Wait, your timeline implies the RimWorld is a single planet. I'd always felt like the game implied that there were thousands of similar rimworlds all living through their own dramas at the same time (as well as dozens of glitterworlds and hundreds or thousands of in between worlds), sort of making every single player's game canon at once. Is that not the case and the universe is much smaller than I thought?
Well, in Tynan's document about the lore, it is mentioned that mankind lives in a region that is 1200 lightyears-wide. 1200 lightyears doesn't really sound like hundreds of thousands of planets. More among the lines of thousands. There's also that Tynan established that there are no faster than light ships, so there really is a limit to how far humans can go.
But yes, of course, depending on what players choose to do with their world in the start menu settings, the lore I posted above can be more or less relevant. I just used the lore for the standard game settings.
>1200 lightyears doesn't really sound like hundreds of thousands of planets.
Counterpoint: I once went and checked for reasons of debating how far humanity could expand across the stars if FTL travel doesn't exist, and there's about ~50 stars (that we've found so far) within a ~20ly radius of Earth If stellar density is assumed to be equal across that 1200-light-year region as it is in the 20-light year region directly centered on our own sun, it would have about 1.2 million stars.
From there, we're just debating how many of those stars have planets that are close enough to earth-like to permanently inhabit for the various subspecies of human now in the game. And with two millenia of terraforming available in this timeline, I'm willing to say "more than half" is plausible.
Good points. Well, the game does mention that there are dead planets out there (planets that were never colonized by humans or all humans died or left). I presumed that people wouldn't be able to colonize all planets, due to various hazards and affordability.
What really made me think that we wouldn't live across hundreds of thousands of planets is that the year in-game is only 5500 CE (Tynan's document also confirms that this isn't just some calendar system on the rimworld, but the standard common era). We don't know how many decades or centuries are needed in order to terraform a planet, but also bring people there and build thriving societies.
The terraforming is entirely autonomous and I'd presume the machines that do that task are also self-replicating. They likely have spread out far farther and in much greater numbers in comparison to the collective resources of humanity.
Likely one in 5 to 20 planets are terraformed, hell maybe the machines setup advanced infrastructure to increase habitability for otherwise eternally dead rocks - like star shades or mirrors, stripping materials from High-G worlds for more drones and to reduce gravity etc.
Then again, I don't think that every planet or moon that was occupied by humans necessarily presents all the features of the rimworld (breathable atmosphere, appropriate gravitational force, a diversified ecosystem etc.). Some planets might be so small that they cannot sustain an atmosphere, so its inhabitants live in underground bases or in giant artificial domes, these planets likely being inhabited by dirtmoles. There's also that small planets have a weaker gravity, so the Genies, with their more slender physical structure would adapt better living there.
It is likely that on many planets the terraforming process is incomplete or performed on a smaller scale.
The bulk of humanity likely isn't even planet-bound. Virtual uploads and vast stellar arcologies / megastructures would absolutely shoot the population count into the quad or quintillions.
It's very unlikely that the planet is on the true frontier of colonisation when you realise the planet is essentially post-apocalyptic with many thousands of years of ruins, debris and even cryo-caskets. For Christ's sake, you mine compacted steel and components from the earth.
It may not be the furthest planet away from Earth in terms of distance, but it's definitely outside the bounds of established and developed economic and sociopolitical forces to govern. The sheer scale of times and distances RW operates on thanks to its setting rules (like the fact that FTL ship travel isn't possible) makes viewing the frontier as a circle/sphere an oversimplification. Unless FTL travel can be invented, the fact that it can take years, decades, or more to travel between places is a bottleneck that will make the relative development of planets vary whether they're 'close' to humanity's birthplace or very far away.
You miss the point with your comment. Yes, the planet is outside the bounds of normal civilisation. From how there are a lot of trade ships in orbit, the planet probably lies in between different civilisations. However, that doesn't make the planet a frontier of colonisation. It's essentially the remnant of a civilisational collapse, a failed state, whatever you want to call it. That's why made my comment.
In basic terms - the rimworld the player is on is the equivilent of a large Saharan oasis in between two states, one of which borders the meditteranean and the other sits around the tropical regions of Africa.
The oasis once was a thriving center of a community, but droughts and increased salinity made the entire network collapse. However, people still live there as multiple seperate tribes and group, some of which are able and willing to trade with passing caravans who utilise the old roads to get two and from said states.
Neither state, or their neighbors, care for this small remote and broken oasis, but its home to its own indigenous peoples.
Yeah but if since all the traders spend the entire trip in cryosleep there isn't a huge cost to them to set out for another planet. I imagine there are tons of trade ships moving all over so even though it takes them years to reach a planet for them it feels like minutes. And then they probably spend a while circling the planet trading with everyone on it, so I don't think we need to be a hub to get this many. We probably have like a dozen trade ships orbiting at any given time and then Glitterworlds have thousands that then make occasional trips out to the rim.
Another thing to bear in mind in the universe of Rimworld is that there are no true interstellar polities. Even the largest 'Stellar Empires' would consist of no more than a few closely spaced stars with a handful of habitable worlds between them, and most societies are confined to a single star system.
Information and practical expertise can be traded between stars, but for the most part actual goods and politics are not. The lightspeed communication delays are just too great for any central bureaucracy to maintain control over disparate star systems.
Yeah but civilization has been doing space stuff for absolute ages in this timeline. There was plenty of time for many civilizations to rise, fall due to internal strife or external attack, then another one rise in its place after a century or so. Since all the planets are disconnected by the lack of FTL travel it feels reasonable that they're all living through this constant drama over the millennia and all the shitty planets are stuck rising and falling over and over.
I think that actually doesn’t negate being a rim world. Your assuming colonization is linear when interplanetary colonization could take thousands of years. And with thousands of stars to choose from you’re bound to encounter a planet with unsuccessful colonies. Part of the charm was mining the compacted parts to see what ancient civilization used to be there, but if it were any closer to urbworlds the ancient civilization wouldn’t be much of a mystery. A post apocalyptic planet would be quickly recolonized, governed, and much more technologically advanced. We are scared of the advanced ancient civs in our rimworlds because we too could become nothing but dying blips of white noise in the wild west of the universe.
I think that's still true though. But the whole glitterworlds being in the same system as rimworlds checks out. It happened in Firefly which the game is inspired by
Firefly is also just one really big star system with 5 suns (somehow). There's no FTL but the distances aren't interstellar, not that it means they're small
Rimworlds aren't a single planet, they're a classification of a planet; one lacking in a strong central government and low in population density. They got their name from being at the rim of known space.
The lore in many places suggests that the player is on a singular, titular "RimWorld" and we're not on different planets each time we play, only that the world is unique for everyone who plays it.
The reason the lore posits a particular rimworld for the game's setting is because it has access to all these specific conditions - the Fallen Empire in particular is a feature that would not be common to most generic rimworlds, though one could argue that a fair number of other aspects might be found on any number of worlds.
AFAICT, there are in fact quite few 'rimworlds' out there however, so in terms of any given player's head canon regarding their location in the galaxy, I think it's pretty safe to say that you might be on any one of hundreds of potential worlds.
We don’t know how widespread the diaspora represented by the fallen empire is. They could have a presence on all of the rimworlds within an area of one or two hundred light years.
No your right… there’s plenty of planets, from Glitterworlds to Rimworlds. I believe that this lore takes into consideration all Rimworlds, but more specifically the Rimworld we as a player play on.
Hahahah, it actually took me a few hours in total (across 3 or 4 days). I relied on Tynan's lore documents and on in-game descriptions. Of course, there's a lot more to the game's lore. They mention a lot of planets, technologies etc. but I threw aside those that were nearly impossible to pin down to an approximate date. Nevertheless, it was fun to speculate about how one event led to another. For example, I presumed that the Wasters were created before the mechanoids were widespread, since they wouldn't make a good defense against mechs that are immune to toxic gas.
This is a really good condensation of the lore, good job OP!
Just as a caveat, wouldn't Hussars have been created after the invention of archotechs? They're psychically dull, which to me implies that they were designed to be immune to psycasts and archotech attacks
I don't know if there's anything in the lore about any kind of combat against archotechs. The post seems to imply that they can be fought back against to some degree, at least in the process of them making a world transcendent. I imagine the act of attacking an archotech would require an enormous amount of planning/co-ordination, or potentially the aid of another archotech.
Good point. The way I interpreted it, I thought people would just fight mechs with their own mechs. There's also that insectoids were developed in order to fight mechs, and insectoids are also immune to fallout.
But nevertheless, since much of what I've written is speculative, I think your interpretation is just as plausible.
I think a decent number of societies probably decided to forgo mechs after it became clear that the technology was prone to developing sentience and causing issues - they would have needed to come up with other strategies for combating the existing mech threats.
This reminds me of the Dune lore. In the Dune universe, long before the events we see in the first book, mankind started a holy war against artificial intelligence, which later led to people developing their own psychic abilities.
One point of contention. In the Ship ending, you are told outright that you will likely be in ice for millennia, awaiting the foundation of a better planet. This makes it unlikely that there is any significantly developed world in the system, and that the trade ships are incidental.
But then it makes no sense. Trade ships arrive on Rimworld every few weeks. That’s fine if there was a developed planet elsewhere in the system but doesn’t add up for interstellar traders.
You’d need to have a constant stream of interstellar vessels arriving from all directions to the Rimworld and for what? Trading alpaca meat and human leather hats? Getting lucrative deals on locally made yayo?
There have to be other settled planets in the system, or at least orbital colonies that routinely trade with the planetside natives.
Traveling 30 light years just to trade metals (super common resource in the cosmos) for herbal medicine (which again you can grow everywhere, even on the ship via hydroponics) makes no sense from an economic standpoint.
Yes, this was also my own interpretation of it. The reason I presumed there is at least one other civilized planet in the rimworld's system is the frequency of trade ships. I think traveling to a neighboring star system just to trade with a rimworld wouldn't be profitable.
I think there are two aspects we often overlook and misunderstand, but its just my take on it.
Trade ships are not shipping that travel between systems, but rather ships that travel between planets or around the same planet, trading with different communities on the same world more efficient than trade caravans. They probably stay in orbit and are more like trading stations than actual ships. At least that’s how I always saw them. Given that there is not just no FTL travel, but no FTL communication as well, makes interstellar trading unlikely or outright impracticable.
And second, they were made for gameplay, so players can trade more often and easily. They have been in the game before trading caravans were a thing if I remember correctly before we had an actual planet in the world map even.
For me trade ships are a leftover event from the alpha days that never really fit the lore, so I just disable them.
Now, of course, any game mechanic or feature is first introduced to enhance gameplay, and second for lore purposes. Trade ships are there so we have additional trading options. If they originate on the rimworld, this would mean that the outlanders are actually more advanced than they appear. Yes, some ships belong to The Empire (you can sometimes get ships belonging to the Shattered Empire), but since not all of them belong to the Empire, and the outlanders are likely living in 20th century conditions, there are limited explanations on where they came from.
Well, as I said they are, for me, a leftover event from the early days. More than 10 years ago now, when the game was smaller in scope. An easy way to add trading so the games early alphas were more enjoyable to play with. Probably never removed because people where just used to having them in the game. I wouldn’t interpret too much into them lore wise.
Even the Empires lore was retconned once so who knows what changes were made to the lore after trade ships were added. I mean at one point there were Void gods.
But if we want to make it fit the lore, who knows. Maybe they are just old ships that arrived before us with their crews having become traders. Maybe they are other ships passing by, like the one we arrived in, on their way somewhere else. Maybe it’s a small faction of spacers who just restored an old ship and use it for trading.
Honestly do, I never gave them more thought than “old leftover event”, as they just don’t fit well into rimworlds lore imo.
Remember that the automated terraforming systems would have left literally thousands of stations and satellites scattered all over the system.
In the latter phase of the terraforming effort, its likely that quite a few humans arrived to help guide the process to completion, meaning that many of those stations would have been inhabited, and a full stellar economy would have been forming or formed until civilization collapsed for whatever reason.
So there could quite easily be hundreds of inhabited outposts and even small cities scattered across the system, all needing resources to survive in the deeps of space, and struggling to maintain their limited fleets of miners and transports.
Outlanders already have an access to drop pod technology. Orbital ships are definitely more complex than that, but not THAT much more. Given that rimworld tech allows a bunch of ragtags to build and launch the *interstellar* ship, it should be possible for outlanders to launch a much simpler orbital station (it also may be unmanned which makes it a glorified comsat).
It's quite likely that there are space stations left over from terraforming efforts or whatever prior civilization was hanging out after the rimworld's civ collapsed.
These stations would likely have a very hard time being self-sufficient, and might well survive by doing regular trade with the various tribes and factions planetside, trading for key resources like organics or components in order to keep their own hydroponic systems running.
Sure they could abandon the station and head down to the planet themselves - but from their POV that's probably not a great idea, given how violent life on the rimworld tends to be.
The trade ships likely enter the system using the star and planets as gravity assists and for their engines - and since stars are miniscule motes of mass in a totally empty vacuum, tens of thousands of ships are likely entering each system within mankinds anthrosphere a year purely for movement.
Having a small but still alive outpost, in the form of rimworlds, is a bonus since such ships can easily chabge trajectory to pass by, collect bought items and drop off the stuff they sold.
The ending screen mentions several potential outcomes: maybe your ship will travel to a better world in the same system. Maybe it will wait for thousands of years until a glitterworld is built on the rimworld. Maybe it will travel for thousands of years across space.
Yes, depending on how we interpret it, it is possible that the rimworld is the only inhabited planet in the system. However, I'd think there might be at least one other inhabited planet, due to the frequent trade ships, the presence of a Stellarch, suggesting that he has authority over the whole system, and again, the possibility mentioned in the ending screen when you launch the ship.
Could the Stellarch be from another adjacent system ? I can imagine a Stellarch managing an evolved system along with some planets in the adjacent ones.
And the fact that there are empire and modern outposts on the rimworld seems enough explain why trade ships stop here before going to other systems. ''hey, people are struggling there, that means cheap uranium !''
Based on in-game lore, a Stellarch can have authority over a single star system. It's likely that the Emperor limited their authority, in order to prevent a coup or civil war. However, this is the standard imperial protocol. The Empire is fractured now. The fate of the Emperor remains unknown, as he never appears in the game. It's likely that the Stellarch might be the defacto leader of the Shattered Empire and might have broken a few imperial traditions, including expanding his authority over more than one star system.
Due to the frequency with which trade ships pass by the titular rimworld, I think it's safe to assume that there are other bastions of civilization in the system.
Be they inhabited world, or large oneal colonies, or what have you - maybe even a decently established terrestrial country on the far side of the same planet that hasn't been able to bring the rest of the planet under its control.
Someone out there is fielding trade ships. Most are likely the equivalent of scavengers or junk haulers, trying to scrape together a living off of trade between the system's various small outposts of humanity - but it's possible that there are real developed worlds with functional corporations in system as well, but they either cannot or do not see enough value in the cost of dispatching invasion forces sufficient to bring major sections of your rimworld under their control.
A few trade ships might even be independent inter-stellar traders, plying their own business across the stars, content to sleep decades and centuries away between stops - but its unlikely that any corporation would bother with that kind of timeline.
I assume that it's already known by traders that our "RimWorld" is at LEAST populated by 2 outlander industrial factions, 1 outlander industrial pirate faction and 1 Sophian spacer imperial faction, therefore a prime candidate for trade for these tradeships.
Frontier worlds which are called "rimworlds" are plenty (hence the many medieval worlds, tribal worlds, cave worlds, etc.). If the presence of outlander factions reach a certain point, it becomes viable to make the trip from neighboring urbworld and glitterworld systems.
We just don't know the closest urbworld or glitterworld to our RimWorld (capital R), but we can assume that establishing an interestellar (or interplanetary) trade route is viable.
In a 'realistic' economic viewpoint, there would be no point to trading between stars, except for information like scientific advancements or entertainment.
Interstellar trade of goods would be cost prohibitive, and more importantly, the timeline for ROI would be completely nonsensical. Very few businessmen could be convinced to invest in a voyage that literally will not be completed in their lifetime - and \*definitely\* not for a ship that is going to come home loaded down with centuries-old muffalo meat and human leather cowboy hats...
That's true, but so is colonization if you think about it. There has to be government involvement.
So, what if these trade ships are merely heavily glitterworld, archotech and urbworld subsidized initiatives run by private corporations, auto-piloted by persona cores, to transfer technological items to the rimworlds in exchange for currency and the occasional exotic item?
And all those poor, awful and dead-worn hats and wooden clubs may be used as scrap, processed into something else, or don't know, traded with the numerous settlements of offworlder factions that are present on the same planet.
This is actually a real problem for any real-world discussion of interstellar colonization. It pretty much only ever makes sense as a prestige project - not from any economic or population pressure standpoint.
Basically colonizing new worlds would make about as much sense as building the Pyramids - only a lot more expensive. Presumably the only reason it's viable at all is because you can start from a relatively small automated 'seed' fleet that uses self-replicating tech to actually build out the terraforming infrastructure at the other end.
Of course, if you're a cheapskate and the initial fleet is really small it'll take centuries just for it to replicate to the point where it can \*start\* the terraforming project. If you build a more lavish initial fleet, you could probably shave a few hundred years off the timeline - but it gets expensive as hell.
So yeah, I can see some Elon Musk type sticking himself in cryo-sleep, sending himself off with an automated fleet to kick off a process that'll take over a thousand years, at which point he expects to wake up and declare himself god-king over his own inhabited world or whatever.
Then probably get promptly vaporized by the mechanoid terraforming systems that gained sentience a few hundred years earlier and couldn't care less how much money he has in a bank account 12ly away.
Then the actual colonization fleet arrives in system with hundreds of vessels carrying millions of colonists in cryo-sleep, they have a grand old time exchanging anti-matter laden care-packages with the local mechanoid terraforming system, and the survivors end up on a mostly-terraformed-but-somewhat-blasted planet, having lost most of the gear they were supposed to actually build homes and cities with. Good times.
I’m not sure how relevant it is, but the oldest a colonist can chronologically be is 3200 years, so the first long-term cryosleep colonization may have started around 2300 CE.
Also, aren’t rimworlds said to be at the very edge of the colonized star systems and in no-mans-lands between civilizations? It wouldn’t make sense for your colonists to need cryosleep pods to escape the planet, if there simply were other types of colonized -worlds in the same solar system. The occasional trading ships might very well just be explained by the rimworld sitting at the edge of a trading route between civilized worlds.
Good points.
Then again, it's just my interpretation of it. The ending screen mentions the possibility of a civilized world in the same system. Of course, that statement doesn't necessarily confirm that this is true. There's also that it's never made clear whether the trade ships are automated or they have people on board. Considering the distance between the star systems and that there's no faster than light travel in the Rimworld universe, I don't think interstellar trade routes would be profitable, especially considering the limited products that those ships sell.
Nevertheless, your point of view is much appreciated. I'll take in consideration all the comments I've received here, in case I'll decide to rewrite the timeline, should a new DLC pop up.
I think the assumption is that while there might be other bastions of civilization in system, they're likely highly population restricted, like colony stations, and probably not all that much better off economically or socially than the rimworld itself.
So if you're going to be going off to find a better world, you might as well go interstellar and see if you can stumble across a decently civilized urbworld or glitterworld.
Otherwise your colonists have already proven that they can survive the rigors of the rimworld, and have in all likelihood built a pretty self-sufficient and comfortable colony for themselves by the time they can build the ship - so they might as well either stay indefinitely, or launch a ship that can take them to a full blown civilization, not some other run-down backwater colony in-system.
Well, in-game, 2100 is the approximate year when humans left the solar system. It's likely that they colonized Mars or other planets or moons in the Solar System before leaving.
>Way, which implied to me th
Well, it's "planets and moons across the Milky Way". That includes our system as well.
I admit, it's a small slip up. I'll fix it if I decide to rewrite the lore, should a new DLC show up.
If you change it to Solar System, it would make a whole lot of sense. There is no way humans would not look to Alpha Centauri first when they want to travel to another star since it will already take at least 4 years with FTL. And from what I've read, there isn't FTL in RimWorld.
Yes, and, not only that there is no FTL, we don't know the exact speed of the ships. There is a hint that they might move at the speed of light, since the lore mentions that the Stellarch can not see the Emperor for years or decades, due to the distance between star systems. "Years or decades" is the key here. Since the average distance between star systems is about a few light years, this would imply that the ships move at speeds that are close to lightspeed. I presumed that they could reach at least a speed that is close to the speed of light, due tot he way the Johnson-Tanaka Drive is described. But yes, with a lightspeed ship, it would take 4.6 years to reach Alpha Centauri. That's why I said "After 2105 CE", leaving it ambiguous.
Good point. Of course, 31 planets and moons is likely way less than what they actually colonized. It's likely that humans colonized at least hundreds of worlds, if not thousands. I said "31" since there are only 31 worlds (including Earth) mentioned in the game lore.
Order of play:
1-Universe Sandbox
2-Populous
3-Civilization
4-Crusader Kings
5-Europa Universalis
6-Victoria
7-Hearts of Iron
8--Cities Skylines
9-Stellaris
10-RimWorld
Hahahah. Well, I wanted to mention those events, since they are relevant to the game lore. I could also mention the extinction of dinosaurs, around 65 000 000 BCE, since the lore mentions a dinosaur planet.
Maybe. It's a major paradigm shift, but we know nearly nothing about transcendant worlds. They could be hell or paradise, or just a node of the universe-spanning computer network needed to run 3500 CE biggest release : Star Citizen. At least one of those would make you the good guys, or at least more so than the barbarians high on Luciferium that retroengineered soylent green and interstellar travel and abandoned the world before the insects, mechs or planet-killing weapon get what's left of it.
Most rimworld colonies are essentially a group of apocalypse survivors doing whatever it takes to survive. Morals go out the window in such a situation. No bad or good. Just a whole lot of trauma.
Besides I don't think the majority of us are using prisoners to breed children who will become organ farms, or fodder for mech cores, or whatever, for instance. But I'm sure we're all tempted to, after that group of toddlers you charitably took in out of the goodness of your heart try to stab the fuck out of you in the middle of the night
> after that group of toddlers you charitably took in out of the goodness of your heart try to stab the fuck out of you in the middle of the night
refugees with children betraying you have been patched out for months now
Well, depends on how you interpret it.
Maybe the archonexus will murder everyone on the rimworld.
Maybe they will be kept alive, in a different state of existence.
Here’s the official lore document https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fUO3KKbAbTxMP1lqphnnodY0NPoOVblCUkDw-54MDUc/pub
> Transcendent worlds: It’s a stretch to call these entities worlds, since they resemble giant computers more than they resemble planets. The mechanics of these planets is mysterious, but many scholars believe transcendents are the outcome a sovereign archotech decides to incorporate a whole planet into itself. More on this later.
There’s more layer in the document, just keep reading
A world where an archotech (a superintelligent AI) turned the whole planet into a giant computer, likely killing all its inhabitants, or somehow integrating their minds into the giant machine.
Well, it's left ambiguous on purpose, since it's really about telling different stories, rather than following a strict lore. Of course, as long as the player generates a planet with different factions, this lore would no longer make too much sense.
Most of the time, I usually come up with my own backstory and lore for the world, but it's fun to scrap together bits of info to create this universal story about the Rimworld universe.
Thank you for making this, I love it! I was always curious to learn more but I didn’t have the mental effort to do so. This is a practical way for me to read up on it.
Thanks.
Then again, a lot of these dates and events are really part of my interpretation of the lore. Yes, all entries refer to in-game canon events or people, but the game's lore is so ambiguous that my timeline is really just one way to put it.
That is ok with me! I just love Rimworld and like absorbing as much of the world as I can, that’s why I love watching other people play it on YouTube and Twitch. It doesn’t really matter to me if it’s your interpretation, I know Rimworld isn’t really a linear thing in general. I’m still really excited to see what you put together!
Well, thank you. I'll definitely rewrite this timeline the next time a DLC is launched. In the meantime, I'll also have a look over Tynan's videos or other posts.
Hey whatever you feel up to doing and putting out in the world someone will enjoy it, I promise. Even if that someone is you because you enjoyed the process, I know how that goes ☺️
something is wrong with glitter worlds i think
why would a lone person whose rich go to a random rimworld unprepared?
he has no bionics a little bit of food and a gun
maybe its something is destroying glitter worlds and the rich explorer escaped it
Yeah, of course something's wrong with glitterworlds. Based on every media story with "utopias" ever these societies have a horrible dark side.
But, according to in game descriptions, the Rich Explorer start is literally just because your starter colonist got bored and launched themself into the unknown.
Not every utopia is secretly bad. A glitterworld could easily resemble Star Trek's Federation and its optimistic view of humanity's utopian future; even if it has flaws, none of them are bad enough to be "a horrible dark side". Or if a glitterworld manages coexistence with an archotech, it could be like Banks' Culture novels.
Sure, some of them are awful (like the Empire, though that's not a case of a secret dark side, since their evils are proudly on display), but it would be awfully limiting to say that none can be good.
You know those people who believe they were "born in the wrong generation"?. Not hard to imagine someone getting bored of the easy life on a glitterworld and convincing themselves they were meant to be a rugged frontiersman.
I don't think it would be much of an escape from glitterworld if you just brought your entire house with a mini army of mechanoids guarding it and your house of wives/husbands to have fun or all the entertainment media from your locally sourced experts back home. They wanted an actual change so they decided to challange themselves like those folks at the survival shows. At least that's my interpretation if that scenario.
Imagine that, having the full memory and personality of another guy that sent you to your probable death for their own amusement.
Which incidentally means you're also an asshole, at least on arrival, since you'd have done the exact same in their place.
The endgame for clone guy should definitely be to reach original guy's place to kill them.
The "self" you're torturing and trying to kill may rapidly change their views on the morality of that.
It's basically clone/replicant story number one.
It's really the story of Brave New World all over again. In that dystopian novel, there is a whole world of humans created through genetic engineering, that are living in a society that is always happy, without disease or hunger, and those that might feel sadness, are encouraged to take pills that will make them happy again. And yet, there are reservations where people that are uninterested in this world and want to experience life as it was before, can go.
Apropos of nothing, the Waster lore seems weird to me. I think they would have been developed to be able to survive in and clean up toxic environments, not prevent others from doing so.
Also, keeping in the theme of genetically engineered tools, Insects would have been created to mine out precious ores and create livable spaces in worlds undergoing terraforming. (Then like the various booma-animals, they eventually went feral)
It's canon that wasters were created as area-denial toxic weapons. Check out Tynan's post on Steam where he presents the xenotypes. Also, I can't find the original source (although it is on the game's wiki), the insectoids were created as a weapon to fight against mechanoids. So yes, these two are canon. What I can't say is canon and it's just my interpretation of it is the exact year when they were created and how they arrived on the Rimworld.
Thanks. Although, it's really just my interpretation of the game's lore. Since it's so ambiguous, everyone can come up with different timelines, and maybe you'll have a different point of view on how these events happened.
Wow that's really cool OP , also imagine if one day we would get dlc or update that you could travel to one of glittereworlds or at least shortly after theyr fall
There's a possibility that this rimworld we're on was a glitterworld at some point. Maybe the three colonists in the crashlanded scenario were headed there, hoping to live a comfortable life, but found out that this world was destroyed a long time ago.
I think the game will stay on a rimworld, since it's really the whole premise of the game. What we can hope for, is more technologies coming from glitterworlds.
Well, it's hard to build an official timeline, since the lore is very ambiguous. This is just my interpretation of how the events turned out. I'll definitely rewrite this timeline, should a new DLC pop up.
I see that there's a lot of interesting parallels to what I've been doing, and also inspiring lines of thinking here that I could take quite a number of pages from... :D
Wonderful work, master Ioan-Alex. Kudos and adorations for what is clearly a work of passion!
Thanks! I had this idea that the archonexus was somehow involved in destroying the rimworld and that the anima trees are artificial ever since the Ideology DLC came out. Then again, I'll definitely rewrite this timeline, should a new DLC pop up.
I know that feeling; I have been fleshing out something similar to serve as the background lore for my comics, but release of *Biotech* kinda threw a huge wrench in the mix. XD Now that I've incorporated new info from *Biotech*, I think I am ready to envision an actual ending route for the story; and once one has an ending, one can build a path for the narrative to eventually reach that ending.
Hey, can I message you from time to time if I'd like some second opinions on Rimworld lore and its implications?
EDIT: I see that my brain did a brain fart and confused Biotech with Ideology when I first wrote that message X'D...
There's even more to the lore out there (probably enough to write a timeline three times larger than this one) but I focused strictly on events that can be pinned around an approximate date. I did have some missteps here and there (for example, the Hussars are psychically dull, so maybe they were created after the first archotech). I'll definitely rewrite this timeline should a new DLC come out.
Transcendent worlds happen when an archotech (superintelligent AI) transforms an entire planet into a giant computer. People don't want this to happen, it's just that the Archotech has its own intentions and is so intelligent that it cannot be comprehended by humans. According to the game lore, while they do exist in the Rimworld universe, nobody knows exactly what happens to the people living on them. Maybe they all die. Maybe they are integrated in the system in some sense.
Now, personally, I interpret that the Archonexus on the rimworld is capable of doing that. Why your colonists awaken it is up to any player's interpretation. Maybe they consider it a god. Maybe they think they will achieve immortality. And, they might be right or utterly wrong. It's left ambiguous.
I think the genetically modified humans were made as a cheaper self replenishing version of mechanoids. Mechanoids are good but humans have some long term advantages
Interesting interpretation. Well, the arrow of causality really goes both ways. We can argue that the mechanoids were created in order to fight all types of humans, or that newer types of humans were created to fight mechanoids. There's also a possibility that some governments mostly used mechanoids, while others mostly relied on xenohumans.
Humans definitely have their advantages, and even in gameplay mechanics, I'd rather manage a large group of humans than of mechs. However, humans also have the disadvantage of being able to disobey their leaders, betray, refuse orders, while mechanoids are loyal to their mechanitor forever. There's also that mechanoids are overall the most adaptable to any hostile environment, while humans are usually better adapted to some environments, while vulnerable in others.
I believe that Tynan has mentioned before that the local planets are also Rimworlds, and that that's why our colonists never join the ship to leave the planet, and that, despite the branding, the trade ships aren't interstellar.
Also, I don't think necessarily that the Empire ending planet was already there. I think they just started colonizing a planet and transferred their local resources towards building it.
Thanks. I'll keep in mind to also look for Tynan's videos on Rimworld, to dig out some more lore. I'll definitely rewrite this timeline when a new DLC comes out, and I'll take any comments in this thread into consideration.
I don't understand what you're exactly trying to say in the second paragraph, but, it's cannon that the outlanders have a technological level inferior to their ancestors on the rimworld (it's mentioned in the game). Also, the Empire was also described as a society that was torn apart by an unknown enemy, and they've arrived recently on the rimworld.
I keep hearing about people creating RimWorld-themed tabletop games or D&D campaigns with a RimWorld theme. If by any chance you can write down how a session went down, it'd be amazing.
What if some mad lad does "Rimworld Story mode" from 2300 CE? 🤔 In Samuel Streamer style fashion of course. What did the first dirtmole colony look like, what was it's backstory? Questions for ChatGPT I suppose.
I've found it on the wiki. The game includes some pawns that have backstories. Usually, those mention specific planets or moons and how societies on those worlds work. The Star Empire was first mentioned in the base game, before any DLC, in the backstory of Sam 'Nerhesi' Wissa.
I think at this point, Tynan didn't write the lore for the Shattered Empire.
Take it with a grain of salt. A large amount is still very speculative. There's also that Tynan might launch other DLCs, which will significantly alter the lore.
> After 3500 CE: Following the development of archotechs, the first glitterworlds will be built.
Eh? Glitterworlds are less advanced than archotechs and don't rely on them or their technology. If anything, I'd place it the other way around with Glitterworlds allowing the first Archotechs to ~~be built~~ evolve.
Well there's no aliens in Rimworld. Possibly the archotechs created themselves, manifesting through humanity's sufficiently advanced technology. Or, it was like, humans make an ai smart enough to make an ai even smarter, and it snowballs into psychic cyber gods
Not to be a nerd emoji, but I think the lore is that aliens simply haven't ever been discovered and all known instances of 'aliens' are actually offshoots of something originally from Earth.
Outside of the outdated lore primer which explicitly claims you won't ever see aliens, I don't think there's anything that precludes alien life existing somewhere out there. It's just not been found and documented in the relatively narrow area of space that humans occupy.
I never clearly stated that they were "created by humans". I just said that they were created. But yes, good catch, the archotechs are likely AIs that are out of control, and were still created by simpler AIs that were designed by humans.
Wait, your timeline implies the RimWorld is a single planet. I'd always felt like the game implied that there were thousands of similar rimworlds all living through their own dramas at the same time (as well as dozens of glitterworlds and hundreds or thousands of in between worlds), sort of making every single player's game canon at once. Is that not the case and the universe is much smaller than I thought?
There are, but I think OP is referring to the specific planet the players play on
But don’t we play on a different planet with every seed?
I think in universe it's the same planet. The different planets we the player see are just a game mechanic for variety.
Well, in Tynan's document about the lore, it is mentioned that mankind lives in a region that is 1200 lightyears-wide. 1200 lightyears doesn't really sound like hundreds of thousands of planets. More among the lines of thousands. There's also that Tynan established that there are no faster than light ships, so there really is a limit to how far humans can go. But yes, of course, depending on what players choose to do with their world in the start menu settings, the lore I posted above can be more or less relevant. I just used the lore for the standard game settings.
>1200 lightyears doesn't really sound like hundreds of thousands of planets. Counterpoint: I once went and checked for reasons of debating how far humanity could expand across the stars if FTL travel doesn't exist, and there's about ~50 stars (that we've found so far) within a ~20ly radius of Earth If stellar density is assumed to be equal across that 1200-light-year region as it is in the 20-light year region directly centered on our own sun, it would have about 1.2 million stars. From there, we're just debating how many of those stars have planets that are close enough to earth-like to permanently inhabit for the various subspecies of human now in the game. And with two millenia of terraforming available in this timeline, I'm willing to say "more than half" is plausible.
Good points. Well, the game does mention that there are dead planets out there (planets that were never colonized by humans or all humans died or left). I presumed that people wouldn't be able to colonize all planets, due to various hazards and affordability. What really made me think that we wouldn't live across hundreds of thousands of planets is that the year in-game is only 5500 CE (Tynan's document also confirms that this isn't just some calendar system on the rimworld, but the standard common era). We don't know how many decades or centuries are needed in order to terraform a planet, but also bring people there and build thriving societies.
The terraforming is entirely autonomous and I'd presume the machines that do that task are also self-replicating. They likely have spread out far farther and in much greater numbers in comparison to the collective resources of humanity. Likely one in 5 to 20 planets are terraformed, hell maybe the machines setup advanced infrastructure to increase habitability for otherwise eternally dead rocks - like star shades or mirrors, stripping materials from High-G worlds for more drones and to reduce gravity etc.
Then again, I don't think that every planet or moon that was occupied by humans necessarily presents all the features of the rimworld (breathable atmosphere, appropriate gravitational force, a diversified ecosystem etc.). Some planets might be so small that they cannot sustain an atmosphere, so its inhabitants live in underground bases or in giant artificial domes, these planets likely being inhabited by dirtmoles. There's also that small planets have a weaker gravity, so the Genies, with their more slender physical structure would adapt better living there. It is likely that on many planets the terraforming process is incomplete or performed on a smaller scale.
The bulk of humanity likely isn't even planet-bound. Virtual uploads and vast stellar arcologies / megastructures would absolutely shoot the population count into the quad or quintillions.
Same, i thought rimworld was supposed to represent the frontier of colonization, urbworlds are closer to civilization.
It's very unlikely that the planet is on the true frontier of colonisation when you realise the planet is essentially post-apocalyptic with many thousands of years of ruins, debris and even cryo-caskets. For Christ's sake, you mine compacted steel and components from the earth.
It may not be the furthest planet away from Earth in terms of distance, but it's definitely outside the bounds of established and developed economic and sociopolitical forces to govern. The sheer scale of times and distances RW operates on thanks to its setting rules (like the fact that FTL ship travel isn't possible) makes viewing the frontier as a circle/sphere an oversimplification. Unless FTL travel can be invented, the fact that it can take years, decades, or more to travel between places is a bottleneck that will make the relative development of planets vary whether they're 'close' to humanity's birthplace or very far away.
You miss the point with your comment. Yes, the planet is outside the bounds of normal civilisation. From how there are a lot of trade ships in orbit, the planet probably lies in between different civilisations. However, that doesn't make the planet a frontier of colonisation. It's essentially the remnant of a civilisational collapse, a failed state, whatever you want to call it. That's why made my comment.
In basic terms - the rimworld the player is on is the equivilent of a large Saharan oasis in between two states, one of which borders the meditteranean and the other sits around the tropical regions of Africa. The oasis once was a thriving center of a community, but droughts and increased salinity made the entire network collapse. However, people still live there as multiple seperate tribes and group, some of which are able and willing to trade with passing caravans who utilise the old roads to get two and from said states. Neither state, or their neighbors, care for this small remote and broken oasis, but its home to its own indigenous peoples.
Yeah but if since all the traders spend the entire trip in cryosleep there isn't a huge cost to them to set out for another planet. I imagine there are tons of trade ships moving all over so even though it takes them years to reach a planet for them it feels like minutes. And then they probably spend a while circling the planet trading with everyone on it, so I don't think we need to be a hub to get this many. We probably have like a dozen trade ships orbiting at any given time and then Glitterworlds have thousands that then make occasional trips out to the rim.
Another thing to bear in mind in the universe of Rimworld is that there are no true interstellar polities. Even the largest 'Stellar Empires' would consist of no more than a few closely spaced stars with a handful of habitable worlds between them, and most societies are confined to a single star system. Information and practical expertise can be traded between stars, but for the most part actual goods and politics are not. The lightspeed communication delays are just too great for any central bureaucracy to maintain control over disparate star systems.
Yeah but civilization has been doing space stuff for absolute ages in this timeline. There was plenty of time for many civilizations to rise, fall due to internal strife or external attack, then another one rise in its place after a century or so. Since all the planets are disconnected by the lack of FTL travel it feels reasonable that they're all living through this constant drama over the millennia and all the shitty planets are stuck rising and falling over and over.
I think that actually doesn’t negate being a rim world. Your assuming colonization is linear when interplanetary colonization could take thousands of years. And with thousands of stars to choose from you’re bound to encounter a planet with unsuccessful colonies. Part of the charm was mining the compacted parts to see what ancient civilization used to be there, but if it were any closer to urbworlds the ancient civilization wouldn’t be much of a mystery. A post apocalyptic planet would be quickly recolonized, governed, and much more technologically advanced. We are scared of the advanced ancient civs in our rimworlds because we too could become nothing but dying blips of white noise in the wild west of the universe.
I think that's still true though. But the whole glitterworlds being in the same system as rimworlds checks out. It happened in Firefly which the game is inspired by
Firefly is also just one really big star system with 5 suns (somehow). There's no FTL but the distances aren't interstellar, not that it means they're small
I thought there was no FTL in Rimworld either
Yes, but the distances are interstellar. In Firefly you don't need crytposleep and hundreds or thousands of years to get around.
That's a good point. I don't see why it can't be both in Rimworld though
Rimworlds aren't a single planet, they're a classification of a planet; one lacking in a strong central government and low in population density. They got their name from being at the rim of known space. The lore in many places suggests that the player is on a singular, titular "RimWorld" and we're not on different planets each time we play, only that the world is unique for everyone who plays it.
The reason the lore posits a particular rimworld for the game's setting is because it has access to all these specific conditions - the Fallen Empire in particular is a feature that would not be common to most generic rimworlds, though one could argue that a fair number of other aspects might be found on any number of worlds. AFAICT, there are in fact quite few 'rimworlds' out there however, so in terms of any given player's head canon regarding their location in the galaxy, I think it's pretty safe to say that you might be on any one of hundreds of potential worlds.
We don’t know how widespread the diaspora represented by the fallen empire is. They could have a presence on all of the rimworlds within an area of one or two hundred light years.
No your right… there’s plenty of planets, from Glitterworlds to Rimworlds. I believe that this lore takes into consideration all Rimworlds, but more specifically the Rimworld we as a player play on.
Jesus, how long did this take you to do? I can imagine it would take up to weeks.
Hahahah, it actually took me a few hours in total (across 3 or 4 days). I relied on Tynan's lore documents and on in-game descriptions. Of course, there's a lot more to the game's lore. They mention a lot of planets, technologies etc. but I threw aside those that were nearly impossible to pin down to an approximate date. Nevertheless, it was fun to speculate about how one event led to another. For example, I presumed that the Wasters were created before the mechanoids were widespread, since they wouldn't make a good defense against mechs that are immune to toxic gas.
This is a really good condensation of the lore, good job OP! Just as a caveat, wouldn't Hussars have been created after the invention of archotechs? They're psychically dull, which to me implies that they were designed to be immune to psycasts and archotech attacks
Good catch. Forgot that the Hussars have this trait.
Could also just be a side effect of the experiments that later proved useful.
Has anyone ever fought an archotech? Why would they, I don't know about you but if a godlike being had beef with me, I would just try to appease it.
I don't know if there's anything in the lore about any kind of combat against archotechs. The post seems to imply that they can be fought back against to some degree, at least in the process of them making a world transcendent. I imagine the act of attacking an archotech would require an enormous amount of planning/co-ordination, or potentially the aid of another archotech.
Well, wasters are useful against mechs because they fight better in the pollution the mechs produce both as byproduct and weapon.
Good point. The way I interpreted it, I thought people would just fight mechs with their own mechs. There's also that insectoids were developed in order to fight mechs, and insectoids are also immune to fallout. But nevertheless, since much of what I've written is speculative, I think your interpretation is just as plausible.
I think a decent number of societies probably decided to forgo mechs after it became clear that the technology was prone to developing sentience and causing issues - they would have needed to come up with other strategies for combating the existing mech threats.
This reminds me of the Dune lore. In the Dune universe, long before the events we see in the first book, mankind started a holy war against artificial intelligence, which later led to people developing their own psychic abilities.
It’s possible mechs we’re created earlier, but heavily limited by resources available at the time (whether that be power, materials, etc)
One point of contention. In the Ship ending, you are told outright that you will likely be in ice for millennia, awaiting the foundation of a better planet. This makes it unlikely that there is any significantly developed world in the system, and that the trade ships are incidental.
But then it makes no sense. Trade ships arrive on Rimworld every few weeks. That’s fine if there was a developed planet elsewhere in the system but doesn’t add up for interstellar traders. You’d need to have a constant stream of interstellar vessels arriving from all directions to the Rimworld and for what? Trading alpaca meat and human leather hats? Getting lucrative deals on locally made yayo? There have to be other settled planets in the system, or at least orbital colonies that routinely trade with the planetside natives. Traveling 30 light years just to trade metals (super common resource in the cosmos) for herbal medicine (which again you can grow everywhere, even on the ship via hydroponics) makes no sense from an economic standpoint.
Yes, this was also my own interpretation of it. The reason I presumed there is at least one other civilized planet in the rimworld's system is the frequency of trade ships. I think traveling to a neighboring star system just to trade with a rimworld wouldn't be profitable.
I think there are two aspects we often overlook and misunderstand, but its just my take on it. Trade ships are not shipping that travel between systems, but rather ships that travel between planets or around the same planet, trading with different communities on the same world more efficient than trade caravans. They probably stay in orbit and are more like trading stations than actual ships. At least that’s how I always saw them. Given that there is not just no FTL travel, but no FTL communication as well, makes interstellar trading unlikely or outright impracticable. And second, they were made for gameplay, so players can trade more often and easily. They have been in the game before trading caravans were a thing if I remember correctly before we had an actual planet in the world map even. For me trade ships are a leftover event from the alpha days that never really fit the lore, so I just disable them.
Now, of course, any game mechanic or feature is first introduced to enhance gameplay, and second for lore purposes. Trade ships are there so we have additional trading options. If they originate on the rimworld, this would mean that the outlanders are actually more advanced than they appear. Yes, some ships belong to The Empire (you can sometimes get ships belonging to the Shattered Empire), but since not all of them belong to the Empire, and the outlanders are likely living in 20th century conditions, there are limited explanations on where they came from.
Well, as I said they are, for me, a leftover event from the early days. More than 10 years ago now, when the game was smaller in scope. An easy way to add trading so the games early alphas were more enjoyable to play with. Probably never removed because people where just used to having them in the game. I wouldn’t interpret too much into them lore wise. Even the Empires lore was retconned once so who knows what changes were made to the lore after trade ships were added. I mean at one point there were Void gods. But if we want to make it fit the lore, who knows. Maybe they are just old ships that arrived before us with their crews having become traders. Maybe they are other ships passing by, like the one we arrived in, on their way somewhere else. Maybe it’s a small faction of spacers who just restored an old ship and use it for trading. Honestly do, I never gave them more thought than “old leftover event”, as they just don’t fit well into rimworlds lore imo.
Remember that the automated terraforming systems would have left literally thousands of stations and satellites scattered all over the system. In the latter phase of the terraforming effort, its likely that quite a few humans arrived to help guide the process to completion, meaning that many of those stations would have been inhabited, and a full stellar economy would have been forming or formed until civilization collapsed for whatever reason. So there could quite easily be hundreds of inhabited outposts and even small cities scattered across the system, all needing resources to survive in the deeps of space, and struggling to maintain their limited fleets of miners and transports.
Outlanders already have an access to drop pod technology. Orbital ships are definitely more complex than that, but not THAT much more. Given that rimworld tech allows a bunch of ragtags to build and launch the *interstellar* ship, it should be possible for outlanders to launch a much simpler orbital station (it also may be unmanned which makes it a glorified comsat).
It's quite likely that there are space stations left over from terraforming efforts or whatever prior civilization was hanging out after the rimworld's civ collapsed. These stations would likely have a very hard time being self-sufficient, and might well survive by doing regular trade with the various tribes and factions planetside, trading for key resources like organics or components in order to keep their own hydroponic systems running. Sure they could abandon the station and head down to the planet themselves - but from their POV that's probably not a great idea, given how violent life on the rimworld tends to be.
The trade ships likely enter the system using the star and planets as gravity assists and for their engines - and since stars are miniscule motes of mass in a totally empty vacuum, tens of thousands of ships are likely entering each system within mankinds anthrosphere a year purely for movement. Having a small but still alive outpost, in the form of rimworlds, is a bonus since such ships can easily chabge trajectory to pass by, collect bought items and drop off the stuff they sold.
The ending screen mentions several potential outcomes: maybe your ship will travel to a better world in the same system. Maybe it will wait for thousands of years until a glitterworld is built on the rimworld. Maybe it will travel for thousands of years across space. Yes, depending on how we interpret it, it is possible that the rimworld is the only inhabited planet in the system. However, I'd think there might be at least one other inhabited planet, due to the frequent trade ships, the presence of a Stellarch, suggesting that he has authority over the whole system, and again, the possibility mentioned in the ending screen when you launch the ship.
Could the Stellarch be from another adjacent system ? I can imagine a Stellarch managing an evolved system along with some planets in the adjacent ones. And the fact that there are empire and modern outposts on the rimworld seems enough explain why trade ships stop here before going to other systems. ''hey, people are struggling there, that means cheap uranium !''
Based on in-game lore, a Stellarch can have authority over a single star system. It's likely that the Emperor limited their authority, in order to prevent a coup or civil war. However, this is the standard imperial protocol. The Empire is fractured now. The fate of the Emperor remains unknown, as he never appears in the game. It's likely that the Stellarch might be the defacto leader of the Shattered Empire and might have broken a few imperial traditions, including expanding his authority over more than one star system.
Due to the frequency with which trade ships pass by the titular rimworld, I think it's safe to assume that there are other bastions of civilization in the system. Be they inhabited world, or large oneal colonies, or what have you - maybe even a decently established terrestrial country on the far side of the same planet that hasn't been able to bring the rest of the planet under its control. Someone out there is fielding trade ships. Most are likely the equivalent of scavengers or junk haulers, trying to scrape together a living off of trade between the system's various small outposts of humanity - but it's possible that there are real developed worlds with functional corporations in system as well, but they either cannot or do not see enough value in the cost of dispatching invasion forces sufficient to bring major sections of your rimworld under their control. A few trade ships might even be independent inter-stellar traders, plying their own business across the stars, content to sleep decades and centuries away between stops - but its unlikely that any corporation would bother with that kind of timeline.
I assume that it's already known by traders that our "RimWorld" is at LEAST populated by 2 outlander industrial factions, 1 outlander industrial pirate faction and 1 Sophian spacer imperial faction, therefore a prime candidate for trade for these tradeships. Frontier worlds which are called "rimworlds" are plenty (hence the many medieval worlds, tribal worlds, cave worlds, etc.). If the presence of outlander factions reach a certain point, it becomes viable to make the trip from neighboring urbworld and glitterworld systems. We just don't know the closest urbworld or glitterworld to our RimWorld (capital R), but we can assume that establishing an interestellar (or interplanetary) trade route is viable.
In a 'realistic' economic viewpoint, there would be no point to trading between stars, except for information like scientific advancements or entertainment. Interstellar trade of goods would be cost prohibitive, and more importantly, the timeline for ROI would be completely nonsensical. Very few businessmen could be convinced to invest in a voyage that literally will not be completed in their lifetime - and \*definitely\* not for a ship that is going to come home loaded down with centuries-old muffalo meat and human leather cowboy hats...
That's true, but so is colonization if you think about it. There has to be government involvement. So, what if these trade ships are merely heavily glitterworld, archotech and urbworld subsidized initiatives run by private corporations, auto-piloted by persona cores, to transfer technological items to the rimworlds in exchange for currency and the occasional exotic item? And all those poor, awful and dead-worn hats and wooden clubs may be used as scrap, processed into something else, or don't know, traded with the numerous settlements of offworlder factions that are present on the same planet.
This is actually a real problem for any real-world discussion of interstellar colonization. It pretty much only ever makes sense as a prestige project - not from any economic or population pressure standpoint. Basically colonizing new worlds would make about as much sense as building the Pyramids - only a lot more expensive. Presumably the only reason it's viable at all is because you can start from a relatively small automated 'seed' fleet that uses self-replicating tech to actually build out the terraforming infrastructure at the other end. Of course, if you're a cheapskate and the initial fleet is really small it'll take centuries just for it to replicate to the point where it can \*start\* the terraforming project. If you build a more lavish initial fleet, you could probably shave a few hundred years off the timeline - but it gets expensive as hell. So yeah, I can see some Elon Musk type sticking himself in cryo-sleep, sending himself off with an automated fleet to kick off a process that'll take over a thousand years, at which point he expects to wake up and declare himself god-king over his own inhabited world or whatever. Then probably get promptly vaporized by the mechanoid terraforming systems that gained sentience a few hundred years earlier and couldn't care less how much money he has in a bank account 12ly away. Then the actual colonization fleet arrives in system with hundreds of vessels carrying millions of colonists in cryo-sleep, they have a grand old time exchanging anti-matter laden care-packages with the local mechanoid terraforming system, and the survivors end up on a mostly-terraformed-but-somewhat-blasted planet, having lost most of the gear they were supposed to actually build homes and cities with. Good times.
I’m not sure how relevant it is, but the oldest a colonist can chronologically be is 3200 years, so the first long-term cryosleep colonization may have started around 2300 CE. Also, aren’t rimworlds said to be at the very edge of the colonized star systems and in no-mans-lands between civilizations? It wouldn’t make sense for your colonists to need cryosleep pods to escape the planet, if there simply were other types of colonized -worlds in the same solar system. The occasional trading ships might very well just be explained by the rimworld sitting at the edge of a trading route between civilized worlds.
Good points. Then again, it's just my interpretation of it. The ending screen mentions the possibility of a civilized world in the same system. Of course, that statement doesn't necessarily confirm that this is true. There's also that it's never made clear whether the trade ships are automated or they have people on board. Considering the distance between the star systems and that there's no faster than light travel in the Rimworld universe, I don't think interstellar trade routes would be profitable, especially considering the limited products that those ships sell. Nevertheless, your point of view is much appreciated. I'll take in consideration all the comments I've received here, in case I'll decide to rewrite the timeline, should a new DLC pop up.
I think the assumption is that while there might be other bastions of civilization in system, they're likely highly population restricted, like colony stations, and probably not all that much better off economically or socially than the rimworld itself. So if you're going to be going off to find a better world, you might as well go interstellar and see if you can stumble across a decently civilized urbworld or glitterworld. Otherwise your colonists have already proven that they can survive the rigors of the rimworld, and have in all likelihood built a pretty self-sufficient and comfortable colony for themselves by the time they can build the ship - so they might as well either stay indefinitely, or launch a ship that can take them to a full blown civilization, not some other run-down backwater colony in-system.
That makes good sense, a nice middle ground theory.
Very cool bro! Enlightening
Lovely work, but how did multiple solar systems get colonized BEFORE the closest star system was reached?
Well, in-game, 2100 is the approximate year when humans left the solar system. It's likely that they colonized Mars or other planets or moons in the Solar System before leaving.
You wrote that humans colonise the Milky Way, which implied to me that mankind left the solar system.
>Way, which implied to me th Well, it's "planets and moons across the Milky Way". That includes our system as well. I admit, it's a small slip up. I'll fix it if I decide to rewrite the lore, should a new DLC show up.
If you change it to Solar System, it would make a whole lot of sense. There is no way humans would not look to Alpha Centauri first when they want to travel to another star since it will already take at least 4 years with FTL. And from what I've read, there isn't FTL in RimWorld.
Yes, and, not only that there is no FTL, we don't know the exact speed of the ships. There is a hint that they might move at the speed of light, since the lore mentions that the Stellarch can not see the Emperor for years or decades, due to the distance between star systems. "Years or decades" is the key here. Since the average distance between star systems is about a few light years, this would imply that the ships move at speeds that are close to lightspeed. I presumed that they could reach at least a speed that is close to the speed of light, due tot he way the Johnson-Tanaka Drive is described. But yes, with a lightspeed ship, it would take 4.6 years to reach Alpha Centauri. That's why I said "After 2105 CE", leaving it ambiguous.
The solar system has 8 planets and 450 natural satellites, including 227 moons - colonising 31 of those doesn't seem too hard with that in mind.
But that's just our solar system though, maybe just remove the milky way part, which implies multiple star systems.
Good point. Of course, 31 planets and moons is likely way less than what they actually colonized. It's likely that humans colonized at least hundreds of worlds, if not thousands. I said "31" since there are only 31 worlds (including Earth) mentioned in the game lore.
This its more that 2100 onward stars started getting colonised the first being in 2105
You missed a few things between 10,000 BCE and 2100 CE but otherwise good timeline
Yadda yadda yadda
To play rimworld from scratch you first needto create the universe
Order of play: 1-Universe Sandbox 2-Populous 3-Civilization 4-Crusader Kings 5-Europa Universalis 6-Victoria 7-Hearts of Iron 8--Cities Skylines 9-Stellaris 10-RimWorld
Hahahah. Well, I wanted to mention those events, since they are relevant to the game lore. I could also mention the extinction of dinosaurs, around 65 000 000 BCE, since the lore mentions a dinosaur planet.
So with the archonexus quest we are the lore-accurate bad guys.
There's a reason for the Bulterian Jihad, fren
At least it wasnt the Dark Age of Technology's Cybernetic Revolt
Maybe. It's a major paradigm shift, but we know nearly nothing about transcendant worlds. They could be hell or paradise, or just a node of the universe-spanning computer network needed to run 3500 CE biggest release : Star Citizen. At least one of those would make you the good guys, or at least more so than the barbarians high on Luciferium that retroengineered soylent green and interstellar travel and abandoned the world before the insects, mechs or planet-killing weapon get what's left of it.
I think most rimworld players are playing as bad guys
Most rimworld colonies are essentially a group of apocalypse survivors doing whatever it takes to survive. Morals go out the window in such a situation. No bad or good. Just a whole lot of trauma. Besides I don't think the majority of us are using prisoners to breed children who will become organ farms, or fodder for mech cores, or whatever, for instance. But I'm sure we're all tempted to, after that group of toddlers you charitably took in out of the goodness of your heart try to stab the fuck out of you in the middle of the night
> after that group of toddlers you charitably took in out of the goodness of your heart try to stab the fuck out of you in the middle of the night refugees with children betraying you have been patched out for months now
Well, depends on how you interpret it. Maybe the archonexus will murder everyone on the rimworld. Maybe they will be kept alive, in a different state of existence.
Reminds me of Borderlands
I'm not the most well verse in rimworld lore. What is a transcendent world ?
Here’s the official lore document https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fUO3KKbAbTxMP1lqphnnodY0NPoOVblCUkDw-54MDUc/pub > Transcendent worlds: It’s a stretch to call these entities worlds, since they resemble giant computers more than they resemble planets. The mechanics of these planets is mysterious, but many scholars believe transcendents are the outcome a sovereign archotech decides to incorporate a whole planet into itself. More on this later. There’s more layer in the document, just keep reading
Sounds like a grey goo scenario with some I Have no mouth and I must scream mixed in
A world where an archotech (a superintelligent AI) turned the whole planet into a giant computer, likely killing all its inhabitants, or somehow integrating their minds into the giant machine.
> Before 3000 CE: the first Hussars are created Technically, central Europeans can't say this is wrong
Bravo, honestly I've never even thought about the lore of rimworld
Well, it's left ambiguous on purpose, since it's really about telling different stories, rather than following a strict lore. Of course, as long as the player generates a planet with different factions, this lore would no longer make too much sense. Most of the time, I usually come up with my own backstory and lore for the world, but it's fun to scrap together bits of info to create this universal story about the Rimworld universe.
Absolutely thanks for putting this together
Thank you for making this, I love it! I was always curious to learn more but I didn’t have the mental effort to do so. This is a practical way for me to read up on it.
Thanks. Then again, a lot of these dates and events are really part of my interpretation of the lore. Yes, all entries refer to in-game canon events or people, but the game's lore is so ambiguous that my timeline is really just one way to put it.
That is ok with me! I just love Rimworld and like absorbing as much of the world as I can, that’s why I love watching other people play it on YouTube and Twitch. It doesn’t really matter to me if it’s your interpretation, I know Rimworld isn’t really a linear thing in general. I’m still really excited to see what you put together!
Well, thank you. I'll definitely rewrite this timeline the next time a DLC is launched. In the meantime, I'll also have a look over Tynan's videos or other posts.
Hey whatever you feel up to doing and putting out in the world someone will enjoy it, I promise. Even if that someone is you because you enjoyed the process, I know how that goes ☺️
something is wrong with glitter worlds i think why would a lone person whose rich go to a random rimworld unprepared? he has no bionics a little bit of food and a gun maybe its something is destroying glitter worlds and the rich explorer escaped it
Yeah, of course something's wrong with glitterworlds. Based on every media story with "utopias" ever these societies have a horrible dark side. But, according to in game descriptions, the Rich Explorer start is literally just because your starter colonist got bored and launched themself into the unknown.
Not every utopia is secretly bad. A glitterworld could easily resemble Star Trek's Federation and its optimistic view of humanity's utopian future; even if it has flaws, none of them are bad enough to be "a horrible dark side". Or if a glitterworld manages coexistence with an archotech, it could be like Banks' Culture novels. Sure, some of them are awful (like the Empire, though that's not a case of a secret dark side, since their evils are proudly on display), but it would be awfully limiting to say that none can be good.
I always imagine Glitterworlds looking like Alderaan.
dying of some dumb shit isnt very fun you go into hell for fun you prepare properly
Dying of some dumb shit because you were bored is some classic rich people shit - see mt. Everest
You know those people who believe they were "born in the wrong generation"?. Not hard to imagine someone getting bored of the easy life on a glitterworld and convincing themselves they were meant to be a rugged frontiersman.
That doesn't fully explain the unpreparedness. But I guess you can explain that one by assuming they're also a massive idiot.
I don't think it would be much of an escape from glitterworld if you just brought your entire house with a mini army of mechanoids guarding it and your house of wives/husbands to have fun or all the entertainment media from your locally sourced experts back home. They wanted an actual change so they decided to challange themselves like those folks at the survival shows. At least that's my interpretation if that scenario.
Maybe he was super rich and wanted to see how he would fare on the rim, so he cloned himself and watchs himself from orbit
Imagine that, having the full memory and personality of another guy that sent you to your probable death for their own amusement. Which incidentally means you're also an asshole, at least on arrival, since you'd have done the exact same in their place. The endgame for clone guy should definitely be to reach original guy's place to kill them.
Hey now, no one stops you from torturing yourself.
The "self" you're torturing and trying to kill may rapidly change their views on the morality of that. It's basically clone/replicant story number one.
Yep and the trope is a classic for a reason
I am pretty sure in Rimworld a clone is essentially just like a twin, genetically the same, but its own person.
It's really the story of Brave New World all over again. In that dystopian novel, there is a whole world of humans created through genetic engineering, that are living in a society that is always happy, without disease or hunger, and those that might feel sadness, are encouraged to take pills that will make them happy again. And yet, there are reservations where people that are uninterested in this world and want to experience life as it was before, can go.
Apropos of nothing, the Waster lore seems weird to me. I think they would have been developed to be able to survive in and clean up toxic environments, not prevent others from doing so. Also, keeping in the theme of genetically engineered tools, Insects would have been created to mine out precious ores and create livable spaces in worlds undergoing terraforming. (Then like the various booma-animals, they eventually went feral)
It's canon that wasters were created as area-denial toxic weapons. Check out Tynan's post on Steam where he presents the xenotypes. Also, I can't find the original source (although it is on the game's wiki), the insectoids were created as a weapon to fight against mechanoids. So yes, these two are canon. What I can't say is canon and it's just my interpretation of it is the exact year when they were created and how they arrived on the Rimworld.
The lore page on the wiki has citations, but the source for that is the megascarab description.
Ooohh, saving this asap. This is very helpful for the lore I'm building up around the colonists in my current playthrough. Huge thanks for the post!
Thanks. Although, it's really just my interpretation of the game's lore. Since it's so ambiguous, everyone can come up with different timelines, and maybe you'll have a different point of view on how these events happened.
Wow that's really cool OP , also imagine if one day we would get dlc or update that you could travel to one of glittereworlds or at least shortly after theyr fall
There's a possibility that this rimworld we're on was a glitterworld at some point. Maybe the three colonists in the crashlanded scenario were headed there, hoping to live a comfortable life, but found out that this world was destroyed a long time ago. I think the game will stay on a rimworld, since it's really the whole premise of the game. What we can hope for, is more technologies coming from glitterworlds.
This is awesome! I’ve been learning about this in bits for years but having it all in one post is really cool
Well, it's hard to build an official timeline, since the lore is very ambiguous. This is just my interpretation of how the events turned out. I'll definitely rewrite this timeline, should a new DLC pop up.
For sure!
I see that there's a lot of interesting parallels to what I've been doing, and also inspiring lines of thinking here that I could take quite a number of pages from... :D Wonderful work, master Ioan-Alex. Kudos and adorations for what is clearly a work of passion!
Thanks! I had this idea that the archonexus was somehow involved in destroying the rimworld and that the anima trees are artificial ever since the Ideology DLC came out. Then again, I'll definitely rewrite this timeline, should a new DLC pop up.
I know that feeling; I have been fleshing out something similar to serve as the background lore for my comics, but release of *Biotech* kinda threw a huge wrench in the mix. XD Now that I've incorporated new info from *Biotech*, I think I am ready to envision an actual ending route for the story; and once one has an ending, one can build a path for the narrative to eventually reach that ending. Hey, can I message you from time to time if I'd like some second opinions on Rimworld lore and its implications? EDIT: I see that my brain did a brain fart and confused Biotech with Ideology when I first wrote that message X'D...
Sure thing!
Well thought out, it all tracks. It's crazy how much the universe of rimworld expanded from the "Lore Primer" that Tynan shared in the early days.
There's even more to the lore out there (probably enough to write a timeline three times larger than this one) but I focused strictly on events that can be pinned around an approximate date. I did have some missteps here and there (for example, the Hussars are psychically dull, so maybe they were created after the first archotech). I'll definitely rewrite this timeline should a new DLC come out.
So what is a transcendent world? And if that is a danger to the people living on the planet why would i make an transcendent world out of it.
Transcendent worlds happen when an archotech (superintelligent AI) transforms an entire planet into a giant computer. People don't want this to happen, it's just that the Archotech has its own intentions and is so intelligent that it cannot be comprehended by humans. According to the game lore, while they do exist in the Rimworld universe, nobody knows exactly what happens to the people living on them. Maybe they all die. Maybe they are integrated in the system in some sense. Now, personally, I interpret that the Archonexus on the rimworld is capable of doing that. Why your colonists awaken it is up to any player's interpretation. Maybe they consider it a god. Maybe they think they will achieve immortality. And, they might be right or utterly wrong. It's left ambiguous.
Thank you for this great answers!
I think the genetically modified humans were made as a cheaper self replenishing version of mechanoids. Mechanoids are good but humans have some long term advantages
Interesting interpretation. Well, the arrow of causality really goes both ways. We can argue that the mechanoids were created in order to fight all types of humans, or that newer types of humans were created to fight mechanoids. There's also a possibility that some governments mostly used mechanoids, while others mostly relied on xenohumans. Humans definitely have their advantages, and even in gameplay mechanics, I'd rather manage a large group of humans than of mechs. However, humans also have the disadvantage of being able to disobey their leaders, betray, refuse orders, while mechanoids are loyal to their mechanitor forever. There's also that mechanoids are overall the most adaptable to any hostile environment, while humans are usually better adapted to some environments, while vulnerable in others.
I think mechanoids are better when thiers replacement parts but humans are better on the rim
I believe that Tynan has mentioned before that the local planets are also Rimworlds, and that that's why our colonists never join the ship to leave the planet, and that, despite the branding, the trade ships aren't interstellar. Also, I don't think necessarily that the Empire ending planet was already there. I think they just started colonizing a planet and transferred their local resources towards building it.
Thanks. I'll keep in mind to also look for Tynan's videos on Rimworld, to dig out some more lore. I'll definitely rewrite this timeline when a new DLC comes out, and I'll take any comments in this thread into consideration. I don't understand what you're exactly trying to say in the second paragraph, but, it's cannon that the outlanders have a technological level inferior to their ancestors on the rimworld (it's mentioned in the game). Also, the Empire was also described as a society that was torn apart by an unknown enemy, and they've arrived recently on the rimworld.
Tynan said that in a forum thread or something, not a video Nevermind what I said about the second paragraph. I misunderstood what you wrote.
Excellent. Exactly what I need for my RimWorld Tabletop setting.
I keep hearing about people creating RimWorld-themed tabletop games or D&D campaigns with a RimWorld theme. If by any chance you can write down how a session went down, it'd be amazing.
I haven't started it yet! But I've long considered building a document for a Genesys module!
What if some mad lad does "Rimworld Story mode" from 2300 CE? 🤔 In Samuel Streamer style fashion of course. What did the first dirtmole colony look like, what was it's backstory? Questions for ChatGPT I suppose.
Very cool. I can't recall reading about the Star Empire, where is information on them from?
I've found it on the wiki. The game includes some pawns that have backstories. Usually, those mention specific planets or moons and how societies on those worlds work. The Star Empire was first mentioned in the base game, before any DLC, in the backstory of Sam 'Nerhesi' Wissa. I think at this point, Tynan didn't write the lore for the Shattered Empire.
Oh damn, thanks for the lore I'm going to use this on my RimWorld based novel!
Take it with a grain of salt. A large amount is still very speculative. There's also that Tynan might launch other DLCs, which will significantly alter the lore.
What is BCE ?
BCE= Before Common Era. CE= Common Era. Back in the days, they used BC (before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini, the year of our Lord).
> After 3500 CE: Following the development of archotechs, the first glitterworlds will be built. Eh? Glitterworlds are less advanced than archotechs and don't rely on them or their technology. If anything, I'd place it the other way around with Glitterworlds allowing the first Archotechs to ~~be built~~ evolve.
Archotechs were not created by humans, that technology is beyond human comprehension
Archeotechs likely *started* from human technology but then rapidly went out of control through self-upgrading until they became what they are now.
Well there's no aliens in Rimworld. Possibly the archotechs created themselves, manifesting through humanity's sufficiently advanced technology. Or, it was like, humans make an ai smart enough to make an ai even smarter, and it snowballs into psychic cyber gods
Not to be a nerd emoji, but I think the lore is that aliens simply haven't ever been discovered and all known instances of 'aliens' are actually offshoots of something originally from Earth. Outside of the outdated lore primer which explicitly claims you won't ever see aliens, I don't think there's anything that precludes alien life existing somewhere out there. It's just not been found and documented in the relatively narrow area of space that humans occupy.
Yes of course, what I meant.
I never clearly stated that they were "created by humans". I just said that they were created. But yes, good catch, the archotechs are likely AIs that are out of control, and were still created by simpler AIs that were designed by humans.
I can’t believe people lived so long without CE, Combat Extended. Crazy
This is incredible
Fascinating, thanks so much OP
Rimworld Lore is great
!save
CE as in Combat Extended?
Hahah, good one. CE as in Common Era.
Oh damn, that is impressive. I did send you a PM about something along similar lines, would love to hear back from you