Firefly Timeline

The following information helps establish the setting of the soft-disclosure program based on 34 Tauri during the early 2500s.

 

–

Table of Contents:

  1. Introduction
  2. Major Events of this Series’ Canons
  3. Additional Notes
  4. Overall (Images Begin)
  5. Creativerse Model

 

–

Introduction:

Firefly is a one-season TV series about how colonization of other worlds can sometimes be like the Wild West; there are still old wagon-like transports, shot-outs, hard times, bandits, and the aftermath of Civil War.  The show covered most of the socio-economic issues we face today.  Here is its entire timeline to help you orient to the characters, plot, and general social commentary:

 

Major Events of this Series’ Canons:

  • 2444:  Patience is born.
  • 2449:  Adelei Niska is born.
  • 2460:  Derrial Book is born.
  • 2465:  Gabriel Tam is born.
  • 2467:  Regan Tam is born.
  • 2468:  Malcolm Reynolds is born.
  • 2475:  A man is born who will one day have a double bypass operation at St Lucy’s Hospital in Ariel City.
  • 2477:  Jayne Cobb is born to Radiant Cobb.
  • 2480:  Derrial Book sails in a Firefly, but it is not a model with extenders, so it tends to shake.
  • 2484:  February 15:  Zoe Alleyne is born vessel-side, and she will be raised on a spaceship. Her Social Control Number is 129,426,3,3523.
  • 2486:  Hoban Washburne is born on a planet where the pollution is so thick, one cannot see a single star.
  • September 20:  Malcolm Reynolds is born on Shadow. His mother has a ranch there devoted mostly to running cattle, and she, along with about forty ranch hands, will raise him. According to him, nobody runs cattle harder or smarter than she does, and she tells him, “Don’t brand the cattle, brand the buyer–he’s the one likely to stray.” His Social Control Number is 099,836,5,4112.
  • 2490:  Late November:  Simon Tam is born on Osiris to Gabriel and Regan Tam. He is very smart, to the point of being considered gifted.
  • 2491:  Fess Higgins is born.
  • 2493:  Bridget/Saffron/Yolanda is born.
  • 2494:  Inara Serra is born on Sihnon. She will study to be a Companion there.
  • 2497:  Kaywinnit Lee Frye is born.
  • 2501:  River Tam is born on Osiris to Gabriel and Regan Tam. She is more than gifted, and everything she does–including music, mathematics, theoretical physics, and dance–comes as naturally to her as breathing does to anyone else, though she can also be a real brat about this. Her brother Simon will one day say she was born with a third eye. Amongst the languages she will know over time, besides English and Mandarin, are Esperanto, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Latin, and Russian.
  • 2503:  Hoban Washburne enters flight school, arguably just to see what the hell everyone is talking about regarding the stars in the sky, which he has never seen. At one point, he is laconic there.
  • Amongst Wash’s classmates in flight school is an unhygienic young man known to Wash as Manfred Asbach, although that name is a fake one he created just for flight school, as he wanted to say he is a certified pilot despite being unable to actually fly a ship. He has no actual piloting skill whatsoever but hacks his way into the flight school computers and makes them do what he wants. Every time he enters the simulator, it flies perfectly because he’s told it to days earlier; and every time he gets into an actual ship, he’s preprogrammed it to do on autopilot precisely what the lesson calls for. Even when he does poorly, as some of the exercises simply cannot be preprogrammed and require actual skill to do right, he hacks into the computers that hold the grades and changes them to perfection. As a result, Asbach is first in their class while Wash is second.
  • Refusing to believe that someone so inept could beat him out, Wash confronts Asbach at graduation, and he reveals the truth about himself. Wash has two choices, to beat him up or to keep his secret in exchange for occasionally making use of his services, and the latter option strikes him as a better long-term benefit. Wash also reassures himself that second in his class in flight school isn’t too bad, all things considered.
  • The only name Asbach will answer to afterwards is “Mr. Universe.” In addition to the pilot’s certification, he is also an ordained shepherd, a professional planet-diver, and a licensed prospector, though he can perform none of those tasks, either.
  • 2504:  River Tam starts correcting her brother Simon’s spelling.
  • 2506:  Malcolm Reynolds joins the war as a soldier on the side of the Independents, attaining the rank of sergeant in the 57th Overlanders unit of the “Balls and Bayonets” Brigade, under the command of Colonel Orbrin. Over time, Sergeant Reynolds gains a reputation for inspiring loyalty in people.
  • Amongst those Browncoats who fight alongside Mal are Corporal Zoe Alleyne (also part of the 57th Overlanders), Lieutenant Ben Baker, Bendis (also in the 57th), Bourke, Sergeant DeLorenzo, Green/Grin (from Sergeant DeLorenzo’s platoon), Johannsen, Kiri, McAvoy (also in the 57th), Monty, Tedesco, Private Tracey, and Vitelli.
  • Jayne Cobb does not join in the conflict, as the pay isn’t good enough on either side.
  • Mal acquires an antique gun that will get him through the war, and that he will ultimately keep afterwards.
  • On his first tour, a piece of shrapnel tears up a nerve cluster in Mal’s back, so he has it moved.
  • Early October:  At the Tam Estate on Osiris, young Simon Tam is doing homework, while his sister is trying to play a war game with him, telling him offhand that his textbook is wrong. Their father arrives on the scene and speaks to Simon about his homework, as well as Simon’s desire for a dedicated source box to access the Cortex. His father says he forbids it–but also that Simon’s mother has already ordered one for him, much to Simon’s delight. The deal, Simon is told, is that he will repay his father by becoming a brilliant doctor.
  • 2507 to 2510:  Simon Tam enters the best MedAcad on Osiris.
  • Mal and Zoe’s platoon is stuck in a trench outside of New Kasmir during the winter campaign for more than a week, while the Alliance is entrenched less than ten yards away. With no ammo to speak of and no orders, the platoon gets to talking to the Alliance soldiers, yelling across insults and jokes. Ten minutes after mentioning that they are out of rations, a bunch of apples rain into their trench. The captain tells them to wait, but they are so hungry that they start eating immediately–not realizing that the apples contain Griswalds, grenades about the size of a battery which respond to pressure. Though the grenades don’t make much noise, three guys get their heads blown off, leaving bodies which just end at the ribcage. From that point on, Mal and Zoe always cut their fresh fruit before eating it.
  • A shepherd says to Mal that the Biblical commandment is not, “You will not kill,” as it is often mistranslated, but in fact, “You will not commit murder.”

 

–

2511: 

  • Hoban Washburne spends six weeks on a moon where the principal form of recreation is juggling geese, particularly goslings.
  • The Battle of Du-Khang. In the ruins of a Buddhist temple, Private Tracey is nearly killed by an Alliance soldier sneaking up on his position, but Zoe gets behind the soldier and slits his throat. Zoe berates Tracey for letting his guard down and forgetting about stealth–and at that moment, Mal charges onto the scene, shooting wildly and yelling about where he is before taking cover. The Independents are overmatched, and Tracey tells his superiors that “this rock” isn’t worth their lives. Zoe asks Mal if they’re to hold, and Mal decides to cover for their shell-shocked lieutenant by inventing an order from him to join up with the 22nd. Zoe and Tracey go along with this, and Zoe is ready to round up the troops, when a seeker comes in. Mal uses a decoy so that the seeker explodes above them, but shrapnel rains down and injures Tracey, making him unable to walk. Mal carries him off as the Alliance forces roll into the temple.
  • Late March:  The Battle of Serenity Valley is fought on Hera. It is among the most devastating and decisive battles of the war, as the valley is considered a key position by both sides, and it is bitterly fought over. The Alliance says they are going to waltz through the valley, but the Independent Faction, with sixteen brigades and twenty air-tank squads, do not make victory easy for them, holding the valley against Alliance forces for almost two months.
  • Sergeant Malcolm Reynolds is stationed on Hera and in command of thirty-odd grunts, including Zoe Alleyne. Five days into the battle, there are so many officers dead that he commands two thousand, and he keeps all of them together, fighting, and sane. The Browncoats are forced to pile up the bodies of fellow soldiers and friends to build a wall because they have no cover, while blood just keeps pouring out of them. The survivors slip in it half the time, finding out that “bloodbath” is not just a figure of speech.
  • Mid-May:  Superior numbers and a brilliant deep-flank strategy by General Richard Wilkins begin to turn the tide at Serenity Valley in the Alliance’s favor.
  • Malcolm Reynolds’s unit holds while waiting for air support from the 82nd, which never arrives. As a result, the Alliance overwhelms the battleground with their firepower.
  • Nearly half a million people lie dead on the field at the end of the battle, about a third of them on the side of the Alliance; Malcolm Reynolds himself has maybe four hundred grunts still intact. Although the fighting is over, both sides leave their survivors there–wounded and sick and “near to mad as can still walk and talk”–while they negotiate the peace, and those soldiers keep dying.
  • The duty status of both Sergeant Malcolm Reynolds and Corporal Zoe Alleyne at the end of the war is that of a “NonTrialed Browncoat,” though Mal is also awarded a valor commendation for his actions in the Battle of Serenity Valley.
  • Although Mal had been a volunteer, and thus “took it personal” and “shut down some” when the Browncoat brass gave up the cause, he never becomes a Dust Devil. Zoe does so, however, as she still considers herself just a soldier, one of the fighting soldiers who happened to call themselves “peacemakers.”

 

–

2512: 

  • A con artist going by the name Yolanda marries Durran Haymer and actually tries to build a life with him, thinking that he is a decent man, “the genuine article.” He has money, which she believes will help keep her from straying, but she eventually disappears the same day as Heinrich, Haymer’s young security programmer. She does not marry or kill Heinrich, but puts him in a position to die easily, and in time, she forgets his name.
  • Haymer suspects that Yolanda and Heinrich may have left together, because he had seen the two of them talking, but thinks otherwise when Heinrich’s body is found. He never stops looking for his wife, though they only find her shuttle.
  • Bored one day, River Tam decides to create an entire language called Tobrik. To make it a special challenge, she requires that the language not have the verb “to be,” which is fine right up until she tries to translate Hamlet.
  • An older salesman attempts to sell Malcolm Reynolds a certain used ship in a shipyard, extolling its virtues and noting how smart a purchase it is, but Mal hardly hears a word he says, as in the distance, a mid-bulk transport ship with a standard radion-accelerator core (class-code 03-K64, Firefly) has caught his eye. He ultimately purchases that ship.
  • Mal opens up the doors to his newly-bought ship to show it off for Zoe Alleyne, who thinks it’s a deathtrap and is surprised he even paid money for it. He tries to sell her on what it can be for them–freedom from the long arm of the Alliance–but Zoe calls him on the fact that the ship isn’t running now. Mal assures her that it will, telling her he already has a name picked out for it.
  • Mal names his new Firefly vessel Serenity.
  • Mal hires Bester, a “genius mechanic,” as one of his crew, in part to make Serenity operational.
  • Hoban Washburne, a mustached pilot, assures Mal and Zoe that with a few modifications, it shouldn’t be a problem to “get some real maneuverability” out of Serenity. Mal asks if that means he’ll take the job, and Wash replies that it just might, so Mal tells him to make himself at home whilst they leave the bridge. Mal is pleased with Wash, but Zoe doesn’t like him–something about him bothers her. Mal tells her that it’s about time they hire a qualified pilot now that they finally have a mechanic, just as that mechanic, Bester, walks by.
  • Although Wash could take a lot of jobs (such as piloting a cruiser, with full benefits, vacations, and less death-defying), he will ultimately stay with Serenity because of his feeling for Zoe and his desire to be around her.
  • Mal hears tell that a couple of Browncoats who had disappeared wound up on Haven, and when he follows them to find out what happened, it turns out that the mining community there is willing to harbor the occasional fugitive for a small price. Since Mal has a ship, he offers to provide them with a ferry service on those occasions when it is required.
  • Amongst the many characters the Serenity crew will deal with in the course of their travels are Horowitz, the Holden boys, Capshaw, and Gruvick.
  • The crew of Serenity have “a perfectly legitimate conflict of interest” over salvage rights with Patience on Whitefall, the fourth moon of Athens. In the course of that conflict, certain words are exchanged, along with certain bullets, and Patience shoots Mal.
  • Over time, Patience comes to own half of Whitefall, just about becoming mayor.

 

–

2513: 

  • Zoe Alleyne marries Hoban Washburne, disobeying Mal’s order to the contrary. Their marriage ceremony does not call for Zoe to swear obedience to Wash.
  • Nandi is at practice, playing a baroque piece on the dulcimer, and the instructor keeps saying to her, “You’re playing it, not feeling it.” The fifth time he says it, she takes the dulcimer and smashes it into kindling, which is when it occurs to her that a Companion’s life might just be a little too constricting for her. As a result, she chooses to leave Sihnon.
  • House Madrassa orders Inara Serra to shun Nandi when she leaves, even though they are friends, and Nandi is aware of this.
  • Nandi trucks out to the border, learns to say “ain’t,” and comes to a moon run by Rance Burgess to find work. Instead, she finds a dung heap of a bordello, poweredly cheaply with solar sheeting and run by “a pig” who has half the girls strung out on drops. There is no Guild out there, they let the men run the Houses, and they don’t ask for references, so she and this man do not get along.
  • Nandi disposes of the man running the bordello and takes control of the Heart of Gold, along with the unregistered girls and boys who work there, including Chari, Emma, Helen, Lucy, and Petaline. In time, she cuts a piece of territory out of other men’s hands, building the business up from nothing.
  • Kaylee Frye has an encounter with someone who is younger than he seems–so much so that she thinks he must’ve been some kind of genetic experiment, as she is very surprised to discover he is only fourteen years old when his folks come by to fetch him. She is “whupped hard” by her father as punishment.
  • Mid-May:  Jayne Cobb partners up with Stitch Hessian.
  • Unification Day (Late May):  Malcolm Reynolds finds himself in an Alliance-friendly bar, “looking for a quiet drink,” and ends up in a barfight. He will continue to find himself in this situation every year on U-Day.
  • Mid-November:  Jayne Cobb and Stitch Hessian arrive in Canton, a town on Higgins’ Moon, and after standing up to Magistrate Higgins, Jayne brings Stitch in on a robbery which he has planned. Together, they steal a hovercraft from the magistrate and pull a second-story on his estate, robbing strongboxes containing sixty thousand in untraceable currency from his safe. They get away clean, but the hovercraft is tagged by anti-aircraft fire, causing it to lose altitude and forcing them to dump the fuel reserve, the life support, and even the seats in an attempt to stay airborne. With the shuttle at thirty feet, only Jayne, Stitch, and the money are left, so Jayne pushes Stitch himself out, costing Stitch one of his eyes. After tossing Stitch, however, the shuttle continues to go down, and Jayne finally dumps the strongboxes as well, accidentally dropping them on the mudders in Canton’s town square.
  • Although Jayne manages to escape, Stitch is immediately captured by Magistrate Higgins, who has him locked up in a steaming hotbox.
  • After discovering the fate of his money, Magistrate Higgins sends his prods into Canton to take it back from the mudders, but they resist, and there are too many to put down, so in the end, he simply calls it a bonus.
  • Believing that Jayne dropped the money into Canton’s town square deliberately, the mudders celebrate him as a folk hero, writing a song about his exploits called “The Hero of Canton” and erecting a statue of him in the square. Magistrate Higgins rolls into Canton, wanting to tear the statue down, but the whole town riots as a result. In time, the legend of The Hero of Canton even spreads to other worlds.

 

–

2514: 

  • Simon Tam graduates from his MedAcad in the top three percent of his class. At 23, he is rather young to be a doctor.
  • Mal goes to ask Bester about “yet another delay” and finds him having sex with someone in the engine room. When Mal confronts him about this, Bester tells him that engines “make her hot,” and that he can’t get them back in the air again anyway, because the secondary grav boot is shot. The girl in question disagrees, even as she’s putting her clothes back on; when Bester protests, she persists in her opinion, explaining that it’s the reg couple that’s bad, and not only points it out for both of them, but fixes it on the spot herself. Impressed by her talent, Mal immediately offers her a job on the ship for as long as she can keep her in the sky. The girl excitedly goes off to ask her folks for permission, and Bester asks Mal what he needs two mechanics for–to which he says that he really doesn’t.
  • Bester is kicked off Serenity, while the girl obtains permission from her parents to accept Mal’s offer of employment as the ship’s mechanic. Mal quickly learns that her name is Kaylee Frye.
  • Kaylee paints a floral pattern all around the dining room of Serenity.

 

–

2515: 

  • Simon Tam, already a gifted doctor, finishes his internship in eight months, becoming licensed to practice medicine.
  • Simon makes surgeon, along with some of his fellow medical graduates. They are now the elite, and the world is theirs, so Simon celebrates by drinking sake, getting naked, and climbing on top of the statue of Hippocrates. There are no Feds until Simon starts singing (possibly the national anthem), but Simon talks (or possibly pays) the Feds out of telling his father.
  • Simon becomes a resident trauma surgeon in one of the best hospitals in Capital City on Osiris, on his way to a major position–possibly even the Medical Elect.
  • The Tam family is made aware of a government-sponsored academy they had never heard of before where River Tam could be sent to learn. Although they have the money to send her anywhere, this academy has the most exciting and challenging program, and River wants to go, so she is sent there.
  • Simon gets a few letters from his sister at first, but then, he doesn’t hear from her for months.
  • River Tam is interviewed by someone at the institute she is attending, and this interview is the first of many to be recorded. River tells the interviewer that she likes school, though things sometimes move a little slowly for her; that she is finding Physics a challenge, though she is already in the graduate program, where they call her “Little Mouse;” and that Volger is a little jealous of her because she’s so young, as he plans to become very important. The interviewer asks if Volger told her he was jealous, but she indicates that people “tell you things all the time without talking.” When the interviewer says that she is very intuitive, River mentions Simon, and how he hates when she can tell which girls he likes, though she also calls him a genius, saying that she could never do what he does. The interviewer assures her that she could do whatever she put her mind to, and tells her that’s what the Alliance needs, what this institute is all about–her mind, and letting it do everything it could. The interviewer then asks River if that sounds like something she’d be interested in, to which she simply asks, “Would I still be allowed to dance?”
  • During another interview at the institute, the interviewer asks River if she understands why “these treatments are important.” She tells him that she thinks there’s been an error, and that she may not be the right subject for this program. The interviewer responds that it’s “perfectly natural to feel a little nervous,” but she requests a transfer back to Gen Ed. He responds that she told them that was no good for her, that it was too slow, which is why she is there. River tells the interviewer that it hurts, and he says he can help her with that, noting how proud Doctor Mathias is of how she’s progressing, to which she says, “I’m not progressing.”
  • Later on in that session, River says, “It’s the Pax.” When the interviewer asks her to tell him what she sees, she describes how he “lost the first one”–he cut too deep, and the first one died on the table. One of his attendants cried, by her description, and he comforted her, saying, “We’re doing such good work.” The interviewer asks River if she understands that that is true–the work they do there is very important, and she’s a part of that–but she responds by asking to see her brother. The interviewer replies that she can write to him anytime she likes, which makes her more upset as she reiterates her request. The interviewer says that he is sure her brother is very busy, at which point River becomes more docile and simply agrees with him.
  • Simon finally gets another letter from River, but it makes no sense to him, as she talks about things that never happened and jokes they never shared, even misspelling some words. Before long, Simon shows his parents her letters, expressing his concerns that River is trying to tell him something someone doesn’t want her to say, but they tell him this is just paranoia and dismiss it, saying he should not risk his career over this.
  • In time, Simon manages to deduce that River’s letters are a code, simply saying, “They’re hurting us. Get me out.” Despite his efforts, however, he is unable to get near her.
  • A woman on Jiangyin goes out of her mind and tries to kill her two daughters, managing to kill one of them. The other daughter, Ruby, survives, but stops talking after that point.

 

–

2516: 

  • Inara Serra leaves Sihnon, reportedly because she wants to “see the universe,” although she retains her status as a Registered Companion.
  • Nandi is shocked to learn of Inara’s leaving, as Inara could have been House Priestess in a few years time, and does not know why she did so.
  • In the course of River Tam’s modifications at the academy, the institute’s doctors open up her skull, leaving a scalpel scar, and make repeated incisions into her brain–even though it is healthy and this would normally be done only to lobotomize a person and remove damaged tissue. They strip her amygdala, a filter in the brain that keeps one’s feelings in check when one does not want to feel scared or worried or nervous. As a result, River now feels everything, as she can no longer push these feelings to the back of her mind.
  • During an interview at the institute, River is ranting about why she’s not sleeping, saying that she has a system, and that her mattress can’t be trusted, it has to be gutted. She asks the interviewer if he’s worried that she cut up her mattress for no reason, or if she had a perfectly good reason that he can’t see. The interviewer simply asks her why she cut up her mattress, and she replies that she is trying to protect her spine. He asks River if she is worried she might be injured, noting that her movement trainers have given her excellent marks, but she replies that no one will give her a mission. When the interviewer asks about that, she says she has a reason–she is reasonable.
  • Later on in that session, River angrily says that her movement hasn’t been dictated yet, but she is not there for nothing. She tells the interviewer that he knows she has a spine, adding that there is “something wrong with the body politic.” Later still, River screams and grabs at the table in front of her, gasping that something is sticking in her–that it’s in the mattress and it’s crawling inside her–before yelling, “You cut it out! You cut it out! You cut it out!”
  • Late September:  Malcolm Reynolds shows one of Serenity’s shuttles to Inara Serra, a Registered Companion and potential renter. She is interested, but insists on a number of conditions–complete autonomy and privacy, an understanding that she won’t service him or anyone in his employ, and some measure of assurance that when she makes an appointment with a client, she is in a position to keep that appointment. Mal says he’ll take all that into consideration, but she tells him she already knows he’ll rent the shuttle to her–for one quarter less than his asking price–because she can bring a certain respectability to his ship that others can’t. He questions why she is even there, and what she could be running from, but she ducks the question, and adds that he does not get to call her a whore. Mal promises that he won’t do so ever again.
  • In time, Inara will call Mal by names which are worse than “whore.”
  • Mid-October:  Jayne Cobb; his boss, Marco Ferlinghetti; and another lackey are holding guns on Mal and Zoe. The three want to know where Mal and Zoe have hidden some goods, but they won’t say, and Mal offers Jayne a better cut than the seven percent straight off the top he gets now–along with his own room and full run of the kitchen–if he switches over to his crew. When Marco shouts at him, Jayne shoots him in the leg, trains his gun on the lackey, and keeps talking to Mal, ultimately accepting his offer.
  • Mid-December:  Inara undergoes a physical examination on a Core world in order to renew her Companion registration, as required by Guild law. It goes as expected.

 

–

2517: 

  • Serenity takes on Shepherd Book, Simon Tam and River Tam.
  • Early January – Mid-May:  Atherton Wing engages Inara Serra’s services at least once with Malcolm Reynolds’s knowledge, though Mal never actually sees him. Mal pictures him as older than he actually is.
  • A carrier run by a skeleton crew blows out, killing all hands. The wreckage is left adrift, although the derelict transport has a cargo of at least three crates containing pure, genuine A-grade foodstuffs made up of protein, vitamins, and immunization supplements. One bar of these foodstuffs will feed a family for a month or more, but there is a government stamp imprinted on every molecule, making the cargo worth only two hundred in platinum.
  • During an interview at the institute, the interviewer notes to River Tam that she is very quiet today, and asks how her session with Doctor Mathias went. She tells him that Doctor Mathias gave her a mission, and the interviewer asks if he told River her mission out loud or if she just heard it, to which she responds that “he plays hide and seek” with her. When the interviewer checks if she meant Doctor Mathias, she says that her brother is a doctor, that he thinks he can find her, but she is “deep down” and does not make a sound. The interviewer asks River what mission Doctor Mathias gave her, but she says she can’t tell him, and the interviewer replies that she can tell him anything, she knows that. She repeats that she can’t tell, then holds out her hand and says she’ll “have to write it down.”
  • Later on in the recording of that session, the interviewer is sitting alone at a table when he suddenly begins to gasp and choke. He reaches up with his hand and pulls a bloody pen from his neck, throwing it onto the table, before gasping again and falling to the floor. At that point, River appears directly in front of the recording device, holding up her own bloodied hand to a transparent barrier and saying, “I can see you.”
  • Serenity has two jobs that do not pay well enough for the crew to put together any savings, followed by weeks without work.
  • Simon Tam is contacted by some men from an underground movement, who tell him that his sister River is in danger, as the government is “playing with her brain.” They indicate that if he funds them, they can sneak her out in cryo and get her to Persephone, from which he can take her wherever he’d like.
  • Simon is arrested for being in a blackout zone on Osiris, though he was only talking to someone who might be able to help River. His father, Gabriel Tam, is called away from a dinner party to bail him out, paying two thousand credits to do so, but having to walk through the door of the facility where Simon is being held goes on Gabriel’s permanent profile. He tells Simon that if this continues, he won’t come for him again, and asks if Simon is coming home. Simon does not answer.
  • Simon goes back to the blackout zone and accepts the offer from the underground movement. In turn, they are successful in getting River to him as promised. Once the Alliance becomes aware of his sneaking her out, however, they crash his accounts. Amongst the things Simon is able to bring with him is a medkit containing valuable medicines such as ivoprovalyn (a common immune booster), propoxin, and hydrozapam.
  • Simon acquires a set of glasses with lenses resistant to retina-scanning sensors.
  • Badger becomes aware of the derelict transport with a cargo of foodstuffs onboard, and he hires the crew of Serenity to pull this illegal salvage. Although he is aware of the goods, however, he does not realize that they are imprinted by the Alliance.
  • Shepherd Derrial Book of the Southdown Abbey, who has been “out of the world for a spell,” decides to walk it a while, and perhaps bring the Word to those who need it told. He brings along what he can from the garden he had at the abbey.
  • The Alliance sends Lawrence Dobson undercover to track down Simon and River Tam, as River is considered a precious commodity worth a great deal of money.
  • Late May:  “Serenity” (the episode, not the movie)
  • Jayne shaves off his goatee, but immediately allows it to start growing back.
  • Unification Day
  • “The Train Job”
  • Early June – Mid-August:  With Mal consistently refusing to let her buy a new compression coil for Serenity’s engine, Kaylee Frye eventually drops the matter.
  • A retrofitted transport ship is licensed to a group of sixteen families, including those of Sharone Schultz and Johann Robinson, out of Bernadette. They are provided with Alliance hearth subsidies and are due to touch down in Newhall as settlers, but the ship is set upon by Reavers, who take out the port thrust and kill all but one of the passengers. The attack happens so quickly that the Reavers leave no sign of a struggle.
  • Kaylee has something “twixt her nethers” that isn’t battery-operated.
  • Rance Burgess impregnates Petaline, his favored whore at the Heart of Gold bordello.
  • The Reavers feast on their victims aboard the transport ship, forcing the lone survivor to watch, and leave their bodies hanging in the ship’s storage compartment. Everything is left on, allowing the ship to power down on its own, but they launch the lifeboat and leave an explosive booby trap for any potential rescue ships. Left alone on the ship and confronted with the will of the Reavers, the only course left to the survivor is to become one of them, desecrating his flesh and eventually losing his mind.
  • Late August:  “Bushwhacked”
  • Mid-September:  “Shindig”
  • Early October:  “Safe”
  • October 18-20:  “Our Mrs. Reynolds”
  • October 26 – November 9:  Serenity arrives on Beaumonde, in the city of New Dunsmuir, and spends two weeks on the planet.
  • Mid-November:  “Jaynestown”:  A fresh warrant for the arrest of Simon Tam comes up over the Cortex, with his birthday attached to it.
  • Late November:  “Out of Gas”
  • Early December:  Shepherd Book gets off Serenity at the Bathgate Abbey for a brief meditational respite.
  • Serenity goes to three places where there are no jobs “worth having,” leading the crew to begin suspecting that they aren’t really looking for work at all.
  • Mid-December:  “Ariel”:  Jubal Early, a bounty hunter, begins tracking Simon and River Tam, as he plans to take them into custody and get the substantial reward being offered.
  • Serenity begins making drops to sell the medicine from the heist on Ariel to various middlemen, with the proceeds being split amongst the crew.
  • Jayne uses his cut of the money to buy a crate of genuine apples for the rest of the crew, much to their consternation. He also forwards some credits to his mother, which are helpful, as Matty is still sick with the Damplung.
  • Wash suggests to Zoe that they forget the fence and go straight to the source, contacting the local MD’s at their drop points so they will get better prices and be assured that the drugs are getting to the right people. Zoe tells Mal about this, but Mal rejects it out of hand, thinking it’ll get back to someone and cause trouble if they eliminate the middlemen instead of playing nice in a quadrant where they already have enough enemies. Zoe doesn’t argue the point, choosing instead to lie to Wash and say that she didn’t get a chance to tell the captain his idea.
  • Late December:  Shepherd Book comes back aboard Serenity and learns about the heist on Ariel, discovering that Simon is “moonlighting as a criminal mastermind.”
  • “War Stories”

 

–

2518:

  • January 1 – March 30:  Kaylee Frye does her best to patch up the Serenity crew’s ground Mule, but it never works right after the damage caused by setting off a passel of grenades in it.
  • Jayne Cobb’s mother makes him a knitted hat to keep him warm in his travels, and mails it off to him along with a short letter.
  • Lieutenant Womack, an Alliance officer who got his command stripes at the Silverhold Colonies, starts running a job on the side smuggling enhanced human organs, though the technology’s not ready and he is operating away from his jurisdiction. The blastomeres are unapproved, likely unstable, and the only way they can move or even incubate the lab-grown organs is in a person, so Womack recruits Tracey to transport them. Tracey is paid to have his organs scooped out and replaced with artificial ones, leaving a nearly invisible scar, and agrees to go to a clinic on Ariel to take out those goods (valued at a million credits or more) and put his own organs back.
  • Zoe begins talking to Wash about having a baby. Wash feels that this is not the best time to bring a helpless person into their lives, given that they’re “deep in the rough and tumble” and neither of them sees that changing anytime soon. Zoe is undeterred by such an objective assessment, as she’s not afraid to try having a child despite the risks.
  • March 31:  Inara Serra obtains a client, the last one before a significant dry spell.
  • April 1-20:  Serenity spends some time looking for work “off the radar,” visiting backwater moons, slums, and frontier planets without so much as a temple built. None of these places has any suitable Companion clients.
  • Serenity sneaks a cargo of little geisha dolls with big heads that wobble past the Alliance to transport.
  • Tracey gets a better offer for the human organs he is smuggling from a buyer who is willing to go three times the going rate–enough money so he could get his parents off St. Albans, where they live, and set them up someplace warm. He skips out on his scheduled drop spot to meet with the new buyer, but Womack and his cohorts get wind of what he has planned. When Tracey shows up, he finds that the new buyer is dead and there are some men waiting for him. He is only just able to get away.
  • Knowing that Womack and his men will never stop looking for him so long as he is alive, Tracey buys a drug (possibly byphodine) from someone to make it appear as though he were dead, figuring that they’ll stop looking for him that way. He then arranges to have himself mailed in a crate to Malcolm Reynolds and Zoe, and records a message asking them to deliver his body to St Albans. Although the guy who sells him the drug tells him he won’t dream, he does dream of his family en route.
  • A crate with no return, addressed to Mal and Zoe, arrives at the franchise of the Allied Postal System run by Amnon Duul. Amnon weighs it, then sends a wave to Mal saying that he’s holding some post for him and his crew.
  • April 21-24:  “Trash”
  • April 25-30:  Mal tries to fence the Lassiter, but no one will touch such a priceless artifact. Realizing that Mal is out of his league, Inara offers to help by contacting people she knows in the highest ranks, despite the potential risk to her career.
  • Mal reads the wave from Amnon, then directs Serenity to the space station where Amnon operates so they can pick up their post and obtain some supplies.
  • “The Message”
  • Mid-May:  “Heart of Gold”
  • Late May:  “Objects in Space”
  • Early June:  Serenity’s crew finds a buyer for the Lassiter, and the funds go to purchase a fancy new hover Mule, Mal’s pride and joy. Though the new Mule isn’t cheap, it is an air vehicle, and therefore considerably more useful than the old Mule, which was strictly a ground vehicle.
  • “Better Days”
  • “Those Left Behind”
  • Mid-June – Late July:  The mining community on Haven waves Mal, telling him that a thief is tired of running from the Alliance and wants to settle down and do some honest work. Mal is willing to pick the young man up and bring him to Haven, though this is the first time Serenity has travelled there since Shepherd Book came onboard. When the crew is preparing to depart, Book–who had already announced his intention to leave Serenity–says that he will be staying behind. Mal can’t conjure a good reason not to let him stay, especially since plenty of the local miners are spiritual folk who welcome the notion of a preacher in their midst, so Book follows through on his plan. His contributions to the community include a small vegetable patch and more use of the local church. For his part, Mal tells himself that truth be known, he won’t miss Book’s praying overmuch.
  • The Alliance begins tracking down smugglers through high-risk assignments by infiltrating the people involved, then torturing and brutally murdering them at rendezvous points.
  • Mal agrees to a cargo smuggling trip for the crew of Serenity, but insists on half of their transport charge up front this time. When the person who hired them actually agrees to pay it, he has a bad feeling about the job, so he puts River down with the man.
  • “The Other Half”:  Serenity undergoes a number of modifications, including the addition of more monitors and control panels to the cockpit and a new bulkhead with a circular pattern in the cargo bay.
  • On orders from The Operative, subliminal broadwaves begin to go out from the Alliance high military containing behavioral modification triggers, in the hopes of locating River Tam. Amongst the many places where this signal is hidden is an advertisement for Fruity Oaty Bars.
  • Early August:  Serenity (the movie) —*The events in this film did not happen; the plot of that movie was a ridiculous forced compression of what would have been hundreds of episodes across multiple seasons, one episode per world, the entire crew likely surviving to/through the end.  In this website’s/saga’s storyline/’universe’, this crew had adventures for ~1 decade before parting ways in peace/friendship.

 

–

Additional Notes:

A subset of that above timeline is for the Civil War their solar-system went through.  34 Tauri grew very quickly, with the core worlds (closest to its central star) enjoying far more development and comfort than the outer planets and moons did.  The result was as you might expect; they started wanting their fair share, and eventually their independence.  Like secessionists in our world today, the existing super-powers and other authorities were quick to stomp that out.  Great Britain attacked America when it declared independence, and America now attacks any states and individuals who do.

 

That’s all we know for now…

–

Overall:

–

Creativerse Model

Forming:

Airlock:

Hangar:

Airlock Control:

Cockpit:

Galley:

Nexus Rear:

–

Engine:

Gravity Drive:

Exterior:

Views of Firefly “Persephone” in Progress:

Comparison:

The green lines in this final image show how Persephone is a Firefly ~2.5 times longer along all dimension-axes than Serenity; 2.5 x 2.5 x 2.5 = 15.625 times more voluminous than Serenity.

–

Also see:

–