The Fragile Crown, Timeline of decaying thrones

Era 1: The Zenith of Sovereigns

800-500 Before Contracts (B.C.) / 1200 - 1500

The world’s power was fragmented among monarchs of uneven strength, Kings, Emperors, High Thrones, each ruling from fortified capitals, each cloaked in divine right. The invention of the steam engine ignited an age of rapid technological development, but instead of elevating civilization, it fed the ambitions of sovereigns. Great rulers harnessed the new sciences not to liberate their people, but to expand their arsenals, entrench their dominion, and wage wars more efficiently.

Geopolitical tensions surged, driven by innovation, yet always framed as noble crusades for protection and prosperity. Beneath those banners, power was quietly centralized. Technologies were locked behind palace gates, sequestered in sealed vaults, and wielded only to reinforce the monarchs' supremacy.

Era II: The Long Stillness

500-200 Before Contracts (B.C.) / 1500 - 1800

The long-anticipated great war never came. Nations flirted with conflict, borders drawn and redrawn in dust and bloodless skirmishes, but no sovereign dared ignite the match. Decades passed in tense stillness—soldiers trained for wars that never began, factories stockpiled arms for battles that never arrived. The people grew restless, hungry for change or destruction, whichever came first. The monarchs, feeling the ground shift beneath their thrones, turned inward. Defensive. Repressive.

Their promises, once gilded proclamations of prosperity and divine protection, rang hollow. Dissent was met with quiet executions, resistance crushed beneath the weight of surveillance and doctrine. Throne rooms closed their gates, palaces became tombs of silence, and kings grew cold behind walls of chrome and prayer.

In the absence of trust, power began to leak. Small regions, villages, districts, domed hamlets, started to govern themselves. They drafted their own laws, carved out contracts in blood or ink, and enforced them with steel or old tradition. The monarchs allowed it, so long as taxes arrived on time and no one wandered too far from their assigned dirt.

And in those quiet fractures, the **** trade flourished.

With authority fractured and oversight waning, the commodification of flesh grew unchecked. Local lords and regional powerbrokers rose—some noble in word, tyrannical in deed; others openly decadent, building their legacies on auction blocks and pleasure vaults. The redistribution of power didn’t lead to freedom, only a new flavor of bondage.

The world stood in eerie stillness. Monarchs struck down any who reached too high—any hand that clawed too close to true power was severed without warning—but they turned their eyes from the slow-burning embers spreading across the land. Village by village, body by body, the old world cracked quietly, while the thrones remained seated in silence, blind to the flames—or waiting for them.

Era III: Cracks in the Cathedra

200-1 Before Contracts (B.C.) / 1800 - 2000

Local economies proved limited, unprofitable, **** under the weight of stagnation and overfamiliar supply. The demand, however, was insatiable—far beyond the borders of each crumbling region. A petite Filipino **** could command a staggering price on the auction blocks of Sweden, exoticized into high commodity. Likewise, a statuesque Scandinavian blonde, wrapped in obedience mesh, would be a trophy possession in the gilded pens of Manila or Jakarta. Rarity fueled appetite. Exoticism became currency.

And with it, the global flesh trade was born.

Driven by a relentless hunger to sell further and sell more, traders and slavers began pushing past the boundaries of isolated dominions. The infrastructure they had, dirt roads, caravans, retrofit cargo crawlers, was insufficient. The scale of desire demanded more: ships that could cross oceans, trains that could cut through wastelands, aircraft that could fly under shield radars. All of which were locked away in the hands of monarchs.

Conflict was inevitable.

Skirmishes erupted at border crossings, vault raids turned into bloody sieges, and smaller monarchs—those clinging to half-forgotten bloodlines—were overwhelmed. Their secrets were pillaged, their hoarded technologies turned loose. And the slavers, traders, raiders—they didn’t just use the tech. They refined it. Enhanced it. Deployed it without hesitation.

But not everything found in the vaults was useful.

Among the prizes were horrors—schematics of weapons never deployed, chambers lined with dormant biotech abominations, cybernetic augmentation protocols that pushed flesh far beyond sanity. The monarchs had not been weak. They had been complacent. Sitting atop arsenals built to end worlds, but choosing silence over supremacy.

The emergence of powerful, nervous factions **** the monarchs to pull back. Many retreated into their shielded capitals entirely, walls humming with sovereign resonance, automated defenses primed for total retaliation. But no throne dared strike preemptively. And no faction dared invade outright. Everyone understood: if a monarch felt cornered enough to act, they’d bring the sky down on all sides.

And so the world settled once more—into a trembling equilibrium of fear, trade, and whispered war.

Era IV: Covenant Decree, the modern era.

1 - Present After Decree (A.D.) / 2000 - Present

The largest and most feared faction in the modern era is the Covenant.

They did not rise by conquest, but by codification. In the fragmented chaos that followed the Thrones’ retreat, the Covenant emerged as something the world had not known for centuries: reliability.

By standardizing the international **** trade—drafting terms and enforcing compliance, they brought an impossible peace to the most brutal economy on Earth. Across warring territories and collapsing empires, one phrase earned reverence:

“If it’s a Covenant contract, it will be honored.”

A **** sold under Covenant terms stayed sold. A payment clause, once signed, would be collected, no matter how many shields or armies tried to prevent it. If betrayal occurred, retribution came. Not as ****, but as execution of contract, clinical and absolute.

Their reputation became currency. Regional powers, breakaway city-states, even minor monarchs aligned themselves with Covenant doctrine—not out of loyalty, but self-interest. The Covenant didn’t ask for ideology, only signatures.

And then came the Decree.

Forged with ink and blood, the Decree was the Covenant’s crowning act—a world-altering accord signed by hundreds of factions and figureheads. It declared that any contract executed in the presence of a Covenant representative was absolute. Its terms would be honored by the Covenant and all its allies. Violators would be hunted, corrected, or erased.

In a single motion, the Covenant elevated themselves above kings. They made words into weapons, signatures into shackles. The old lies of the monarchs, the endless divine proclamations—they were discarded like broken promises. Now only contracts mattered. And the world accepted it, because for the first time in generations, they worked.

This event marked the true beginning of the new calendar. Not the fall of a throne. Not a war. Not a plague.

But a contract.