Timeline

Dates are Lattice Standard (LS), counted from the first confirmed Lattice transit. "Present" for the game is LS 212. Entries are canon; details between them are open for stories.

1. LS -14
   MB-TL-N014

   The Halden survey

   A mass-distribution survey around the outer planetoid Halden records a gravitational gradient that does not match any body in the system. The anomaly is logged, disputed, and filed.

2. LS -3
   MB-TL-N003

   The gradient is mapped

   A second survey traces the Halden gradient outward and finds it does not stop. The published map draws it as a field of velocity vectors, and the name Vector Lattice sticks before anyone has proved what it is.

3. LS 0
   MB-TL-000

   First transit

   An unmanned hull with a prototype field coupler settles into the Halden strand and arrives at a neighbouring star eleven weeks later, transmitting. The date becomes the calendar.

4. LS 9
   MB-TL-009

   First settlement charters

   Three colony consortia file charters for systems on the mapped strands. Transit is slow, cheap, and reliable, which is all a colony needs.

5. LS 31
   MB-TL-031

   Control nodes identified

   Surveyors establish that strand gradients are anchored on compact masses at intervals, and that field modulation near those masses alters transit along the whole strand. The first node stations are built within the decade, and the first disputes over who may build them follow.

6. LS 58
   MB-TL-058

   The Concord charter

   The core systems around Halden form the Helix Concord to administer node access and transit scheduling. Its founding document is a timetable.

7. LS 77
   MB-TL-077

   Coupler miniaturisation

   A foundry on Verrin demonstrates a field coupler small enough to fit a cargo lifter. Fifteen years of incremental shrinking follow; the target of a wearable unit is stated publicly in LS 84 and ridiculed.

8. LS 96
   MB-TL-096

   The first Mach Drive

   Foundry line Mach-1 on Verrin certifies a wearable inertial field generator. Its rating scheme, the speed at which the field still holds a body together, gives the unit its name. Of the first forty operators certified, nine wash out and two are killed in training.

9. LS 104
   MB-TL-104

   The Frontier compact

   Outer-strand settlements, far from any node and taxed for transit by the Concord, sign a mutual-transit compact that becomes the Frontier Ascendancy. Its first act is to run an unscheduled hull through a Concord node.

10. LS 119
    MB-TL-119

    Machborne certification standardised

    The word "Machborne" appears on a foundry stamp for the first time. Drive operators are by now a recognised trade: rescue, survey, construction on high-gravity worlds, and, increasingly, security.

11. LS 133
    MB-TL-133

    The Covenant secession

    The fortified industrial systems of the Keld reach, which build most of the Lattice's node stations and heavy hulls, declare themselves the Iron Covenant and stop shipping. The Concord does not contest it; it cannot.

12. LS 148
    MB-TL-148

    The Null declaration

    A networked research collective on the Sable strand publishes a single statement declining further membership in any bloc, and stops answering. Their Drives are already unrecognisable.

13. LS 166
    MB-TL-166

    The first company war

    A dispute over the Tessel node is settled not by fleets but by contracted Machborne companies fighting on the node station's surface. It lasts six days and is cheaper than a blockade would have been. The precedent holds.

14. LS 172
    MB-TL-172

    Transit failure at Halden

    Transit times along the Halden strand lengthen without explanation. Within a year, hulls stop arriving. The failure zone spreads along adjoining strands.

15. LS 181
    MB-TL-181

    The Break named

    The failed region stabilises at its current extent: eleven inhabited systems unreachable, a boundary zone where transit is possible but the gradient is turbulent. A Concord survey bulletin refers to "the break in the Lattice"; the phrase loses its article and becomes a name.

16. LS 184
    MB-TL-184

    First Break salvage

    A Frontier company recovers a Drive from the boundary zone that outperforms its rating by a margin the foundries cannot reproduce. The price of Break salvage is set the same year.

17. LS 189
    MB-TL-189

    The Mach Wars begin

    With transit unreliable and every bloc cut off from at least one foundry, the four blocs move openly to secure nodes, foundries and salvage. There is no declaration. Historians mark the start from the first contested node, Cairn, in LS 189.

18. LS 197
    MB-TL-197

    The Sanctioned Contest Accord

    All four blocs sign an accord permitting guild contests on designated ground under recorded telemetry, as a substitute for unlimited company war. The accord is observed in roughly the spirit intended.

19. LS 204
    MB-TL-204

    The Break advances

    For the first time since LS 181, the boundary zone expands, swallowing the outer station at Marrow. The blocs stop pretending the Break is static.

20. LS 212
    MB-TL-212

    Present

    The Mach Wars continue: node actions, salvage raids, sanctioned contests, and simulations run on captured telemetry. The fastest recorded operator speed in a sanctioned contest is 412 km/h. The Lattice has not been explained.

The operations these years contain: The Mach Wars. The worlds: Planets and Sectors.