Dead Space Timeline: every major event from the Black Marker to the Brethren Moons

The Dead Space timeline runs on the Gregorian calendar, so every date is an ordinary year, from 2214 when the Black Marker came out of the ground to 2514 when the Brethren Moons reached Earth. Before that sits a much older history, revealed in Dead Space 3 (2013), of an alien world that lost the same fight two million years earlier. There's one continuity: the games, the films Downfall (2008) and Aftermath (2011), the novels Martyr and Catalyst, the comics and the Deep Cover audio drama all slot together, and the 2023 remake of Dead Space keeps the original's dates while changing some details, flagged below.

Before humanity (about 65 million to 2 million years ago)#

Most of what's known about the deep past comes from the research of the Sovereign Colonies scientist Earl Serrano, pieced together on Tau Volantis and found by Isaac Clarke two centuries after his death.

• Ancient past: The Brethren Moons existed long before humanity. Each was born from a Convergence, in which a species that had built copies of a Marker died and its dead were drawn together into one planet-sized Necromorph. The Moons stayed linked to one another and to the Markers across the stars. (Dead Space 3)
• About 65 million years ago: The object later called the Black Marker struck Earth at what is now the Chicxulub crater. The impact was blamed for the extinction of the dinosaurs, and the artifact was later believed to have shaped the evolution of humans. (Dead Space: Martyr; Dead Space 3)
• About 2 million years ago: On Tau Volantis, then a world of oceans, a native species found its own Black Marker and began building Red Marker copies of it. The outbreak that followed started a Convergence, and a new Moon began to take shape from their dead. (Dead Space 3)
• About 2 million years ago: The few aliens who resisted built a planet-sized Machine with a Codex to run it. Switching it on flash-froze the planet and stopped the Tau Volantis Moon half-formed in orbit, but they never finished the stage meant to destroy it. The species died out, and the dormant Moon went on whispering through the Markers to "turn it off". (Dead Space 3)

Earth and the Black Marker (the 21st century to 2215)#

Humanity's first steps off Earth came in the 21st century. By the 23rd, a world government called the Sovereign Colonies ruled Earth's nation-state Sectors and its young colonies, with space travel still slow, costly and run by the military.

• Between 2045 and 2050: The New Horizons Lunar Colony was set up on Luna as a joint US and Chinese mining base, the first permanent colony off Earth. (No Known Survivors)
• 23rd century: The Sovereign Colonies presided over the first wave of colonisation, as people and corporations left a polluted, resource-starved Earth. Resource shortages only got worse as the colonies grew. (Dead Space 3)
• 2214: The Black Marker was found in the Chicxulub crater off the Yucatan Peninsula. The military officer Craig Markoff and the mining firm DredgerCorp raised it, and the scientists on the floating research compound believed its signal was a source of limitless energy. (Dead Space: Martyr; Dead Space 3)
• 2214 to 2215: The geophysicist Michael Altman, convinced the government meant to bury the find, escaped the compound and told the public that the Marker was the first proof of alien life. He was taken back just before a Necromorph outbreak overran the facility and the Marker was lost beneath the sea. (Dead Space: Martyr)
• 2215: Markoff and the project psychologist Stevens, now believers in the Marker, murdered Altman and posed as his followers. They turned him into a martyr and founded Unitology in his name, while the government called him a hoaxer whose death was an accident. The Church came to treat the Black Marker as holy and grew into the largest religion in human space. (Dead Space: Martyr; Dead Space 2)

The 2008 game's text log called Altman an anthropologist. The 2023 remake rewrote the log to make him a geophysicist, in line with Martyr and Dead Space 2. (Dead Space; Dead Space (2023))

The Red Marker programme (the 2290s to 2311)#

About eighty years after the dig, the Sovereign Colonies Science Division finally learned to copy the Black Marker. Three Red Markers were sent to remote, classified worlds to be tested.

• 2290s: Red Markers were grown from the Black Marker's data and installed on Kreemar, Aspera and Aegis VII. Each was meant to prove the Marker could end the resource crisis. (Dead Space 3; Dead Space: Catalyst)
• 2290s: On Aegis VII, Marker 3A set off an outbreak that grew into the Hive Mind. The Marker was left on its pedestal, where it held the creature in check, and the Sovereign Colonies sealed off the system. (Dead Space; Dead Space: Downfall)
• 2290s to 2300s: On the planet Vindauga, Istvan Sato shot dead Councilman Tim Fischer and was sent to the political prison on Aspera, next to the base housing Marker 2A. When the Marker activated, the prison and the research station fell to Necromorphs. Istvan's brother Jensi Sato reached the Marker with the prisoner Henry Wandrei, and a Sovereign Colonies ship mined the planet's orbit as it left. (Dead Space: Catalyst)
• Before 2311: The test outbreaks pointed to a "master signal" that every Marker answered. The Sovereign Colonies built Ptolemy Station, an array of Marker pylons, to triangulate it, and traced the signal to an ice world, Tau Volantis. (Dead Space: Liberation; Dead Space 3)

The Tau Volantis expedition (2311 to 2314)#

Losing the Secession War and running out of resources, the Sovereign Colonies Council sent a fleet to Tau Volantis in the hope that whatever powered the Markers could save it.

• 2311: The Sovereign Colonies Armed Forces fleet under Admiral Marjorie Graves reached Tau Volantis with General Spencer Mahad and a science division led by Dr. Earl Serrano. Ships including the flagship CMS Roanoke and the CMS Terra Nova held station in orbit while bases went up on the surface. (Dead Space 3)
• 2311 to 2314: Serrano's teams found a buried alien city, frozen remains and a host of Red Markers. The alien specimen they called Rosetta let them read the aliens' minds, and they built a Codex to work the Machine. (Dead Space 3)
• 2311 to 2314: Markers brought up to the fleet drove the crews to insomnia, hallucination and violence. Graves became obsessed with switching off the Machine and was confined to her quarters on Mahad's orders. (Dead Space 3)
• 2314: Serrano learned the truth. The aliens hadn't made the Markers, they were victims of them, and the Machine was all that held the Moon frozen. When word of the Moon network reached the Council it rated Tau Volantis an extinction-level threat and invoked Scenario Five, the order to destroy every trace of the Marker programme. (Dead Space 3)
• 18 June 2314: Mahad's loyalists carried out the purge, destroying the data and artifacts, executing the scientists and disabling the fleet, while a minelayer seeded orbit to keep anyone else out. Private Tim Caufman, sent by Serrano with Private Samuel Ackerman to recover the Codex from the downed transport The Mule, was shot by Mahad, who wiped the Codex and then killed himself. Serrano, his leg crippled, died alone by the Machine. (Dead Space 3)
• 2314: The purge left the Sovereign Colonies unable to fight on. The government collapsed, and the secessionists built an Earth-centred one in its place, the Earth Government Colonial Alliance, known as EarthGov. The Marker programme was forgotten. (Dead Space 3)

EarthGov and planet cracking (2314 to 2507)#

For nearly two centuries the Markers were a rumour kept alive by the Church. Humanity's resource problem was solved, for a while, by tearing planets apart.

• 2440s: The first planet crack broke up Saturn's moon Titan. Its remains, the Shard of Titan, became the base for the city later known as the Sprawl. (Dead Space; Dead Space 2)
• 2446: The USG Ishimura was commissioned as the first Planet Cracker class ship, flagship of the CEC mining fleet and one of the first big vessels with a ShockPoint Drive. (Dead Space)
• Before 2508: Isaac Clarke was born on Earth, in the American Republic's eastern seaboard, to the ship architect Poul Clarke and his wife Octavia Clarke, who later joined the Church of Unitology. (Dead Space (2023))
• 2505 to 2507: The neuropsychiatrist Nicole Brennan met Isaac while treating his mother. She then took a senior medical post aboard the Ishimura, a job he urged her to accept. (Dead Space (2023); Dead Space 2)
• 2505: Ignoring a government ban on the system, the CEC built an illegal mining colony on Aegis VII to reach the rich metals under its crust. (Dead Space; Dead Space: Downfall)

The Aegis VII incident (2508 to 2509)#

Marker 3A was dug up again, and within weeks the colony and the Ishimura were both dead. The 2023 remake tells the same story at the same date. It gives Isaac a speaking voice, expands the role of the botanist Elizabeth Cross and changes some deaths, noted where they fall.

• 2508: Diggers at the Aegis VII Colony uncovered Marker 3A. Word reached both the CEC and the Church of Unitology, and the Ishimura was sent to crack the planet. (Dead Space: Downfall)
• 2508, four weeks before the Kellion: Insomnia, paranoia and dementia swept the colony. Colony manager Hanford Carthusia ignored the warnings of the security officer Abraham Neumann, even after the first murders. (Dead Space (comic))
• 2508, one to two weeks before: Marker 3A was lifted off its pedestal. Fifty Unitologists killed themselves in the Union Square mass suicide, and the engineer Sam Caldwell, hallucinating, killed several colleagues before he was shot. (Dead Space (comic); Dead Space: Extraction)
• 2508, days before: The Ishimura arrived and took the Marker aboard on the orders of its Unitologist captain, Benjamin Mathius, who barred all flights between ship and planet. Then the planet crack began. Necromorphs rose from the colony's dead, the shuttleport was destroyed and almost everyone on the surface was killed. (Dead Space: Downfall; Dead Space (comic); Dead Space: Extraction)
• 2508: The detective Nathan McNeill, the security officer Gabe Weller and the surveyor Lexine Murdoch escaped the colony by shuttle, only to land on the infested Ishimura. They fought through the ship and got away, with Lexine's strange immunity to the Marker making her a target. (Dead Space: Extraction)
• 2508: The outbreak spread through the Ishimura. Mathius died when Chief Science Officer Terrence Kyne tried to sedate him, and Dr. Challus Mercer began breeding new Necromorphs. Security chief Alissa Vincent sent out a distress beacon before she died, the signal that drew rescuers in. Nicole recorded a farewell to Isaac and took her own life. (Dead Space: Downfall; Dead Space)
• 2508: The CEC repair shuttle USG Kellion arrived with Isaac, security chief Zach Hammond and the computer specialist Kendra Daniels. It crashed in the Ishimura's flight deck, and most of the crew died within minutes. (Dead Space)
• 2508: The EarthGov destroyer USM Valor, there to back Kendra's secret mission to take the Marker, picked up an infected escape pod and crashed into the Ishimura. Hammond died aboard the Valor helping Isaac recover parts for an escape. In the 2008 original an enhanced Brute kills him. In the remake he's lost in a Marker hallucination when the Necromorph that had been his crewman Chen kills him. (Dead Space; Dead Space (2023))
• 2508: Isaac and Kyne loaded Marker 3A onto the executive shuttle. Kendra shot Kyne, revealed she worked for EarthGov and flew off with the Marker, but Isaac recalled the shuttle and followed it to Aegis VII. He returned the Marker to its pedestal, which weakened the Hive Mind but planted the Marker's blueprints in his mind. Kendra then showed him proof that Nicole had been dead all along. The Hive Mind killed Kendra, Isaac killed it, and he escaped as the cracked chunk of crust fell back onto the planet. (Dead Space; Dead Space (2023))
• Late 2508 or early 2509: The drifting Ishimura shocked into a field worked by Magpie salvagers. Jessica Li landed the Hunter's Moon inside it, and Marker shards in the hull raised the dead crew. Stefan Schneider was the only survivor, and EarthGov took the Ishimura. (Dead Space: Salvage)

EarthGov's Marker project (2508 to 2511)#

EarthGov learned what the Sovereign Colonies had known and decided to try again, this time growing its own Markers.

• Weeks after Dead Space: The USG O'Bannon was sent to Aegis VII, secretly to collect fragments of Marker 3A. A shard turned its chief scientist Nolan Stross against his own crew, Aegis VII blew apart, and the outbreak gutted the ship. The destroyer USM Abraxis took the four survivors and destroyed the O'Bannon. Stross was frozen for research. (Dead Space: Aftermath)
• Weeks after Dead Space: Isaac was found stranded on the shuttle and taken into EarthGov custody. (Dead Space: Aftermath)
• 2508 to 2511: Isaac and Stross were held in an asylum on Titan Station under Director Hans Tiedemann. Their minds were mined for the blueprints that built the Site 12 Marker, and Isaac's memories were suppressed. The derelict Ishimura was towed to Titan and decommissioned. (Dead Space 2)
• 2508 to 2511: Gabe and Lexine Weller married and settled on Titan. EarthGov watched them through the Oracle Program, hoping Lexine would have a child who shared her immunity. (Dead Space 2: Severed)
• 2510 or 2511: On Ganymede, a Red Marker powered the radiation shielding of the capital, Marius Landing, and the Church of Unitology was secretly experimenting on Necromorphs with a Marker shard. The journalist Emmeline Ayuba went undercover in the Church's cathedral at Enki Catena. Necromorphs got loose, riots broke out and the creatures reached the spaceport. Emmeline was recaptured and made to commune with the Marker. (Dead Space: Deep Cover)
• 2510 or 2511: The Church won new influence by handing out relief after the outbreak. Emmeline, now a true believer, became one of its leading figures and a front-runner in Ganymede's parliamentary elections. (Dead Space: Deep Cover)

The fall of Titan Station (2511)#

Three years after Aegis VII, the Church freed the Necromorphs on Titan Station to reach Isaac and the Marker he had helped to build.

• 2511: The Unitologist convert Karrie Norton, working under the name Vandal for Tyler Radikov, sabotaged power and communications across the station. The first Necromorphs got loose from the Government Sector, and Tyler tricked her into opening the way to the Public Sector. She was mortally wounded stopping a reactor meltdown. (Dead Space (mobile))
• 2511: The engineer Franco Delille, a Unitologist acting on orders from Daina Le Guin, crossed the falling Sprawl with the police officer Sarah Andarsyn, who didn't survive. He freed Isaac from his cell in the Titan Memorial Medical Center and was turned into a Necromorph moments later. (Dead Space: Ignition; Dead Space 2)
• 2511: Isaac fled through the Sprawl, guided by Daina, whose promised cure turned out to be a trap to hand him to the Church. Tiedemann ordered his security force to kill the project's key subjects. (Dead Space 2)
• 2511: Gabe Weller fought from the Titan Mines to the hospital to reach Lexine, who was on Tiedemann's list. His commander Victor Bartlett tried to kill them both. Gabe died opening the airlock so Lexine and their unborn child could escape. (Dead Space 2: Severed)
• 2511: Isaac joined the pilot Ellie Langford and Stross. Stross, consumed by dementia, put out Ellie's eye and was killed by Isaac. Isaac used the docked Ishimura to reach the Marker, killed Tiedemann, and destroyed the Site 12 Marker by beating the Nicole hallucination in his own mind. Titan Station was destroyed, and Ellie flew him clear. (Dead Space 2)

The Unitologist Uprising (2511 to 2514)#

After Titan, the Church's war on EarthGov came into the open. A militant sect, the Circle under Jacob Danik, attacked the Marker sites EarthGov had built across its colonies.

• 2511 to 2514: Isaac and Ellie made a home on the New Horizons colony on Luna. The relationship ended when Ellie lost patience with Isaac's refusal to face what had happened to him. (Dead Space 3)
• 2514: The data archaeologist Damara Carver, studying the Marker under Shroud 4 on Uxor, found the surviving Sovereign Colonies records and learned of the master signal. The Circle blew open the shroud and the Marker woke. Her husband John Carver found Damara and their son Dylan Carver already turned, and ended them himself. (Dead Space: Liberation)
• 2514: Carver, Ellie and Captain Robert Norton used Damara's research to find Ptolemy Station. They went on to Keyhole Station, where Ellie took the ShockRing toward the source of the signal. Norton and Carver destroyed the ring behind her. (Dead Space: Liberation)
• 2514: Contact with Ellie's team was lost. Norton and Carver went to Luna to recruit Isaac just as the Circle attacked the colony and freed its Marker. The EarthGov ship USM Eudora picked Isaac up as the city fell. (Dead Space 3)

Tau Volantis (2514)#

Two hundred years after Scenario Five, humans came back to the frozen world, and this time the Moon got out.

• 2514: The Eudora shocked blind to Tau Volantis and was torn apart by mines still active from 2314. The survivors made it to the derelict Roanoke and the CMS Greely, and Isaac found Ellie alive among the wrecks before the group took the CMS Crozier down to the surface. (Dead Space 3)
• 2514: Crashed and scattered on the ice, the team followed Serrano's trail through the old Sovereign Colonies bases. Norton, jealous of Ellie and Isaac, grew more hostile as they went. After the Nexus he opened fire on Isaac, and Isaac killed him. (Dead Space 3)
• 2514: Isaac and Carver rebuilt the Codex and learned the truth about the Moon. Danik seized it and shut the Machine down, and the Moon woke. Isaac and Carver turned the Machine back on and fought their way up to the Moon, which was dragged down and killed. Ellie escaped by ship, and Isaac and Carver fell with the wreckage. (Dead Space 3)
• 2514: Isaac and Carver woke alive on the surface. They chased the surviving Circle members, now a self-mutilating cult under the Cult Leader, to the Terra Nova, while the Brethren Moons played with their minds. They killed the Cult Leader and jury-rigged the ship for a ShockPoint jump to Sol. (Dead Space 3: Awakened)

Dead Space games in order#

Release order#

The main series:

1. Dead Space (2008)
2. Dead Space 2 (2011)
3. Dead Space 3 (2013)
4. Dead Space (2023), the remake of the first game

The spin-off games:

1. Dead Space: Extraction (2009)
2. Dead Space: Ignition (2010)
3. Dead Space (mobile, 2011)
4. Dead Space 2: Severed (2011)
5. Dead Space 3: Awakened (2013)

Story order#

This list folds in the films, novels, comics and the podcast, since they fill the gaps between games.

1. Dead Space: Martyr (2010 novel), set in 2214
2. Dead Space: Catalyst (2012 novel), set in the 2290s
3. Dead Space: Downfall (2008 film), the Dead Space comic (2008) and Dead Space: Extraction (2009), which overlap in the weeks before Isaac reaches Aegis VII
4. Dead Space (2008), or the 2023 remake
5. Dead Space: Aftermath (2011 film)
6. Dead Space: Salvage (2010 comic)
7. Dead Space: Deep Cover (2024 podcast)
8. Dead Space (mobile, 2011) and Dead Space: Ignition (2010), which overlap in the hours before Dead Space 2
9. Dead Space 2 (2011) and Dead Space 2: Severed (2011)
10. Dead Space: Liberation (2013 comic)
11. Dead Space 3 (2013) and Dead Space 3: Awakened (2013)

Newcomers only need the three main games, in order. The 2023 remake can stand in for the original. Everything else is optional, though Extraction and Severed tell one continuous story, Gabe and Lexine Weller's, that runs alongside the first two games.

Where the story stands (2514)#

The dying Tau Volantis Moon had called to the others, and they answered. When the Terra Nova reached Sol, Isaac and Carver heard nothing from Earth or Luna but screams, and Brethren Moons hung over the planet. The story stops there, with Isaac and Carver's fate unknown, Ellie's whereabouts unrecorded and humanity facing the same end the aliens of Tau Volantis met two million years before. (Dead Space 3: Awakened)