Dark Aether Story
Timeline
Key events in approximate story order. Uncertain dates are labeled — nothing here invents precision.
- 1980sconfirmed
The Dark Aether story begins (Die Maschine)
Requiem investigates a Dark Aether breach at the Morasko facility, launching the modern continuity.
- 1984–1985confirmed
The Forsaken is contained — and the Director is unmasked
Requiem lures the Forsaken — the entity that was once Zykov — into containment, ending the Dark Aether crisis it spent the whole war chasing. The reward: the senior staff are arrested on the orders of Requiem’s own unseen Director, revealed as Edward Richtofen.
- 1991confirmed
The Terminus breakout and Project Janus
Five years after taking the fall, the ex-Requiem team breaks out of the Terminus blacksite prison while a Dark Aether outbreak swallows Liberty Falls, West Virginia. Behind both stands Richtofen’s Project Janus — and the search for Samantha Maxis runs through the whole campaign.
- After 1991confirmed
After Reckoning: stranded inside the Dark Aether
Black Ops 7 picks up after Reckoning with the story set inside the Dark Aether itself, where colliding timelines strand an eight-person crew in the wastes and a figure called the Warden commands the Shadowsmiths against them.