Gaal Dornick travels to the imperial capital Trantor and meets the elderly mathematician Hari Seldon waiting in his hotel room.

Seldon shows Dornick psychohistorical calculations revealing a 92.5% chance that Trantor will be completely destroyed within 300 years.

At his trial, Seldon proposes that 30,000 scholars compile an Encyclopedia Galactica to preserve all human knowledge against the coming dark ages.

Chief Commissioner Linge Chen offers Seldon exile on the remote planet Terminus rather than execution.

Seldon accepts exile to Terminus and secretly reveals to Dornick that a second Foundation will be founded at a place called Star's End.

Mayor Salvor Hardin warns the Foundation's Board of Trustees that Anacreon has cut off metal shipments and plans to invade Terminus.

Hardin translates Lord Dorwin's visit and treaty into symbolic logic, proving the Emperor has promised the Foundation absolutely no protection.

A pre-recorded hologram of Seldon reveals that the Encyclopedia is a cover story and the Foundation's true purpose is guiding civilization through crises.

Prince Regent Wienis toasts Hardin on Anacreon, then declares him a prisoner of war and reveals his fleet has attacked the Foundation.

Foundation engineer-priests across Anacreon launch a coordinated strike, cutting all power to the planet and crippling Wienis's invasion fleet.

Wienis grabs a guard's ray gun and fires at Hardin, but Hardin's personal force field deflects the shot and Wienis kills himself.

Ponyets secretly records Pherl using the forbidden transmuter and blackmails him into buying a shipload of nuclear technology for Askone.

Mallow turns fugitive priest Jord Parma over to Korellian authorities rather than protect him and trigger war.

Mallow proves at his murder trial that Parma bore a Korellian Secret Police tattoo, exposing the entire frame-up against him.

Korell declares war on the Foundation, but Mallow's trade-dependency strategy reduces the conflict to minor skirmishes with no decisive battle.

The Foundation saga begins when mathematician Hari Seldon predicts the fall of the Galactic Empire and is exiled to the planet Terminus, where his scholars will preserve human knowledge and guide civilization through the coming dark ages. Fifty years later, Mayor Salvor Hardin outmaneuvers the naive Board of Trustees and uses a manufactured technological religion to defeat Anacreon's invasion fleet without firing a single shot. Prince Regent Wienis attempts to conquer the Foundation by force, but the engineer-priests strike and cut all power across Anacreon, leaving Wienis humiliated and dead by his own hand. The Foundation then shifts from religion to trade as its primary tool, sending guild traders like Limmar Ponyets into distant star systems to reintroduce nuclear technology through blackmail and guile. Finally, Hober Mallow defeats a political conspiracy against him, exposes a Korellian spy ring at his own murder trial, and proves that trade dependency is a more powerful weapon than any fleet.

The headline events of the Foundation's founding and survival

Dornick visits Trantor's observation tower and sees an endless city of metal buildings stretching to every horizon.

Imperial agents arrest Gaal Dornick and interrogate him at length about his private conversation with Hari Seldon.

Anacreon's royal envoy Anselm haut Rodric visits Terminus and demands that the Foundation cede political control to Anacreon.

Using his influence over the Terminus City Journal, Hardin pressures the Board of Trustees into allowing him to attend their meetings.

Chancellor Lord Dorwin visits Terminus and explains that real science means reading old experts and picking the most convincing account.

Hardin tells his deputy Yohan Lee that the Board is hopelessly incompetent and instructs him to plan a coup.

Councilman Sef Sermak's political delegation confronts Mayor Hardin and demands that Terminus arm itself and attack the Four Kingdoms outright.

Foundation ambassador Poly Verisof returns from Anacreon to warn Hardin that Prince Regent Wienis is planning an imminent invasion.

King Lepold's coronation ceremony is plunged into total darkness as all power across Anacreon is simultaneously cut off.

Priest-supervisor Theo Aporat declares the battle cruiser Wienis engaged in sacrilege and shuts down every system aboard the ship.

A second holographic recording of Seldon congratulates the Foundation on defeating Anacreon but warns against using religion as a weapon of attack.

Ponyets visits Eskel Gorov in his Askonian prison cell and agrees to take over the Foundation's technology mission on Askone.

Ponyets demonstrates the iron-to-gold transmuter to Askone's Grand Master, offering the produced gold for offerings at ancestral shrines.

Foundation secretary Jorane Sutt recruits Master Trader Hober Mallow to spy on the Korellian Republic and find the source of nuclear weapons.

While touring a Korellian steel factory, Mallow spots guards carrying nuclear sidearms marked with the old Galactic Empire's emblem.

Behind every major crisis in the Foundation's history lies a web of political intrigue, diplomatic visits, and gradual revelations. From Gaal Dornick's awestruck first look at Trantor's all-metal skyline to the imperial arrest that sets the Foundation's founding trial in motion, the early chapters establish the Empire's decadence through small but telling details. In the Foundation's first decades, Mayor Hardin outmaneuvers the unworldly Board of Trustees by forcing his way into their meetings, enduring a useless imperial chancellor, and planning a quiet coup from his office. The climax of Anacreon's failed invasion is witnessed through the eyes of priest-supervisor Aporat aboard the captured battle cruiser and the shocked crowd at Lepold's darkened coronation. Later, traders Ponyets and Mallow operate deep in the field—one demonstrating an illegal alchemical device to a hostile Askonian ruler and the other stumbling upon the lingering nuclear presence of the supposedly dead Empire.

The key secondary scenes and political maneuvering behind each crisis

Lawyer Lors Avakim secretly visits Dornick in custody and reveals that Seldon deliberately engineered their arrests to force the government's hand.

Seldon tells the Commission that his plan can reduce the coming 30,000-year dark age to just 1,000 years.

After exile is granted, Seldon reveals to Dornick that he planned the Terminus exile over two years ago and fully anticipated it.

After Rodric's visit, Hardin privately tells Pirenne that Anacreon doesn't know plutonium is no longer used in nuclear power plants.

Board member Jord Fara reminds his colleagues that Hari Seldon will appear in a recorded message on the Foundation's 50th anniversary.

Hardin warns the Board that without nuclear weapons of its own, Terminus has nothing to deter an Anacreon invasion.

Prince Regent Wienis flatters young King Lepold into agreeing to go to war against the Foundation for its technology.

The Terminus Council narrowly votes down Sermak's motion to impeach Mayor Hardin, prompting Sermak's party to storm out in fury.

Hardin reveals to Wienis that all engineer-priests on Anacreon have been told of the unprovoked attack and are now on strike.

Hardin tells Wienis the fable of the horse and its bridle, explaining how the kingdoms surrendered freedom in exchange for Foundation technology.

Ponyets spends a month under house arrest at Pherl's villa, secretly recording Pherl using the forbidden transmuter while gaining his trust.

Five hundred pounds of transmuted gold buys Eskel Gorov's freedom from Askonian prison and the two traders depart the system.

Mallow travels to the remote planet Siwenna and meets exiled patrician Onum Barr, who reveals the Empire's deep internal decay.

Mallow tours an imperial nuclear power plant and learns that its hereditary tech-men cannot repair the generators if they ever fail.

Riding the crowd's enthusiasm after his trial victory, Mallow has Sutt and Manlio arrested and claims the Foundation's mayoralty for himself.

The Foundation's history turns on moments when a character learns something game-changing or chooses a path that cannot be undone. Seldon's trial sequence delivers revelation after revelation—the dark age can be shortened, Seldon engineered his own arrest, and the exile to Terminus was the plan all along. On Terminus, Hardin repeatedly identifies the gap between what authorities promise and what they can deliver, from Anacreon's ignorance of nuclear technology to the Emperor's empty treaty guarantees, forcing the Board to confront its own helplessness. The Anacreon crisis deepens through a series of private decisions: a teenage king manipulated into war, a narrowly failed impeachment vote, and Hardin's careful springing of his trap using a force field and an ancient fable. In the Askone arc, Ponyets's patient surveillance of Pherl turns goodwill into leverage, while in the Korell arc, Mallow's discovery of imperial decay and his triumphant courtroom move clear the way for his mayoralty and his unconventional theory of how to win a war.

The pivotal revelations and turning-point decisions that change the story's direction