2000: BioCrisis begins.
I couldn't ascertain from Oni's story when this is supposed to have happened, but if we're going to give the Wilderness time to spread and become a menace, we need to push it back some years before Dr. Hasegawa and Jamie venture into a quarantined area. Choosing "2000 AD" is also a bit of an homage to Neon Genesis Evangelion and its Second Impact. Any time in the '90s would work as well, such as 1997 (when Oni began development).
For the reasoning behind my choice to have a divergent timeline, and why I don't define the BioCrisis as "industrial pollution run amok", see the
Overview's "Backstory" section.
2009: Muro is born.
I have nothing to go on here except my placement of Mai's birth in 2013 (see below) and the assumption that Muro is older than Konoko (based on "blam! love, little sister"). He's probably more than a tiny bit older, considering he has managed to take control of the Syndicate and is a more advanced Daodan host.
2012: Freedom Riots.
I used to think this was a silly thing to place in our near future, back when I first read Oni's manual —
as if people would be rioting for freedom around the world!
Um, hmm...2013 (before November): Mai is born.
Using this date allows Konoko to be 19, a reasonably believable age, by the time Oni takes place (see 2032), and also gives Jamie time to take part in the Freedom Riots before becoming pregnant with Mai. It's true that Konoko is stated as being 23 in the
Unit Viewer, but this is not repeated in-game anywhere, and I see her rash behavior as more fitting for a teenager than an adult.
2014: Jamie dies in the Wilderness. Daodan project starts.
Has to take place after Mai's birth, and yet we don't have much spare time to work with because Konoko was separated from her dad at age 3, and the Daodan project initiated by Jamie's death was already well along by then. Apparently the Hasegawas were too intent on investigating the Wilderness Reserves to let having a baby back home slow them down.
2016: Syndicate raids Hasegawa'a Lab. Mai and Dr. Kerr are taken in by TCTF.
The manual tells us that Konoko was
orphaned at age 3, so based on my 2013 birth date, we arrive at 2016 or 2017.
2017 (after 8th birthday): Muro is implanted with the Daodan.
I just didn't want Muro to also be seven when implanted, but he does need to be about as young as Mai was when she was implanted in order to explain his maturity as a symbiote.
2020 (after 7th birthday): Konoko is implanted with the Daodan. Shinatama is produced using Konoko's brain engrams.
Konoko says that
she was 7 when she was implanted with the Daodan.
2026: Muro takes control of Syndicate.
The manual says that Muro came to power "less than ten years ago". Muro's only 17 at this point in time, so I can't strain credulity even further by setting it earlier than this, but if it was closer to Oni's time, say, 2029, they wouldn't say "less than ten years ago", they would say "a few years ago".
2032: Oni happens. Konoko is 19, Muro is 23.
It's more or less stated directly that Oni takes place in this year, per the manual, the Unit Viewer (2009 + 23 = 2032), the alignment of days of the week in Konoko's diary with the dates of the 2032 calendar year, and the
hidden sevens in "2032". Hardy
eventually confirmed on our forum that the mention in the manual of the WCG starting in 2032 was a mistake, removing the one obstacle to assigning Oni to that year.
2032-2033, post-Cataclysm: War Against the Syndicate. Seeing their perfect equilibrium shattered, angered that the world was falling to pieces around them, the WCG has the TCTF wage an all-out war against BGI and the Syndicate. Many strongholds that the WCG had pretended not to know about are raided and destroyed in a matter of weeks, with numerous casualties on both sides. However, the WCG soon begins to lose its hold on the world, and the branches of the former TCTF in each country need to focus on maintaining law and order among the general populace, so the firestorm is soon over for BGI and the Syndicate. The casualties in the upper ranks have, however, caused the two criminal organizations to also splinter and re-organize into smaller groups.
