Story timeline

Limbo Wiki (official)

Rhythm Star is finished

The seventh floor, where everything is woven from music. Its capital is Khalid.

• The Tiaoyin Tiangou & Rhythm Star

467/02/15In game

Mobolisi withdraws to the Rhythm Star

Mobolisi announces he is going into seclusion and leaves Clear a doll to call on whenever the Bureau needs his help; Clear was sent to watch him. Mobolisi says he will stay on the Rhythm Star and Clear can find him any time, ‘as long as I don't notice’.

• S3Operthief
• The Tiaoyin Tiangou & Rhythm Star
• Artemis's remains

482/04/07In game

Orders at the sanatorium; the doll becomes Mob

Mobolisi orders every unit at the sanatorium to turn themselves into melody and hide in the public music if a stranger comes to look, and the security posts to erase any stranger until the treatment is over. The same day Clear names the doll Mob and asks it to tell him about Mobolisi.

• S3Operthief
• The Tiaoyin Tiangou & Rhythm Star
• Artemis's remains

Limbo Wiki (official)

The Tiaoyin Tiangou is born

An urban legend of Rhythm Star: a phantom thief that appears at midnight under a full moon and steals melodies, returning them seven days later with the noise gone.

• S3Operthief
• The Tiaoyin Tiangou & Rhythm Star

663/02/23In game

The Botticelli prototype catches a figure on the moon

The stargazer Mobolisi invented the Botticelli action camera. With the prototype he photographs a figure on the moon; Clear analyses it and says it is ‘100% a cloud’. Mobolisi asks how a city built entirely of artificial things could have clouds, and closes with ‘all normal’.

• S3Operthief
• The Tiaoyin Tiangou & Rhythm Star
• Artemis's remains

663/09/01In game

A teddy bear's melody is fixed

Everything on the Rhythm Star is woven from melody, and every loop stutters where it ends and restarts. Linsa, a girl who loves the moon, finds her long-lost teddy bear under the moonlight and hears its melody end smoothly instead of jumping back to the loud part, as if someone had fixed it. A 664 essay calls the stutter a defect the planet was born with.

664/02/21In game

Botticelli II's fake moons and the black dot

The commercial Botticelli II adds moon texture to any round pale-yellow light, streetlamps included. In 665 a reporter photographs the real moon as a control, and the prints show a blurry black dot where the moon should be; an expert suggests it is the figure of a girl.

• S3Operthief
• The Tiaoyin Tiangou & Rhythm Star
• Artemis's remains

668/03/14In game

The film ‘Loki's World’ opens

‘Loki's World’, the Shiyue Festival holiday release, is about a ghost who doesn't know he is one until he finally realises and leaves the world; many viewers feel they have seen the story before. A review calls the script so flawless it might have been repaired by the Tiaoyin Tiangou, and finds that unsettling. A 671 psychology essay uses the film to discuss people cut off by society, ‘between corpse and living’, and a 671 short story follows an old man trapped in a street on the Rhythm Star.

• S3Operthief
• The Tiaoyin Tiangou & Rhythm Star

668/07/03In game

Thefts and returns in Khalid

In July 668 a streamer's bracelet is snatched mid-livestream, and during the chase someone else's walnut bracelet is stolen too. In August a Mr Mo, stepping out of the Jingxie Bar, photographs the walnut thief: very fast, flying, and flashing a V sign at the camera. The stolen things start coming back: the walnut bracelet returns mismatched, some beads turn out to be plastic and the rest later sprout; the music box of tavern owner Lusha Kelin vanishes and reappears a week later with its reset noise gone.

• S3Operthief
• The Tiaoyin Tiangou & Rhythm Star

670/02/23In game

The mayor debates the Tiangou at the Jingxie Bar

At the turn of 670 the mayor brings a televised public debate to the Jingxie Bar and argues the Tiaoyin Tiangou is real, citing a stolen walnut bracelet that came back with its melody repaired. One debater accuses the mayor of manufacturing a whim by spreading the story; onlookers joke that the Tiangou might as well steal the whole planet and fix it.

• S3Operthief
• The Tiaoyin Tiangou & Rhythm Star

670/05/20In game

The Tiangou becomes a blonde-girl meme; Fuli is mistaken for it

On the forums the Tiaoyin Tiangou is drawn as a blonde little girl and becomes a meme whim; posters complain that Ruling Bureau won't act until it actually takes shape. In 672 Fuli, guardian of the Hoodoo floor, skips work to eat ice cream on the Rhythm Star, is accused by a passer-by of being the Tiangou, and vanishes with a Ruling Bureau escape tool, which only confirms the rumour.

• S3Operthief
• The Tiaoyin Tiangou & Rhythm Star
• Fuli

672/08/05In game

Fuli is hired to play the Tuning Tengu

People calling themselves Khalid's city government turn up and ask her to play the Tuning Tengu. She knows it clashes with her post as floor guardian and her duty to control whims, but they pay too much: she takes the full deposit and asks the bureau chief to bear with her, or to go after them at once if it is a problem.

• IIBeneath the Trash
• The Tiaoyin Tiangou & Rhythm Star
• Fuli

673/07Limbo Wiki (official)

The Tiangou steals Rhythm Star

Around July 673 the Tiangou steals Rhythm Star itself. Its people are lost for seven days and returned on time. From then on, the satellites hold the Eclipse Festival from 7/32 each year to celebrate the "moon" coming back.

• S3Operthief
• The Tiaoyin Tiangou & Rhythm Star

673/07/17In game

The ‘performance’ and the double

The mayor straps a quantum sync terminal onto Fuli so she can blink to every place where the ‘tengu eats the moon’ sighting appears; people who see her will think the Tiangou has taken shape, which feeds the whim. Half an hour into the show the jumps stop and she is stuck in a magenta space facing a blonde girl identical to herself, who keeps repeating ‘clear the pollution… protect everyone… on the moon’ until the jumps resume and the double is gone.

• S3Operthief

770/08/32Limbo Wiki (official)

Ark Mirage: the border reaches Haven

The Mazarine End reaches Haven. Igallta, the rebirth guide, is handed near-unlimited power by the Tower's underlying logic and runs out of control, until Fuli stops her with the power of a man-made god. Everyone's rebirth point, locked to Haven in the Age of Chaos, moves to the Moon.

Fuli's page adds that during Ark Mirage she briefly stole the Mazarine End itself, using a branch of her power called the Tiaoyin Tiangou.

• VIArk Mirage
• The Mazarine End
• Igallta
• Fuli
• Geopelia & Gino
• The Tiaoyin Tiangou & Rhythm Star

771/01/05

2094/11/05Limbo Wiki (official)

Awake Journal vol.9, guest Moonlight

Vol.9 comes out on 2094/11/05 with Moonlight as guest. The Eclipse Festival entry cites this issue as the source of its description of the festival.

• The Limbos
• The Tiaoyin Tiangou & Rhythm Star