Timeline

## 22nd Century B.C.

* Witches hearing about The Old Ones.
* Several decades prior to 2200 B.C., Arcadius, the world's first psychic, was born in the Mediterranean region.
* Around 2200 B.C., Arcadius accidentally used his psychic gift to read the mind of a powerful village leader and learned his impure thoughts for very young girls, a revelation that caused the leader and the rest of the village to turn against him. Upon being bound and burned at the stake, Arcadius, in excruciating physical pain from the flames and emotionally distressed by the villagers betraying him, inadvertently unleashed a blast of psychic energy moments prior to his death that was so powerful, it created a new dimension called Hell.
* After Arcadius created Hell, he began bringing in the spirits of those who had committed heinous sins in their lives, feasting on and tormenting their souls for eternity. This cycle would continue for another thousand years or so, when the Traveler witch Amanda/Bonnie created her own afterlife dimension, which was a purgatory that trapped the souls of supernatural creatures. In most, but not all cases, this prevented anyone who was supernatural from finding peace or going to Hell until the Other Side's destruction in the 21st century.
* Some time after Arcadius' death, his enemies forged a weapon known as the Staff of Arcadius. This weapon has the ability to disrupt a psychic's powers and inflicts them with an extremely painful headache.

## Middle Ages

### Early 970s A.D.

* In the Kingdom of Norway, a large group of Viking warriors attacked a village where two young witches, Esther and Dahlia, were raised. The Vikings easily slaughtered all of the villagers except for the two witches, whom they decided to capture after they saw Dahlia using magic to neutralize the Viking who attempted to attack her younger sister. Before they were captured, the sisters promised each other that they would stand by one another, "always and forever," no matter what happened. It was this vow that would also later be adopted by Esther's children Finn, Elijah, Niklaus,Neveah, Katie, Kol, and Rebekah also their friend and Klaus's wife Dianna Stuart in the early 11th century.
* In order to spare Esther from the horrible physical and psychological abuse she herself would eventually endure from the Vikings, Dahlia agreed to perform the dark magic they demanded in exchange for Esther's protection. As a result of this deal, she was forced to work for them all day in a cramped hovel while Esther was able to spend most of her day outside collecting magical herbs for her.
* At some point during their captivity, Esther began to grow closer to one of her Viking captors, Mikael, and after some time, they fell in love and planned to get married and start a Family.
* When Dahlia informed her of a plan she had created to allow them to escape the Vikings' control using potent sage and serpent's blood, Esther confessed that she had decided to stop practicing witchcraft, as she believed she would no longer need it because Mikael would protect her from any harm. Dahlia felt incredibly betrayed by Esther's decision to leave her in favor of marrying one of their captors, believing that she was breaking their vow to always stick together. In her grief, she began sobbing on the floor after Esther left with Mikael. It is believed that this moment is what led to Dahlia swearing to never be oppressed again.
* Some time in 971, Mikael and Esther were married and began to try to have children of their own.

### 990s-Early 1000's

* In the Kingdom of Norway, Freya, now an adult woman, continued to learn witchcraft from Dahlia, and as she grew older, it became exceedingly clear that Freya's magic was out of control, as the firstborn witches of Dahlia and Esther's family's bloodline are known to always possess devastating amounts of power, moreso than the other witches of the bloodline.

* After learning that Freya's siblings had been turned into vampires, preventing them from having any children, Dahlia, furious that Esther had essentially weaseled out of their deal by preventing her from taking their firstborn witch children, became determined to figure out a way to get the firstborn Mikaelson witches she desperately craved. Her ultimate goal was to create a coven of powerful witches from whom she could channel and become unstoppable, and it was this goal that led her to realize that she needed to extend her lifespan in order to make her plan work, since she had only Freya to continue the bloodline at this point.

* Dahlia eventually created a spell that would grant a witch an unconventional form of immortality, which would allow them to retain their magic, unlike vampires and true immortals, who lose their magic upon transformation. Though Freya insisted that she wanted no part of this spell, as she viewed the immortality as a curse, Dahlia (seeing this opportunity as both a stop-gap in her quest to true immortality as well as a chance to extend Freya's life so she can have a larger bloodline of Mikaelson witches for Dahlia to take) forced Freya to partake in the ritual against her will. The spell required them to put themselves in a magically-induced sleep for a century while their magic would continue to grow exponentially over that time. When they awoke from this sleep, they would then have more power than they ever dreamed, but it came at a price-- they could only be active for a single year before they had to return their magical slumber for another century and once again build up more of their power. This spell ensured that they would only become more powerful with each century they awakened.

### 1001

* At some point in this year, Tatia, a Petrova doppelgänger who was the object of affection for both Elijah and Klaus, confessed to Elijah that she loved him, effectively choosing him over his brother. The relationship between Elijah and Tatia grew stronger from then on, with Elijah's mother Esther being so happy that she truly believed that she would call Tatia her daughter once she and Elijah married.
* In the New World, Henrik Mikaelson was killed by werewolves after sneaking out on a full moon with Klaus "to watch the men change into beasts."

**Autumn 1001**:

* In their grief after losing their youngest son, Mikael and Esther began thinking of magical ways to protect their family in order to ensure that they would never suffer such a loss again. When Esther came upon the Immortality Spell that Qetsiyah created that turned Silas and Amara into the first Immortals, she got the idea to modify it to defend against the werewolves' powers. However, when she approached her mentor, Ayana, and begged her for her magical assistance, Ayana refused, stating that the balance of Nature would not stand for what she wanted to do, and insisting that if Esther proceeded as planned, she would cause the beginning of a plague.
* After much convincing and encouragement from Mikael, Esther ultimately turned the Mikaelson Family into the first vampires using her modified immortality spell shortly after the village celebrated the pagan holiday Samhain. Esther had two reasons for transforming her husband and their children into these immortal vampires: it was both a way protect the rest of her family from losing any other members to the werewolves, and also, secretly, to keep them from bringing forth another generation of witches, since Esther knew that vampires, as undead creatures, could not have biological children, and she also knew that Dahlia intended to return to her in order to claim any firstborn children Finn, Elijah, Klaus, Kol, and Rebekah would potentially have.

* In the spell, she used a small amount of blood that Tatia voluntarily gave her at Esther's request, as Tatia's status as the first Petrova doppelgänger to be born after Amara was made into an Immortal, made her blood a powerful binding agent in witchcraft. She also called on the sun for life and the ancient white oak tree for immortality. As a result, the very first vampires, called the Originals, were created.

* Shortly afterward, the recently-turned Original vampires unintentionally made their first human kills, revealing that an all-consuming hunger for human blood was an unforeseen side-effect of vampirism, a hunger that the Mikaelson children had yet to learn to control. After Klaus, Katie, and Neveah made their first human kill they immediately began shifting into a werewolf, revealing their newly activated hybrid nature and making it known that Klaus, Neveah, and Katie was not Mikael's biological children, but was instead a product of the affair Esther had with Ansel, a werewolf and the Alpha of the North East Atlantic Pack, the same pack to which the werewolf who accidentally killed Henrik belonged.