History & Timeline¶
The chronology behind Landfall, from deep past to the playable war. Colony dates are given in AL (After Landfall); the founding day is 0 AL.
How much the colony knows
The colonists begin knowing none of the deep history — only that Nandana was made by someone. The ancient events below are revealed through ruins, Custodian archives, and Mara transmissions across the three acts. See The Seeding.
Deep past (undated)¶
| Era | Event |
|---|---|
| The First Seeding | The Progenitors seed life across the sector, including their firstborn race, the Mara |
| The Rebellion | The Mara turn on their makers as slavers, war against them, and drive the Progenitors from the sector |
| The Long Vigil | The Progenitors, before exile, prepare Nandana as a seed-world for some intended inheritor, and leave the Custodians to tend it until they come |
| The Drift | Millennia pass. The Custodian recognition protocols decay. The Mara hold the sector and forbid the holy world |
The crossing¶
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| Pre-launch | Earth — the Cradle — collapses; humanity scatters colony ships toward the few green scans |
| The Long Dark | The Odyssey crosses to Nandana, the one world that answered green |
| Arrival | The Odyssey — too vast to land — takes up orbit on the last of its fuel and is stranded there, becoming the colony's anchor in the sky |
The three acts¶
Act 1 — Landfall (0 AL onward)¶
The colony makes its first landfall on the Landfall Coast, descending from the fuel-stranded Odyssey in orbit. It fights to establish footing against the Custodian host and feral Yaksha husks, raises its first bases, and begins salvaging Progenitor technology. The goal shifts from survive the machines to prove we are the inheritors — winning over or seizing the Custodian grid.
[!note] Design note Act 1 is human-vs-machine. It establishes the grounded human arsenal and begins the salvage progression that carries through the whole game.
Act 2 — The Mara (mid-campaign)¶
The Mara fleet reaches Nandana. Zealous, exotic, and merciless, they assault the colony to scour it from their holy world — fearing, though they cannot prove, that humanity is a new Progenitor seed. The colony fights a two-front war until the Custodians can be turned to its side. Much of the deep past surfaces here — through Vritra's broadcasts and the ruins beneath the front — but humanity's own origin stays stubbornly unresolved.
Act 3 — The Seed-Heart (provisional)¶
The colony descends to Nandana's core and the Seed-Heart — the Progenitor engine that made the world. Awakening it turns the entire Custodian grid to humanity's side and can break the Mara siege — but a full awakening may broadcast the signal that recalls the exiled Progenitors to the sector.
Open design decision
The finale is deliberately a choice, not a sacrifice (Nandana always survives):
- Wake the Seed-Heart fully — save the colony now, but perhaps summon the makers/masters back into the galaxy.
- Seize partial control — hold the Mara off with only what you have salvaged, and keep humanity's fate its own.
The benefactor-or-slaver question is what the player gambles on. This shape is provisional — the alternative under consideration is a decapitation strike on Vritra's flagship, where the mystery detonates instead of the planet.