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Quick n' dirty additions, and trying to avoid any major spoilers:
Pre-Gap dates assume the Gap began somewhere in the 4700s AG, just for a baseline. If you disagree, just slide those numbers around to taste.
Millions (or hundreds of thousands? Sources contradict) of years ago: The Sivv Dominion uses its advanced technology to aggressively spread across the galaxy, stopped only when the Kishalee empire, possessing its own incredible technologies, cripples the sivv empire in a stunning act of sabotage. The Sivv Dominion collapses and is soon wiped out by its surviving enemies.
Hundreds of Thousands of Years Ago: The act that doomed the Sivv Dominion also sent the Kishalee Empire into a long slide of cultural decay. Eventually it, too, collapses. The Sivv and the Kishalee are eventually forgotten by history, remembered only in the prehistoric legends of other species.
Unknown Pre-Gap: Eox fires a doomsday weapon that destroys the planets Damiar and Iovo, creating the Diaspora. The weapon also backfires, devastating Eox. The handful of native elebrians who survive the initial cataclysm turn to undeath to persist.
Unknown Pre-Gap: The planet Golarion's first great human empire, Azlant, uses magical portals to explore the galaxy, establishing colonies on Akiton and New Thespera.
Unknown Pre-Gap: The Oatia elves of Castrovel study the stars, making advanced discoveries, and eventually use portals to depart to distant worlds, eventually spreading to numerous worlds and possibly even other galaxies.
Circa 10,100 Pre-Gap: Earthfall. An asteroid pulled from the Diaspora smashes into Golarion, obliterating Azlant and ushering the planet into the "Age of Darkness." Azlanti colonies elsewhere in the galaxy, including those on Akiton and New Thespera, are suddenly and permanently cut off from home.
Unknown Pre-Gap: The Azlanti humans of Akiton wage war against the planet's resident witchwyrds. The witchwyrds are outnumbered. The majority stay and fight the Azlanti, eventually evolving into shobhads. A smaller population negotiates a peace with the Azlanti. The smallest percentage develops starflight and flees. Of these, those who remain nomadic are the witchwyrds we know today. Some settle on a new world, Kasath, and eventually evolve into kasathas. The Azlanti humans gradually become the Hylki. Much of this history will be forgotten or suppressed by the start of the Gap.
Circa 9,160 Pre-Gap: A massive starship from a distant galaxy crashes into Golarion. Its wreckage and the alien creatures and technology that trickle out of it fascinate the local human barbarians, who call the wreck the Silver Mount. This event introduces androids to the galaxy and releases small populations of some creatures collected on Akiton and Castrovel into the wild.
Circa 9,000 Pre-Gap: Gnomes first emerge on Golarion.
Unknown Pre-Gap: Eshovok the Far-Sighted unites the vesk and establishes their empire, the Veskarium. The Veskarium wages a war of extermination against the other two sapient species on their planet. Eventually, the Veskarium rules the planet, unopposed.
Unknown Pre-Gap: The deity Kadrical first arrives in the system modern Pact Worlds explorers call the Scoured Stars and adopts the system as his domain. Kadrical first manifests a powerful field, the Godshield, to protect the jinsul species from the ravages of their sun.
Unknown Pre-Gap: Under Kadrical's watchful eye, izalguuns develop technology considered advanced even in modern times. Several other species in the Scoured Stars unite to form a blended civilization; much much later this civilization will call itself the Kreiholm Freehold. Jinsuls serve as Kadrical's enforcers, maintaining the peace and guarding against external threats.
Unknown Pre-Gap: A mysterious "darkness" from space threatens the Scoured Stars. Kadrical responds by engulfing the entire trinary star system in the Godshield, cutting the planets off from each other and the rest of the galaxy.
Unknown Pre-Gap: Centuries later, Kadrical slips into a torpor and the Godshield falls. The eight indigenous civilizations of the Scoured Stars all flee, scattering across the galaxy by various means. One of Kadrical's heralds attempts to stop the exodus, but succeeds only in scattering it.
Unknown Pre-Gap: Not long after (no more than a couple of centuries later), Kadrical briefly wakes, discovers that he has been abandoned, and sends an artifact out into space, each one intended as a beacon to ask its civilization to return. None respond.
Circa 4,800 Pre-Gap: On Golarion, Aroden raises the Starstone from the bottom of the Inner Sea and builds a great capital city around it: Absalom. This ushers in the "Age of Enthronement."
3,226 Pre-Gap: Having developed interplanetary travel, the Veskarium invades and conquers the neighboring world in their system, Iji. The Veskarium renames the planet Vesk-2.
Circa 200 Pre-Gap: Aroden dies and prophecy is forever broken in the multiverse.
161 Pre-Gap: The Veskarium completes its initial conquest of all eight planets in their solar system.
Circa 100 Pre-Gap: The Russian Revolution of 1917 takes place in a distant galaxy.
0 Pre-Gap: The Gap begins, marking the end of the reliable historical record in the Golarion system. The start of the Gap is porous, with no clear and singular cutoff point. The physical loss of Golarion post-Gap means that most historical records do not survive, leaving a tattered history that grows even sparser as the Gap approaches. Surviving records of dubious authenticity suggest that Golarion was in the early stages of technological society, with isolated usage of aircraft and orbital vehicles. The ancestors of space goblins are reputed to have snuck onboard a spacefaring vehicle and infested an orbital space station. The Pathfinder Society is active in this era, eventually inspiring the formation of the Starfinder Society.
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The Gap (in no coherent order):
* Golarion and other worlds in the Mataras system catch up with Verces and Bretheda, developing interplanetary and eventually interstellar travel. Various nations and worlds from the system establish colonies in nearby systems, often requiring the use of generational arkships.
Some notable colonies include:
* Hobgoblins, presumably from Tian Xia, establish an interstellar empire that the modern Gideron Authority claims as its own. The hobgoblin empire eventually collapses, for unknowable reasons.
* A colony in the neighboring Marixah system, which brands itself the Marixah Republic after emerging from the Gap.
* Explorers from the Mwangi Expanse use a magic portal to establish a colony now called Xibion.
* Absalom Station is constructed and the Starstone relocated from Golarion's surface to the station's core.
* Somehow, either through a fluke mutation or a blessing from Hylax, shirrens, a component of the Swarm, gain individuality.
More later!
Thank you for making this, it's helping me organize something for my new Starfinder players. Saying some of these names associated with the history of the Pact Worlds is very demanding.
For most new players who know nothing about Starfinder, it's great to have a resource like this to give them a general idea of what's happened.