u/totally_a_goon

Most of those infos are taken from the Wiki, since I play the German version and the names are rather different. I might occasionally slip up despite revising efforts, so bear with me please. I might have also missed some more OOC sources, so feel free to point them out.

All years are D.A. ("Zeitalter der Dämmerung" in German, which both do not make it clear if this is supposed to be dawn or dusk).

Enshrouded has recognizable days of the week (as seen in the Kennel Notes which have Monday and Friday), but seems to have months which are either overly long (up to at least 64 days) or aren't named. We know of the "month names" yearwake, midyear, and yearfall, which might instead be season names. They are also sometimes capitalised and sometimes not - I'll go with not.

== Better Days ==

Long Ago

• Somewhen: Manathor, a young ancient, digs deep and touches the planet's core, which is subsequently changed. Into fungi? Who knows!
• Later: Manathor, now the oldest of the ancients laments a lot and writes these laments down on the obelisks. Among others, he notes that the young Ancients have begun to emphasize with humans.

383

• 45th of yearfall: An Empyrean Scholar notes that human knowledge put into a Night Sanctum will vanish overnight, even when he sits outside and watches nobody enter or leave. A couple century later, an Ancient explains that the human knowledge is used for trade.

Note: this is interesting, because even pre-Elixir Vorgoth was paranoid about the Ancients and wanted his siblings to build catapults instead of Night Sanctums. So the Sanctums are human-built but under control of the Ancients. Is this some kind of religious thing? And how do surface churches work with this?

432

• 1st of yearwake: The Ancients arrive at White Wind at sundown and choose a new Empyrean Scholar. The Scholars are noted as figures of respect but few in number.

482

• The catacombs of Queen Pikemead are finished.

Note: It's not clear to me when exactly she dies, but her kingdom is subsequently split between her three children (of who's father(s) we know absolutely nothing). It seems they follow old germanian inheritance laws, whereby an inherited realm is divided between the children. The most well-known example would probably be the divisions (and reunifications and redivisions) of the Frankish Empire after Charlemagne.

So Pikemead's kingdom is divided into:

• Rimgard - Lord Vorgoth, oldest and notable paranoid
• Meldore - King Gormander, middle and primus inter pares
• Orindell - Queen Jezmina, youngest

Note: where do the "imperial" gardens and "imperial" guard come from? There's no empire here. In German it's "kaiserliche Gärten", so it's apparently supposed to be imperium instead of regnum. Is there some sacramental element that an Ancient should have fulfilled that didn't happen, so Pikemead never went through an imperial coronation? Or did she unite the realm as a wandering warrior-queen (with a consort in every harbour) and the "imperial" things are from another, older age entirely?

490

• Yearwake: Cade Hawthorn ponders the name of his nearly finished bridge, eventually decides to call it Braelyn Bridge.

== Bad Days ==

492

• 49th of midyear: Vorgoth meets the Wanderer, drinks an elixir and starts floating (as seen in the intro).
• Later: At the annual royal reunification ball, Vorgoth gives Gormander a drop of elixir, convinces him to opt-in on this elixir business and backhands Jezmina when she doesn't want to.
• Later: Gormander and Vorgoth start building Elixir wells. Vorgoth notes that in Orindell, private investors will build them instead of royalty.

493

• Midyear: Costner Meyers was visited by the Wanderer and subsequently builds an Elixir Well in the Kindlewastes (after apparently killing the people who lived there and didn't want in on this).

496

• 20th of midyear: Now-King Vorgoth holds a celebration for his successful securing of the Albaneve Summits.
• Somewhen: The Wanderer is spotted on the road to Glenwood's End.

498

• Somewhen: Balhazar laments the construction of yet another Elixir Well. He notes that the fumes that the well spits out at least haven't cause lasting harm yet.
• Somewhen in yearfall: The Wanderer busies himself haunting people either at the foot of their beds or in local pubs over an ale, inciting them to start digging already.
• Somewhen: Marianne Reed is killed on the Vukah ritual hill, after coming to investigate the ones who overtook Fort Kelvin.

Note: this is pretty odd since the notes in Fort Kelvin proclaim it to be the last village to still be at peace from the Elixir Wars, which haven't actually happened yet.

500

• Somewhen: Cade Hawthorn complains about the rats becoming aggressive and desperate in Morwenna.
• Somewhen: Balthazar realizes that the bluejays no longer drift through the skies as they used to, notes the encroaching Shroud.
• Somewhen: Balthazar realizes that the Elixir is made out of fungi, notes that this is and has always been a weapon.
• 1st of yearwake: Shenanigans at the Maelstrom construction site. Notably this seems to be a construction for an underground holding facility without a hospital wing, which a foreman notices as odd.
• 7th of yearwake: More shenanigans. Somebody thought reenacting a famous Junji Itō manga underground was a good idea.
• 3rd of yearwake: More shenanigans, Shroud infection seems to overcome a prisoner, who is then noted to have a humor imbalance and who has seizures a Fibonacci sequence of minutes apart, while leaking yellow bile from everywhere.

Note: Humor imbalance on one hand and Balthazar realizing that the Elixir and Shroud are made out of fungi is really rather incompatible.

502

• Somewhen: Balthazar realizes that the Shroud is made out of fungi.
• Somewhen: In Fort Kelvin, Elio Ricci notes that war is approaching and that the earth has been trembling. Pikemead's Reach has received the reports of trembling without comment.
• 1st of yearfall: Chester Loft puts on a preformance for Vorgoth in Cromville, noting that he'll see himself hang if it disappoints. His pure soul can be found there, implying that he disappointed.
• 2nd week of yearfall: Caves rumble under Fort Kelvin. War is seen as brewing.

Note: this conflicts with the 498 note of Marianne Reed as noted above.

• 5th week of yearfall: Gormander tries to rename the Imperial Gardens to Gormander's Gardens. Results in civil unrest. Instead he puts up a statue of himself.
• 21st of yearfall: Gormander sends Investigator Lachland to find out what's been going on in Glenwood's End.
• 35th of yearfall: Lachlan finds Glenwood's End in sharp decline and it killed for his trouble.
• 50th of yearfall: Gormander sends a strongly worded letter to Glenwood's End after the locals sent him the head of Lachlan.

== The Elixir Wars ==

503

• Somewhen: Balthazar notes in his tower next to Lone Thistle that gliders are neat and he doesn't know how to get down from there.
• Yearwake: Balthazar notifies the citizens of Ferndale about the dangers of the Shroud and the Elixir.
• 3rd of yearwake: Athalan Skree vows revenge on Vorgoth, presumably after the battle of the bridge of the Ancients which saw the corruption of her brother.
• 12th/13th of yearwake: the dockmaster at Stillwater Bay finds a ship is about to be sent to a maiden voyage somewhere while carrying shroud-spreading mushrooms at the order of Vorgoth.

Note: The soldiers are universally described as sickly, Whatever army Vorgoth went south with, it was already collapsing and only the Shroud kept it moving.

• Midyear: Athalan Skree briefly passes through Wescott.

Note: Did she get here after the battle of the bridge? The quest trail is the other way around.

• 64th of midyear: Skimmer's Cove is crumbling. Gormander's Imperial Guard suspects an imminent collapse. Strange vibrations and moving lights are noticed underwater. These would eventually turn out to be Drak.
• 21st of yearfall: Vorgoth's forces breach Pikemead's Reach's walls. Gormander isolates the inner city, which is seen as one final betrayal by his soldiers. Gormander subsequently summons a shroud root from underground in an outer city square and goes on to ravage the city.

Note: The Elixir Wars are over really fast, unless all the Scavenger activities are rolled into them.

== Endings ==

504

• 27th of midyear: The lighthouse keeper south of Stillwater Bay notes a large body under the water.

505

• Somewhen: Balthazar laments in Saline Springs that the shroud is encroaching pretty badly and that the capital of the ancients has lifted into the sky.
• Yearwake: Balthazar advises the citizens of Ferndale to not use the Elixir when he's out of tinctures and remedies.
• Midyear: Balthazar notes that the people of Ferndale have turned away from this potions in favor of chugging more Elixir.
• Midyear: Emily Fray notes that the Kindlewastes become drier by the day.
• Beginning of Yearfall: Jezmina decides to start an evacuation caravan from East Lapis to Longkeep. Emily Fray eventually joins.

506

• Somewhen: Balthazar is contacted by the young faction of the Ancients, notes that they plan to build Cinder Vaults. First test results are a lot of dead rats.
• Somewhen: Loraine Crim studies Obelisks in the Springlands and Revelwoods.
• Yearwake: Loraine Crim finds Vukah markings on the Pillars of Creation. She notes that the Vukah leave their tusks here to ritually prevent another eruption. Worse: they have started to emerge from their caverns recently.
• 15th of Yearwake: A lighthouse keeper notes that many more ships are lost at sea than usual.
• Yearfall: Helên, a fugitive from the Summits, arrives with others at Rookmore. She decides to continue on to Woodgard and set up medical support.
• Yearfall: A caravan from the Kindlewastes arrives at Woodgard.

Note: This can't be Jezmina's caravan, because she only passes the Pillars of Creation in late 507. Who are these people?

• 39th of Yearfall: The Drak overrun a lighthouse south of Stillwater Bay.

507

• Somewhen: Balthazar finds a flame shrine next to his tower at Lone Thistle after making a glider.
• Somewhen: Balthazar laments that an ancient spire won't let him in even as he steps on the plate.
• Somewhen: Balthazar succeeds in having one of his pet rats, Igni, survive a prototype Cinder Vessel.
• Yearwake: The survivors of the southern caravan started building a flame sanctum in Woodgard.
• 13th of Midyear: Prisoner revolt at Raven's Keep.
• Later: Jezmina sees Surat's Rest burning after the prisoners from Raven's Keep had overrun it.
• Later: Jezmina's caravan is attacked after passing through the Pillars of Creation. Half the people are lost, presumed eaten by the locals.
• 19th of yearwake: Loraine Crim muses about Eldermere Dam and the disappearance of the water that used to be in the Kindlewastes.

Note: It's absolutely not clear when the water actually disappeared. Other notes have it be a near-mystical past, but the Kindlewastes have been driying out in living memory, so what is going on here?

• 62th of yearwake: Someone in the northern caravan notes that their brother is in the southern caravan. This means they have already split at this point and the northern caravan is led by Commander Cyrus, to see Pikemead's Reach while Jezmina's southern caravan continues to Longkeep.

508

• Somewhen: Loraine Crim notes that the Ancient language split into two different dialects: one young, one old.

Note: This is good, because Manathor at one point writes that he's the one who has inscribed the obelisks. At another point he notes that he's now the oldest of the ancients - so Loraine Crim would presumably have access to the writing of the young Ancients and not Manathor's olde style writings.

• Somewhen: the northern caravan arrives at Pikemead's Reach. They are subsequently lost, presumed eaten by the locals.
• Somewhen: Balthazar finishes the first of the Cinder Vaults. The very first volunteer to enter a Cinder Vessel is Oswald Anders.
• Somewhen: Balthazar laments at the flame crypt above Longkeep that the flame won't talk to him.

Note: Balthazar sure gets around quite a bit in 507/508. Never seems to stay in a place for long.

• Yearwake: Jezmina arrives at Longkeep.
• Yearfall: Loraine Crim mucks around the Albaneve Summits and finds a dragon skeleton.

509

• Somewhen: Jezmina arrives in Blackmire and collaborated with the younger faction of the Ancients to build more Cinder Vessels and alert the worthy to their location. This snags up at least Valory.

Note: The young Ancients must have done this previously, because Elio Ricci has noted the changing stars and how he was drawn into his Cinder Vault. This might have been the only instance of the Ancients doing so that is recorded.

512

• 1st of midyear: Captain Arkwright notes that the Ancients and a handful of warriors entered the Cinder Vault above Longkeep.
• 6th of midyear: Longkeep is under Scavanger siege.
• 20th of midyear: Having destroyed the bridge to stop the siege, Captain Arkwright and his men enter the Shroud to escape starvation. They are subsequently lost, eaten and corrupted by the locals.

513

• Somewhen: The last survivors at Longkeep leave a note, hoping for salvation.

540ish

• Somewhen: The Flameborn awakens.

==Summary==

The most terrible enemy is the reddit editor. Only WYSIWYG is worse.

The worldbuilding is, overall, good (if you accept my judgement). It's certainly no FromSoft, where you have to piece things together from several dozen item descriptions and the devs' twitter posts.

I commend them for doing what I think is a worldbuilding virtue: ponder and write down what the previous generation was like. What lead up to this? There is not the feeling that there has been recent history and ancient history and nothing inbetween. There is clearly stuff that happened, and this is good.

There could be more of it, though, like who fathered Pikemead's children or who was her predecessor. Or the general gist of medical knowledge.

My final rating is "More like this" out of 10.