Universal Star Date (USD) Timeline

USD format

USD YYYY.D where YYYY = years since the Common Registry epoch and D = one decimal place (tenths of a year; ~36–37 standard days).
Year 0.0 = ratification of the Common Registry and activation of the Central Authority’s core ID, registry, and tariff systems.

0–9: Founding and Standards

USD 0000.0 — Central Authority charter and Common Registry begin; Inspectorate and Patrols are formed to issue IDs, ship registries, and tariffs.
USD 0000.4 — Core Tariff Courts and cross-tier Debt Courts are formalized to handle cargo, tariffs, and debt-to-labor rulings.
USD 0001.2 — Kedra becomes the busiest contract court hub for Authority cases; long delays drive demand for bribes and “queue cutting.”
USD 0002.0 — Slipwind publishes the first Archive of Routes baseline; Keth auditing becomes the navigation standard.
USD 0003.1 — Vellari Water Council adopts sealed meter rules; tamper-proof water seals become mandatory for interworld shipments.
USD 0004.0 — Talarq high-temperature part safety labels are required for reactors and industrial lines.
USD 0005.6 — Synthborn escrow and identity archiving enters multi-species standards through node banks.

10–19: Lanes, Permits, and Enforcement

USD 0010.2 — Authority, Data Guilds, and Keth define Jump Lanes as structured FTL corridors; risk and maintenance rules are published.
USD 0011.0 — When one power controls both ends of a lane, toll control is recognized; price spikes follow.
USD 0012.4 — “Illegal lanes” guidance warns crews about un-beaconed shortcuts released by Syndicates.
USD 0013.1 — Core/Mid/Rim port procedures are standardized (inspection stacks, bonded warehouses, on-arrival fees, dispute handling).
USD 0014.0 — Passage permits, beacon verification, and blacklist protocols are harmonized across ports.
USD 0015.5 — Inspectors, militia/port guards, and rim enforcers are codified as tiered enforcement tools.
USD 0016.3 — Trusted relay worlds designated for records integrity: Slipwind (Keth) and Brightline (Synthborn).
USD 0018.1 — Neutral escrow arbiters gain recognition; attacks on arbiters become galaxy-scale crimes with broad blacklisting.

20–39: Sector Flows and Constellations

USD 0021.0 — Human constellation formalized: Kedra → Armistice → Brackenfeld → Red Harbor; legal docs, tariffs, food exports, and grey finance route.
USD 0023.2 — Vellari constellation codified: Thalassa-Nine (standards) → Brinelight (reef composites) → Deepmere (kelp fuel) → Salt Crown (brine chemicals).
USD 0025.5 — Keth constellation set: Slipwind (Archive), Harlune (turbines), Vastris (relays/salvage maps).
USD 0027.0 — Caraphex constellation defined: Ravel (labor clades), Shardplain (tools), Pitchmire (hydrocarbons), Mandible Reach (ship-breaking/escrow).
USD 0029.4 — Talarq constellation recognized: Tal (foundries), Scoria (refractory exports), Obsidian Reach (reactor testing).
USD 0031.2 — Serean constellation logged: Varo-Blue (habitats/rites), Cyrin (chemical skimming), Mistral Gate (storm retrieval).

40–59: Conflict Patterns and Mobile Jurisdictions

USD 0041.0 — Pirate doctrine is published; focus on weak routes and slow convoys; known hotspots logged.
USD 0042.6 — Hotspots include Mistral Gate, Pitchmire, and Brackenfeld convoy rims.
USD 0045.2 — Syndicate zones named: Salt Crown Corridor (tolling), Pitchmire Vector (checkpoint tolls), Mistral Gate Outposts (weather tax).
USD 0046.0 — Authority patrol capacity declared thin; insured cargo prioritized; slow rim response.
USD 0048.3 — Non-standard ports (mobile habitats, belts) recognized; mobile jurisdiction, weather rules, bonds, and multi-layer councils become normal.

60–79: Machine Status and Escrow Regimes

USD 0060.0 — Core publishes Synthborn personhood guidelines; status remains inconsistent mid-to-rim.
USD 0061.2 — Right-to-Patch splits Assemblies and Contract Nodes; neutral escrow often holds pay and IDs during disputes.
USD 0063.0 — Brightline rises as escrow/verified compute hub under corporate oversight.
USD 0064.1 — Mixed-crew rules: separate pay channels, dual IDs, contract clarity, emergency custody templates.
USD 0065.9 — Cache Vale neutral backup vault gains cross-species adoption and becomes a frequent raid target.

80–99: High-Risk Resource Cycles and Debt Expansion

USD 0080.0 — Mistral Gate retrieval runs recognized as deadly but high-pay; Syndicates push illegal “insurance.”
USD 0082.7 — Salt Crown meter-seal fraud wave triggers raids and corridor disputes; tolling intensifies.
USD 0085.2 — Drift zones increase where collapsed beacons break old charts; misjumps rise.
USD 0088.4 — Debt courts expand; rim prison-labor economy grows; conditions and quotas worsen.

100–Current: Information Lags, Border Disputes, and Free Companies

USD 0101.0 — Signal corruption and tampering spike; crews adopt dual-send and couriers; trust concentrates on a few relay worlds.
USD 0102.6 — Border disputes escalate over harvest seas, mining belts, and junction depots; refugee flows increase.
USD 0103.3 — Core and mid normalize bribes/expedite/escort tariffs in congested corridors.
USD 0104.0 — Permit/blacklist checks harden at beacons; invalids face fines, seizure, or escort back to port.
USD 0105.5 — Seasonal Brackenfeld convoy piracy patterns documented.
USD 0106.2 — Caraphex labor extortion persists; Free Companies hired for escort, standoffs, and recovery.
USD 0107.0 — Cross-sector summary confirms current baseline: Humans (legal/finance), Vellari (water/chemicals), Keth (navigation/data), Caraphex (heavy labor), Talarq (high-temp industry), Sereans (storm-chemicals), Synthborn (escrow/machine labor).

Quick reference:

Authority & Law: Core trade rules, ship registries, ID tracking; corruption and underfunding limit reach beyond the core.
Lanes & Ports: Keth charts; core inspections; mid corruption; rim “pay first” survival rules.
Water & Fuel: Vellari seals; counterfeit risk; dirty fuel damage; price shocks.
Security: Pirates, thin patrols, and Syndicate shadow governance in key corridors.

BUSD (Before Universal Star Date)

All species use BUSD to date events that happened before the Common Registry epoch. It is a simple mirror of USD and uses the same decimal precision. The format is YYYY.D BUSD, where YYYY is the whole years and D is a single decimal place for tenths of a year (about 36–37 standard days). BUSD is not a separate calendar. It is a counting method used for pre-Registry history, archaeology, contracts about old claims, and museum and archive labels.

How the count works. BUSD measures backward from the USD baseline using the current USD year as an offset so people can translate “years ago” into a single, stable label. The community baseline is the latest published USD year. At present the baseline is USD 0107.x. To convert a plain “years ago” statement into BUSD, subtract the current USD year and keep one decimal place if you know it.

Example: an event 2000 years ago is recorded as 1893.0 BUSD (2000 − 107 = 1893).
Example: a find dated 75.3 years ago is −31.7 relative to USD, so it is not BUSD; it is USD 0075.3. BUSD only applies to dates before USD 0000.0.
Example: an inscription estimated at 6,420 years ago is 6313.0 BUSD.

Decimals. As with USD, .D is tenths of a year. If only a season is known, clerks round to the nearest tenth. If only a wide window is known, archivists write a range (e.g., 1893.2–1893.5 BUSD). If the margin of error is larger than ±0.5 years, records add circa (e.g., c. 1893 BUSD).

Why everyone uses it. Before the Registry, worlds kept their own year lengths, flood cycles, storm cycles, and reign counts. Those units do not match in length across species. BUSD gives a cross-species, court-safe way to place anything older than the Registry on a single spine without rewriting local history. Vellari water ledgers, Keth canyon chronicles, Talarq kiln marks, Caraphex clade stones, Serean cloud logs, Synthborn awakening records, and Human temple eras can all be translated cleanly into one label.

Legal and records practice.

Archaeology and museums: always label pre-Registry items with BUSD on the first line, then list local names in parentheses.
Courts and escrow: if an ownership or burial claim predates USD 0000.0, filings must state a BUSD range and the basis for the estimate.
Data Guilds: when they publish route or colony retrospectives, the main axis is BUSD up to 0.0, then USD forward.
Beacons and ports: safety bulletins that cite ancient failures use BUSD so auditors can compare across sectors.

Edge cases.

0.1–0.9 BUSD refers to the final tenths of the year just before USD 0000.0.
If research later improves a date, clerks update the decimal only; the YYYY part changes only when evidence crosses a whole-year threshold.
If a site mixes strata, label each layer separately rather than averaging across layers.

Conversion quick guide (baseline USD 0107.x):

50 years ago → −57 (use USD, not BUSD).
500 years ago → 0393.0 BUSD.
2,000 years ago → 1893.0 BUSD.
10,000 years ago → 9893.0 BUSD.

Writing rules. Always include the suffix BUSD. Do not mix local month names with BUSD decimals. Keep one decimal place unless a court or guild requires more precision. When a document lists both systems, place BUSD first for anything before the Registry and USD first for anything after.

Why the offset can change. As time advances, the USD year increases, but archived BUSD labels stay tied to the baseline that was in force when the catalog or ruling was issued, unless a court or data house republishes under a new baseline. Major archives note their baseline at the front of each volume (e.g., “Baseline: USD 0107.x”). This keeps citations stable while allowing new work to use the current offset.

Summary. BUSD is the shared, plain system for all pre-Registry time. It uses the same decimal as USD, avoids local calendar bias, and converts “years ago” into a single number that every port, court, guild, and crew can read the same way.