Story timeline
Phigros' story in in-game time. The Tower's history comes from the official Limbo Wiki, and the story told by the Collection sits on the days the game gives it.
On this pageI Glaciaxion
Where each chapter's own story sits in Tower time, as its Collection entries date it. Most chapters also look back on older history, which appears under its own year.
IGlaciaxion
770/02/28–771/01/04
In late February 770, Gino of Glaciaxia Patrol Team VII meets the amnesiac Geopelia on Mount Sierra; she joins Team VII, shares his dorm and settles into camp life of hot pot, the first snow and the fishing festival, just after Captain Dlyro has asked Gino whether their world is real. On 3/17 Geopelia sees a giant tower in the sky that was not there the day before; from 3/22 demices pour out of the pit, Theo and Carl die, and Dlyro takes the whole team into Suppression Order 0327, leaving the two behind with a silk pouch for Gino. On 770/03/32 comes Babel: white ash falls from the tower and a black hole rises over the horizon to swallow the glacier, Dlyro leaves Gino her Saturn login as she is pulled in, and the pair flee along the tower-shielded road to Mount Sierra and into the light bridge toward a new world. Some clues in the chapter jump ahead to the Tube Maze, Blanda on the Third Floor, the whim Dlyro's notes on the Tower organization, and Trophon being rebuilt on Titan in 771.
IIBeneath the Trash
770/04/01–770/06/18
On 770/04/01 Geopelia and Gino pass through the light gate into the Hoodoo, help the scavengers on the garbage mountain, set up a temporary home in District Eight, fix Trophon and meet Kouma and Kuzumi. On 4/06 they visit District Three's manager Fuli, and Geopelia fixes the radio Kuzumi had left for repair with a trick her brother taught her. On 4/07 they take the radio to Perchnest Station and follow Kuzumi onto the HQ004 train but cannot find her, while deathMark's stave tells of the train attacked by a void monster with a mazarine ruin in its eyes; on 4/09 Fuli opens a gate between worlds and leaves. Fuli's floor-guardian logs (410–672) trace how the stone folk grew, how they were named the Pillar Stone People, Kuzumi's arrival in 469, and Fuli agreeing to play the Tuning Tengu for Khalid's city government. On the real-world side there is a birthday radio from Geopelia's childhood and Gino, as a sheriff, inspecting the body of a famous female singer surnamed Zuo.
IIIMazarine End
53/04/07–770/04/07
On 770/04/07, the day of the train attack, deathMark writes five staves in a row; per the Phigros wiki page, in this chapter Geopelia and Gino are caught in the Mazarine and recover old data from the river of history: the six 'Warrior' records. In 53 A.P. 'she' teaches 'me' to ride a nightmare horse and 'I' glimpse an inverted tower; in 57 they leap a cliff with the Melt, and she looks at the tower's base under construction, says people will one day abandon the world inside the tower too, and vanishes; in 59, at the first theatre trial after the tower plan begins, 'I' am sentenced and my tongue is cut out. In 60 'I' kneel dying on the snowfield, and the next day the tower lifts off while whims stampede into the crater it leaves behind. In 740, at Haven, someone addressed as chief captain volunteers to go back to Glaciaxia and promises there will be no second battle of Cowbelly Valley.
IVSewer Maze
770/05/21–770/06/04
Swallowed by the Mazarine End, Geopelia and Gino are separated: on the Two-Faced Dance Floor an arcade machine brings Geopelia face to face with the child Kuzumi before she heads for Mazarine, while Gino, in a town of Lost Cats, hears an old woman talk of an empty room that does not exist. They regroup at the citizens' hall at the heart of “79”, cross the Tube Maze's arcade, find the empty room and meet the trapped Sutan. On 770/06/04 Gino clears “Battle of Rainbow”, Geopelia breaks Sutan's chain, and the three walk out of an arcade into Neon. The chapter's items also look back on Liandu and Peregrinus in 143–256, the 469 arcade game of the same name and Broken Data Research's 671–672 reports on Mazarine; a few (770/07/08–08/29) belong to chapter 5's time.
VNEON LED
770/06/04–770/08/31
Geopelia and Gino lodge at Liandu's hotel while Peregrinus sends Dlyro after Liandu, his last clone, and the hunt on 06/18 ends with the hotel on fire. Gino looks into Iris University, and Kuzumi takes Geopelia to the dying Guru, her brother Peregrinus; the Guru then disappears and Geopelia ends up leading the Witches' Council, while Sutan entrusts “Battle of Rainbow” to Liandu. Liudaohong disbands in early August and Blanda and “Seven” hunt for a system backdoor; from 08/29 the Mazarine End swallows Neon, and on 08/31 Geopelia, as the Guru, opens a passage and Neon sees its first clear sky since the Rainbow War (the Rainbow Reappearance). The items also record the Rainbow War (from 242), the Ruling Bureau takeover (286) and the Guru becoming floor guardian (300).
VIArk Mirage
770/08/31–772/07/32
After the Rainbow Reappearance Geopelia wakes in Haven, met by her rebirth guide Igallta; Gino's score board jumps from 000000 to 1000000, and Clear questions “Agent Diamond Princess” Geopelia about the whim escape. deathMark logs that Igallta's intrusion into “Ark Six” has been stopped (Limbo Wiki: the Ark Mirage of 770/08/32, when the Mazarine End reached Haven). On 09/10 Geopelia asks Kuzumi, on a Haven street, to help finish her floor guardian report, and Blanda sends a thank-you letter. The rest is a comic side story about the Ruling Bureau staffers Wandou and Snow Pear Cream: old episodes from 632 on, Wandou's July 771 undercover stint at Arachne, Broken Data Research's base, where Geopelia nearly eats him, and the eve of Welcoming the Tengu at the end of July 772.
VIIChronnection
771/01/05–771/08/31
Early in 771 the Landstar67 - Modify, a mock-vintage spaceship registered to Geopelia, is in Gino's hands; it once belonged to a Rhythm Star estate dealer and reached Fuli's club after the Operthief affair. In late July the Ruling Bureau agent Wandou slips into the Mazarine while undercover in Broken Data Research, is fished out as broken data, and quits. On 08/20 Geopelia is sent to supervise the ALIGN rally, held despite protests, and Gino goes with her. On 08/31 the 93rd ALIGN rally starts at Clock Town on Saturn's south pole, with a course that overlaps the Mazarine End, and Geopelia records the giant clock face where Ark I stands still. According to the wiki, the next day (771/08/32) the Mazarine reaches the Second Surface and Clock Town (the Mid-Level) escapes above the sky.
VIIITransit Tide
772/07/31–772/08/02
On the Moon, on the eve of the Eclipse Festival, Broken Data Research hands Agent Wandou 'replacement data' to stick on the fireworks, a virus meant to counter Ruling Bureau and keep the Pixel Tower going. At the 7/32 temple fair Geopelia and Gino spend their last festival together, and Gino says the eclipse lasts only eight hours and next time they meet will be in reality. That night Wandou swallows the firework data by mistake, and Snow Pear Cream straps him to a firework and launches it. On 08/01 the eclipse and the Mazarine reach the Moon together, Broken Data Research broadcasts that PhigrOS has crashed, and Samuelle watches the Pixel Tower die from a beach on the Ocean of Storms; on 08/02 a voice finds Geopelia through a failing base-station signal.
IXSolivault
773 A.P. – 2091/08/31
After their reunion in the Vault, Geopelia and Gino patrol it on the motorbike Trophon; Gino takes Broken Data Research's replacement data out to recall the 'virus' it released, while Geopelia follows her memories to a snowy camp, where the two find Peregrinus's notebook and follow the path he took one night toward a ruined research base. The black hole erupts (the Mazarine reaches the Vault) and tears them apart, and Geopelia falls into it, crosses the Noise Field, breaks the wall of signals and says goodbye to Peregrinus on a train platform. On 2091/08/31 she wakes in reality to a headline about a surface exploration team hit by a severe earthquake, with one dead, chases a mechanical butterfly into the streets of New Zhengzhou and meets Gino. Almost every entry is dated 773.A.P.??.??, so the 773 beats are listed in story order worked out from how the texts follow one another (array order is story order); Collection unlock flags are only supporting evidence, and the text wins where they disagree.
S1Lotos
261/04/04–743/05/22
In the year 90 Cronos designed Lotos, a city hung upside down in the giant water tank Lavabo; in the 271 flood and evacuation he split himself into five souls and sealed the way back inside the Box of Delusion and the Pearl of Truth. In 743 Bernice Itaca, the ‘wisdom’, decides Lotos still exists, and her cousin Ida, the ‘promise’, finds the Box among her past-life belongings and posts its poem online, drawing a man who calls himself Mentus Petman. On 4/3, at the black port of Port Odysseus, Clear tells Bernice the outer wall of Lotos is immaterial, while Ida and Sappho rescue Mentus and buy their way out of Erapeter's hands with the method for opening the gate. On 4/4 the four dive to Lotos; Erapeter, the ‘desire’, gathers the souls and reverses the energy flow, and Bernice shoots him dead with no rebirth; Ida merges with her past self, sends Bernice away, Lotos collapses and Port Odysseus falls. In May, Broken Data Research salvages what is left and concludes Ida was obliterated, though Cronos may come back again.
S2Eschaton
743/04/05–771/08/31
In 743, Ruling Bureau agents Geopelia ('Diamond Princess') and Clear ('Justice') follow Ark I's log to Dusk Base, an old Rainbow War battlefield, find the Ark's navigator Samuelle in the stranded ship and invite her to join the Bureau. A floor guardians' group chat covers 770: Xie Ming goes offline on the day of Babel, the lower floors are evacuated, an amnesiac Geopelia turns up in Neon, is asked whether she released Neon's whims, and respawns at Haven. In late August 771, Naberius is locked out of the Saturn system, the Ark I dig nears its end while the Limbo Wiki raises the riddle of its 773 oars and the Tower's '773-year' lifespan, and the chat is renamed 'Landstar67 Big Win' as the ALIGN team's channel. On 08/31 the Spectator leaves four narrations, and the chapter ends 'to be continued'.
S3Operthief
467/02/15–674/02/23
From 467 the stargazer Mobolisi lives in seclusion on the Rhythm Star, watched by Clear, and in a sanatorium on the moon tries to treat Artemis's remains by turning them into melody. From 663 Khalid hears of the Tiaoyin Tiangou, a phantom thief whose loot comes back a week later with its looping melody repaired. In 670 the mayor feeds the rumour, and on 673/07/17 his ‘performance’ with Fuli lets the Tiangou take shape: during a seven-day eclipse it turns the whole planet into silent melody and steals it. Fuli follows her double, the Tiangou itself, to the Black Moon Sanatorium and uses Artemis's remains to undo the effect, and the planet comes back on 7/24; she leaves with the remains and the Tiangou and has Clear identify them. Afterwards Broken Data Research works through a subspace copy and leftover objects, loses researchers along the way, and recovers the sanatorium's log.
S4Animitta-Sabha
666/05/32
On 666/05/32 Clear, as Agent 'Justice', hands in his report on Animitta-Sabha at the intelligence department. The ball-jointed doll covering the desk says Clear has been chasing the 'Black Moon' case. It also passes on a message from Mobolisi: he knows no more than Clear does, but the lead came from the difficult-cases folder, collection six, report six.
ExtraBassAreUs
156/08/26–156/08/31
The chapter's two Tower documents are both from 156 A.P.: the ‘Bassareus’ script credited to Gino (156/08/26), and Mobius Studio's letter (156/08/31) approving tester Geopelia's Disc Genesis closed beta and installing the subspace ‘Polaris Paragon’ in her PhigrOS. The story inside the subspace is set ten thousand years after a 21st-century space boom: Earth's vanguard was abandoned on the camellia planet Kemiliya, and Driftstar arrived in the mecha Bassareus and took over. As the satellite holding the consciousness samples starts to fall, Gino's sample wakes in the body of the researcher Youai, who has just died, and meets Geopelia, a runaway experiment whose heart is Bassareus's steam engine. With help from Liandu and the alien panda Jiazhutao, she takes Bassareus, pushes the satellite into a higher orbit and blasts open the camellia cloud. The script stops as Driftstar aims a gun at Gino, now in a faceless doll, at his mother's grave, and Geopelia finds the doll.
EXChapter EX
220/02/01–771/12/23
Chapter EX is a set of separate side stories rather than one plot. Inside the Tower: in 242–243 Gino of the Mobius studio hosts Hepo from ROTAENO and puts up with Peregrinus of the Witches' Council, who later rescues the stray Yiluo; in 220 Geopelia meets PAFF and NEKO inside the CytusII subspace, and in 771/02 she and Clear investigate a botched CytusII migration; in 771/05 Geopelia and Gino take a commission into Lanota; and on 771/12/23 the Limbo Wiki office watches Clock City's New Year's Gala and shares the reunion dinner with guests from Kalpa and Rizline. Reports from the Mid-Level Containment Shelter (767) tell of a masked man recovering a man-eating girl from the Bailin flower sea. In the real world there are the Treasure of Seventeen ARG in summer 2091, NazoGame's 2092 challenge letter, the April Fools' 'Burn'd Duck' skit of 2092, and Para's 2096 records of having tea with a remnant of PhigrOS in a ruin.