John Bellingham. Bellingham died three weeks later, in Bethlehem. (In our world, he was hung on May 18.) Publication of Grimm's Fairy Tales.
  • 1813: George III rescued by Kerberos Club and sent to Faerie. Dr. Simmons found dead. (This was, of course, covered up on both sides.)
  • 1815: Ada Lovelace born. Victor Knight born. Gregory Sage born. Reginald Hunter born.
  • 1816: Indiana is a state
  • 1817: Charlotte Beuchamp marries Bertram (?doublecheck notes). Mississippi is a state.
  • 1818: Alice Beauchamp born. First edition of Frankenstein published anonymously. Illinois is a state.
  • 1819: Alexandrina Victoria (aka Queen Victoria) born. Alabama is a state. SS Savannah, American steamer, crosses the Atlantic in 23 days.
  • 1820: Maine is a state.
  • 1820: January 29: Official Death of King George III.
  • 1820: February 15: Official Funeral of King George III. (Again, cover ups. No one outside club -- and few within -- suspect.)
  • 1821: Thomas de Quincey's Confessions of an Opium Eater. Inspires Samuel Berk (will create needle device). Richard Burton born. Greece breaks away from the Ottoman Empire. Napoleon Bonaparte dies, and his corpse is stolen before it can be autopsied.
  • 1822: Death of Percy Shelley. Missouri is a state. Rosetta Stone unlocked (to a degree -- Kerberan agent Colonel Tomkyns Hilgrove Turner stopped samples of La'sur script and Writing of Pa from falling to public examination, preventing potentially incalculable damage.) (Obviously, no one knows what the Rosetta Stone no longer has.)
  • 1823: Victor's parents, Augusta and David Knight, separate. Anne Beuchamp marries Henry Stephen-Fox Strangeways, currently 3rd Earl of Illchester (as of 1802). Second edition of Frankenstein published in France, with Mary Shelley's name on it.
  • 1824: Death of Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron)
  • 1825: Mary Shelley institutionalized in a secure sanitarium.
  • 1826: Alice's parents, Edith and TBD, die (of consumption? Not cholera, as it's before 1831). Randolph Beuchamp dies.
  • 1827: Gerald Beuchamp dies of consumption
  • 1829: Sir Robert Peel's police force. Dorian is 18 in this year and has his portrait painted.
  • 1831: Winter: Ladon Green born.
  • 1832: Charles Lutwidge Dodgson born 27 January, known in our world as Lewis Carroll
  • 1831: Sophronia born. First case of cholera in England. Launch of HMSS Ray, a submersible. (This may not have happened in this game.)
  • 1834: Spanish inquisition officially ends.
  • 1836: Arkansas is a state.
  • 1837: Victoria Regina Imperatrix. The first Kerberos campaign begins. Night Fears, Dragon in the Smoke, Spiritual Matters. Hegel's Philosophy of Secret History published posthumously by Eduard Gans. Michigan is a state. 26 star USA flag, also Great Star Flag. Next change in 1845. Cf: http://www.ushistory.org/betsy/flagfact.html (It may or may not be known that the young Doyles were kidnapped -- something about the father ticking off some Chinese Tong. Matters were resolved, but one of Lady Miriam's favorites, Robert Doyle, decides somewhere around here to turn over a new leaf, blaming himself for make his cousins too interested in the scandalous which led to their sneaking out which led to their kidnapping. Or not -- the Doyles aren't talking about this.)
  • 1838: Lion Crest, White Wedding, Profane Miracles sequence. (Possibly where Dorian first hears about the club.)
  • 1838: April: Lost Luggage sequence and aftermath. Dead Man's Hand.
  • 1838: July: Visit to Pennsington.
  • 1838: September: Hounds of Hate. (At most, folks hear of horrific murders or animal attacks, the odd thing being these were folks with a lot of money, for the most part.)
  • 1838: October: Tamar's ritual planned for Halloween. (Dorian may or may not have a double memory.)
  • 1838: November: The wedding of Lady Rachel Durless and Graf von Gheistbiennenstock. Graf rescued from the Tower Gang (1 member captured -- his status as of 1838?) and Angelina rescued from mad doctor.
  • 1838: December: "Lillian"'s identity discovered. Entry into Faerie. Merrill retrieved. A truce between Gregory and the sidhe man he injured.
  • 1839: December: Exit from Faerie. Ship blown off course. Bedchamber Crisis, ending with Peel retracting his opposition and becoming one of the Queen's staunchest supporters.
  • 1840: Penny Post, electric light invented (it will be years before it is widespread and easily manufactured).
  • 1840: January: Paris. Daguerre and the Fleople.
  • 1840: 10 February: Queen Victoria weds her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.
  • 1840: February-???: Helping the Fairy Earl.
  • 1840: 10 June: Edward Oxford's failed attempt to kill Queen Victoria.
  • 1840: August-December: Africa, thwarting Murray's schemes. Egypt, thwarting Khentykawes. New York, marring an opera and making an enemy of Astor. Reginald becomes the Pennsington heir in truth, and "Gregory's" engagement to Sophronia is announced at Edwina Campion's ball. Lord Mace and Victor Knight work on their reputations.
  • 1841: Special Branch founded under the direction of Sir Robert Peel.
  • 1841: January: Abigail Baker to marry Isaac Martin.
  • 1840-1842: Irish Potato Famine comes to a head. Queen Victoria comes to Ireland and assumes the title of Queen of Faerie, a crown which had not been held since Queen Titania’s assassination by British protestant magi during Elizabeth I’s reign. Over the next decade, She will push for political reform, and replace the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland with one tasked with relieving Irish suffering. Her popularity in Ireland remains high, even among the serious Republicans. She even goes so far as to establish a Royal Residence in Killarney, a move which continues to reinforce Her popularity among Irish human and inhuman subjects alike. (Unless folks pay attention to matters Irish, they only know there was some famine, some uprising, and some smackdown from the Queen.) (Vanishing streets in London are only noticed by those there. Everything went back to something resembling normal.)
  • 1842: Three weddings and a flying island. For Queen Victoria, Year of Assassins. (May: John Francis. July: William Bean. August: Francis Bell. Unknown assailant with rifle -- wounded in Her side, and this wound will re-open in times of trouble.) Treason Act of 1842 granting royal household powers to investigate and preemptively act to prevent possible threats to Her Majesty's safety. These powers granted to Special Branch by royal decree. (Dorian may know there's been some upheaval in the underworld over the last 5 years.)
  • 1844: Founding of Babism. Bab announces the coming of "He whom God shall make manifest" and of "God's Angel, come to cut out the rot of our world with fire and the sword, and woe to those upon whose face Her gaze will fall."
  • 1844: 22 October: Great Disappointment of the Millerite Movement, which was expecting the return of Jesus Christ. Fanatic core becomes Liberationists, convinced THE Enemy has captured the Returned Lord and is holding Him. (The identity of the Enemy will change several times.)
  • 1845: London's Secret Monarch. A secret figure begins reigning over the London underworld, organizing the city's crime and vice. Rumors fly as to this figure's identity, one common theory being that it is Lord Alec Campion.
  • 1847: The Strange. Thomas Babington Macaulay coins the term “Strange” in a letter written to the Edinburgh Review. (End of events in book Dorian Gray. The letter may or may not have been written. If so, perhaps Dorian's ears prick up.)
  • 1848: Communist Manifesto published. It refers to the Strange: "Those possessed of means and abilities beyond the ken of other mortals may seem to stand above their fellow workers, being a naturalborn elite (or a natural under-class, to be exploited), but these powers are not a thing for the aggrandizement of the self, but a call to greater service to communal concerns." (Unknown if this happened.)
  • 1850: Robert Pate attempts to assassinate Queen Victoria. She Herself prevents him. He is handed over to Special Forces and has not been heard of since. The population of London has more than doubled since 1800, and is about 2.5 million, over two thirds of which were not born in the city. Taiping Rebellion begins and will continue for quite some time. Lord Kelvin publishes a paper on the conservation of energy.
  • 1851: New Birmingham, first permanent British colony in Faerie, founded. Geographically, more or less off Ireland's southern coast, sort of. (Not common knowledge.)
  • 1852: Henri Giffard, a French engineer and aeronautical pioneer, flies a lighter-than-air craft. When reports of the flight reach British inventor Sir George Cayley, they inspire him. Even at the advanced age of 79 he is driven beyond any of his previous efforts, and throws his fortune behind what becomes known as the Cayley Airframe. Also, Volta's Folly.
  • 1853: Voltaic Firearms is out of business by mid-year, and its remaining stock of firing pieces dumped into the secondary market at cut-rate prices by solicitors for the company’s creditors. By the end of the year, the fifth of the so-called “Lightning Outrages” had occurred, victims stunned insensible and robbed blind in the streets. Volta had vanished from Britain, and agents of the courts or those seeking to bring suit against him could find him nowhere. (1852-3 might be taken out of the timeline.)
  • 1853: Howling 13th, Her Lupine Rangers, created when Prince Albert presents Queen Victoria with a gift of a dozen Wolfriemen, or Wolf Belts.
  • 1854: Crimean War begins. The Charge of the Light Brigade goes rather differently than in our world. Most of the Light Brigade is saved by the 13th Lupine Rangers, as commemorated in third and fourth stanzas of (Alt)Tennyson’s The Charge of the Light Brigade. (Year change will be needed.)
  • 1854: After 2 years, Sir George Cayley and his engineer Thomas Vick oversee production of the Gull, the world’s first production-model flying machine. Before more can be produced, Cayley dies, and Vick is contacted by agents of the Crown to work on a project for the state, HMAS Queen.
  • 1856: Babbage Computational

Commerce. Babbage Computational constructs its first calculation mill, and begins construction of a telegraphic network to connect it to the centers of industry in London. (May or may not have to come out of timeline.)

  • 1857-1858: Rebellion in India (Years will change.)
  • 1858: Dickens writes of the Strangeness.
  • 1859: Needlework. Launch of the HMAS Queen. (Years on last two need to change)

Game Begins

  • 1860: Spring: Dorian gets an Emu. Trip to coal mines.