Armada continuity overview

I'd like to start this blog entry with an apology: I'm sorry that the continuity discussions of the Armada comics got pretty much impenetrable about halfway through.

In hindsight it is clear that trying to discuss the canonicity of each story individually wasn't the right approach. I did realized going in that the continuity of certain comics was tricky. That's why I started with Arabian Nights, thinking I could get the discussion about "The Story of the Battlemage Ravidel" out of the way first. However, over the course of writing these reviews and talking about them with Jeff Gomez, writer and line overseer of the Aramada comics, it's become clear to me that the rabbit hole goes much deeper than I had originally thought. We are actually dealing with several layers of ret-cons. Even worse, to see the full picture we need elements from each layer. I think the true madness of what was going on here really hit me when I realized that the novel "The Shattered Alliance" on the one hand invalidated parts of the latter two Ice Age comics, yet also put the Alliances comic back into continuity, even though Alliances was never actually published.

This article is my attempt to make sense of it all. I'll first show how the comics fit together when they were originally published, and then go over the three waves of ret-cons to show what was altered each time.


A short introduction
The first big ret-con was Wizard's consolidation of the storyline that happened while the comics were still published. This brought the comic into line with the timeline shown in the Fourth Edition Pocket Players' Guide. This is presented in the most detail in The Story of the Battlemage Ravidel. The second ret-con came with the start of the Weatherlight Saga and the release of a more detailed timeline. This is often thought of as the  revision, but you'll see that it actually only brought minor changes compared to the other two ret-cons discussed here. The final one happened almost simultaneously, when Wizards started releasing novels that didn't just alter the timeline, but actually changed the events from how they were shown in the comics.

You could say that the scripts of the unreleased comics are another layer, either the original layer, as they were written before the comics even saw print, or a final layer, as information about them didn't reach the storyline community until years later. While I love the fact that information about them came out eventually, and I feel very honored at now even having been allowed to read some of it, I would not count them as a separate layer of continuity. As I explained last time, the fact that the material is unpublished and unavailable to the fans at large makes it problematic to consider them in continuity. A shame, since I always prefer actual stories over summaries like TSOTBR or randomized video games like Battlemage, but I'm afraid that's what we are stuck with. So I will not discuss them as a separate layer in this article, though they will certainly come up at various moments in the discussion.

Before I start, there is one question I would like to answer. That question is: Why bother? If all this is pre-revisionist, why not just declare the whole thing out of continuity? Wouldn't that be the cleanest solution? You'd think so, but it's actually not quite true. The revision was never a clean reboot. Everything that came before still counted, unless it was contradicted. And while later sources certainly contradicted stuff found in the Armada comics, at the same time they kept referencing them. I've already mentioned The Shattered Alliance referencing the Alliances comic, but the Invasion cycle actually featured Tevesh Szat, Freyalise, Taysir, Krstina and Daria and referenced the events from Homelands and Ice Age (specifically Tevesh Szat's plotting, which was only shown in the comic and not in the later novel.) Even in the past year we've seen references to Leshrac's trip to Shandalar in an Uncharted Realms story. In the grand scheme of things the current storylines build upon the Time Spiral/Mending plot, which in turn was a direct sequel to the Weatherlight Saga and that Saga flowed directly from Pete Venters' consolidation of the plots in the Armada and Harper Prism lines. Yes, these original stories have faded into obscurity, but they are still, essentially, the foundation of the current Magic continuity. Nowadays you have to read these comics with a bunch of annotations on what is or isn't still in continuity, but declaring them out of continuity altogether would mean you'd instead need to read the Invasion cycle with a bunch on annotations on what on earth the characters there are talking about. Given that choice, I obviously pick the option that keeps as much stories in the canon as possible!

With that out of the way, let's dive in!

Layer 1: bloss zeigen wie es eigentlich gewesen.
I'll start with the situation in October 1996. The last comic had just been released, but the Battlemage game was still in development. At this point continuity was fairly clear. We had all the various stories from different points in the history of the Multiverse, the involvement of various planeswalkers in those affairs, all that coming together in the Summit of the Null Moon, which kicked of Ravidel's plans of vengeance. At the end the Mox Beacon was been lit, starting the Planeswalkers War, but the final confrontation wasn't out yet, for that you'd have to wait on the video game.

The reason I say "fairly clear", is because there are a few gaps. The conclusion of the Antiquities trilogy, Alliances and various other stories where never published because the line was suddenly cancelled. Luckily quite a lot of the important plot points did end up at various points in the backmatter of the comics. The ending of Antiquities was spoiled in an article by Skaff Elias, the fact that Kaysa and Jaeuhl would lead the Fyndhorn elves to Yavimaya was mentioned in a wrap up article in the last released comic (Urza-Mishra War #2), and most importantly: Kristina dumping Taysir, and his later resurrection and adoption of Daria were mentioned in "Taysir's Tale", from the Homelands comic. Not ideal, but at least we knew what was going on! The biggest storyline beat that was still missing at this point is Leshrac's imprisonment.

The books had been published anti-chronologically, but by now the order had mostly been established. There were lots of references between comics that gave hints to the correct order, and in Urza-Mishra War #2 we were given an official confirmation of the list. Mostly.

I say mostly, because this list places Elder Dragons at the very start. As I mentioned in the review of that comic though, there are very clear hints that it is supposed to happen after Dakkon Blackblade. Jeff Gomez has told me this was indeed a mistake with this list, so we can move Elder Dragons to that position. We then don't quite know the relative position of Elder Dragons to Arabian Nights, but since those comics happen on different planes, that's not a huge problem.

Furthermore, we can place the short story The Dragon War between Dakkon Blackblade and Elder Dragons (It happens a short number of years after Dakkon, while Elder Dragons happens at least 80 years later) and the Summit of Minorad between Serra Angel and Homelands (The Serra Angel comic outright states it happens before the Summit, while in Homelands Kristina is already imprisoned in her woods.) The only real unknown is the Shandalar video game. It's supposed to happen centuries after the Shandalar comic, but it's relative position to the later comics is unknown.

While the order is relatively clear, the timeline is not. As came up several times in my reviews the oldest comics presented a very long timeline, with millennia between the Ice Age and the Summit of Minorad. Somewhere along the line that was changed, as Homelands presented us with the "A Brief History of Dominaria" article, which incorporated the shorter timeline from the Pocket Players' Guide. As a result we never had a full version of the long timeline. We didn't have a full version of the new timeline either, but that would change with the release of the Battlemage video game.

Layer 2: Longe Durée
The Battlemage game capped of the Armada saga in a rather anticlimactic fashion. As I stated in its review, the random nature of the game makes it difficult to say more about the final conflict than "A bunch of planeswalkers fought, and Ravidel was probably beaten." Unfortunately, that was the ending we had to work with.

With the game came a website, which included what is now probably the most mentioned source on this entire blog (which I'm quite happy to finally let lay fallow once we move on to The Duelist and the novels), The Story of the Battlemage Ravidel. In many ways it was a great source. It recapped most of the comics, enabling people who hadn't been able to get their hands on them to read the lore. It also gave us an actually published source on some events that up till then had been stuck in the unpublished comics, like Ravidel battling the Ash Warlord over the Sylex or Leshrac's imprisonment. Finally, it coupled the events of the comics to the official timeline, allowing us a clearer picture of when everything happened.

Here it should be noted that TSOTBR and the Battlemage game itself deviated from the original plans. Leshrac was now imprisoned in Phyrexia, rather than in Estark. Geyadrone Dihada fought in the Planeswalkers War, while in the comic she was absent. On the flipside, Eskil the White, Freyalise and the Ash Warlord Embereck were all set to appear in the comic but missing from the game. While I much prefer the original story (the summary of which is coming soon to this very blog! [/shill]), my point from the introduction stands. TSOTBR and the game may be old, obscure sources by now, but they have actually been published and can, after some tracking down, actually be read or played by everyone. I know Jeff Gomez still considers the original plots the canonical version (Quick aside: how awesome is it that he is still this enthusiastic about this material after so many years?), and they are certainly part of my head-canon, but in determining actual, proper canon, the published versions simply have to take precedence.

Unfortunately, TSOTBR did one more thing: it switched various stories around. In the comics it is explicitly stated that after Fallen Angel, Eskil would go on to aid the people of Corondor in the Blackblade-Dihada conflict, and that The Dragon War happened after Sol'kanar's defeat by Dakkon. TSOTBR states that Sol'kanar wanted to summon Sivitri Scarzam to defeat Trine, the Fallen Angel. Which puts us in a loop. The Dragon War follows Dakkon Blackblade, which follows Fallen Angel, which follows Dragon War, which follows Blackblade... TSOTBR also puts Arabian Nights after Antiquities, but still puts Kristina's birth before the war. Which makes Kristina older than Taysir, which does not match the way they are portrayed in the comics and makes his remarks about Kristina being wise beyond her years very strange.

I know some people say "TSOTBR is the later source, so that's the canon version". A stance that I fully understand. As much as we may dislike ret-cons, the later published version usually stands. But in this case I'm not convinced. While it is technically written as an in-universe source, in the end TSOTBR is just a glorified summary. When I have to mentally edit whatever I'm reading to make it fit into continuity, I'd rather disregard parts of the summary article than of the actual stories. Furthermore, precisely because it is presented an in-universe history, it's much easier to explain the mistakes in TSOTBR. The author could just have been misinformed about certain events. In Fallen Angel and The Dragon War it is the omniscient narrator you would have to disregard. Finally, and I admit that this is a bit meta, Jeff Gomez has recently shared with me the origin of the text: it started its life before most of the comics were even written, as an overview of the events that would be covered. It ended up in the hands of someone from the marketing department who rewrote it and put it up on the Battlemage website without running it by mister Gomez first. In this version of events the different timeline sounds not so much like a ret-con, but more like a mistake. The fact that the document was originally created before most of the comics were even done brings to mind the timeline included in Arabian Nights, which places the, then still in development, Homelands comic before the Ice Age, something that was obviously rendered untrue by the time Homelands was published. Because of all this I will stick to the original order of the comics.

I realize this puts me in a rather odd situation, where on the one hand I'm taking TSOTBR as canonical over the unpublished sources, while at the other I put it at a subordinate position to the actual comics. My justification for this is that I believe that the storyline should ultimately be about the stories themselves. So my hierarchy of sources goes something like this:

Published stories > Articles, summaries, other secondary sources > unpublished sources

If you prefer the approach of "Last released source trumps all" though, there isn't really anything I can say against that. Unless WotC ever released an official source to clear things up (which I highly doubt is ever going to happen, since there isn't much to be gained for them by clearing up the chronology of Sol'kanar and Eskil) we will just have to accept that there are two possible versions of the timeline, one in which the comics have the ultimate say, and one in which that honor goes to TSOTBR. Below I will give you both possible versions as they stood in 1997. First, the "Last released source trumps all" version.

• Dakkon Blackblade
• The Dragon War
• Fallen Angel
• Elder Dragons (Not mentioned in TSOTBR)
• Antiquities War, Urza-Mishra War'
• Arabian Nights
• Fallen Empires
• Ice Age
• Shandalar (Not mentioned)
• Shortly after the World Spell Kristina leaves Taysir, the unpublished Alliances takes place, Ravidel is apprenticed to Taysir, Leshrac is imprisoned and Ravidel duels the Ash Warlord Embereck over the Sylex. Dominaria is plagued by storms and floods for some centuries. (All new material from TSOTBR)
• Jedit Ojanen
• Serra Angel (Not mentioned)
• Summit of Minorad
• Homelands
• Shadow Mage #1-3, Nightmare, Shadow Mage #4
• Wayfarer
• Magic the Gathering: Battlemage

Here is the version I would champion at the time:

• Fallen Angel
• Dakkon Blackblade
• The Dragon War
• Elder Dragons and Arabian Nights
• Antiquities War, Urza-Mishra War
• Fallen Empires
• Ice Age
• Shandalar
• Shortly after the World Spell Kristina leaves Taysir, the unpublished Alliances takes place, Ravidel is apprenticed to Taysir, Leshrac is imprisoned and Ravidel duels the Ash Warlord Embereck over the Sylex. Dominaria is plagued by storms and floods for some centuries. (All new material from TSOTBR)
• Jedit Ojanen
• Serra Angel
• Summit of Minorad
• Homelands
• Shadow Mage #1-3, Nightmare, Shadow Mage #4
• Wayfarer
• Magic the Gathering: Battlemage

I've left of the Shandalar game from both lists, since its placement is simply unknown. 

For clarity's sake: When I say I'm following the comics over TSOTBR here, I just mean on the order of the stories, not on the time between them. The timeframe that puts the Brothers' War at approximately 4000 years before the present is explicitly corroborated in a whole stack of novels, so there it is very clear that the TSOTBR version of events is correct.

Timeline-wise the picture was now a little clearer (The Brothers War happened about 4000 years ago, Fallen Empires decades later, some centuries passed between the World Spell and Jedit Ojanen, the dates of 128# years between the Summit of Minorad and Shadowmage/Nightmare/Wayfarer still seemed to stand), but more changes were to come. Magic was about to embark on an entirely new saga, for which a much more detailed timeline was in the works.

Layer 3: Help, I'm running out of semi-appropriate quotes from historians!
With the start of the Weatherlight Saga we were no longer told that the Brothers' War had happened "about 4000 years ago". Instead, we got a clear statement that the dominant calendar of Dominaria, Argivian Reckoning, started with the birth year of Urza and Mishra, and that it was now the year 4204 AR. I am not entirely sure when the dates for other sets were made available, but by the time Urza's block had rolled around quite a lot of the timeline was know in exact years and eventually it all crystallized into this graph:

As you can see, WotC stopped further updating the timeline with Mirrodin

While not mentioning the Armada comics at all, this timeline was precise enough that the placement of most of the comics became a lot clearer. A lot of them featured a certain set, so they now have a definite year attached to them. Homelands is a bit tricky since the timeline given in the comic spans a longer period than what the set gets allocated here, so that needs some interpretation. In my review I championed the idea that the comic should be considered backstory to the set, and thus takes place in the period directly before the dates given on the timeline. The 128# dates from the Jared Carthalion adventures are now invalidated as there are only 1271 years between the Ice Age and the Invasion, but the appearance of Teferi and the mention of Kaervek in the Battlemage game allow us to place that game in the year 4196. Battlemage, Nightmare and Shadowmage then have to happen shortly before it. The earliest, pre-Brothers' War stories are still relatively undefined, perhaps appropriately for prehistoric events, but the fall of the Thran Empire will eventually by placed at -5000 AR giving us at least a terminus post quem of sorts for Fallen Angel.

At this point pretty much all the temporal references mentioned in the comics have been invalidated. Only the vaguest, like the one placing Dakkon Blackblade "centuries before the Brothers' War" tend to still apply. There are two specific dates that we can retain though. First is Tevesz Szat's claim of being 2000 years old in Fallen Empires. The second is the narrator's statement that Ice Age #2 takes place 500 years after the events of #1. Both these dates are still entirely plausible. My attitude here is to echo the architects of the revision and say "If it isn't contradicted, it still counts". So on my timeline Tevesh Szat is born 2000 years prior to Fallen Empires, in ~1850 BAR, and Ice Age #1 happens ~500 years before the World Spell, in ~2400 AR.

The biggest grey area left at this point is the Flood Ages. The timeline rather bizarrely places Alliances at ~2900, but the end of the Ice Age in 2934. I guess if you take that "~" to mean "About a century" then it's still true, but a date of ~2950 would've been a lot clearer. Clearly Alliances takes place after the World Spell. As it stands though, we don't have a clear period for the flooding and storms, and thus no clear point when the Summit of Minorad would take place. It's tempting to say that since this timeline provides no new evidence, the claim from TSOTBR that the Flood Age lasted several centuries still stands. Here's the thing though: I'm fairly sure that certain sources do comment on the length of the Flood Age. I just haven't reviewed those sources yet, and I couldn't quickly find the relevant quotes. I seem to recall the floods to having been shortened to just a few decades. For now I have placed the Summit of Minorad at ~3000 AR. That's a number of decades after the World Spell, and allows for the "Empty Quarter" to nicely take up 1/4th of the original timeline. Serra Angel has been slotted in between the World Spell in 2934 and the Summit at ~3000. It could be that sources I cover later on in my project prove that my memory is simply mistaken and the Flood Ages did span several centuries. I'm eyeing Planeswalker and Shattered Alliance here especially, since those take place roughly around that time. If this turns out to be the case, the Summit will be moved on accordingly, to whatever will prove the correct time for "the last vestiges of the Ice Age" to disappear from Dominaria.

The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed there is one comic missing in the previous paragraph. At the time the Jedit Ojanen cover still fit neatly between the World Spell and the Serra Angel comic. It still would be, had it still been in continuity. Which brings me to the final, and by far the biggest, ret-con that was applied to the Armada comics. Up to now we've been talking about moving the comics from one place on the timeline to another. At most altering a few sentences in the text to allow Dragon War and Fallen Angel to swap places, if you are so inclined. But eventually Wizards would go further. Several comics were entirely remade, with newly released novels taking their place in the canon!

They altered the past, and didn't even send Sarkhan back in time to do so!

Layer 4: The End of History?
The novel The Brothers' War was published in 1998, so while I'm treating these last two layers as separate, they really show parallel developments. The acknowledgements of the novel thank Skaff Elias, Jim Lin and the others behind the creation of the Antiquities set and the members of the Magic continuity team, but also Jeff Gomez, Jerry Prosser and everyone else who worked on the creation of the Antiquities War and Urza-Mishra War comics. However, that acknowledgement is followed up with a "Word about sources and accuracy" which makes the intention of the book pretty clear. It has some in-universe talk about what sources the writer supposedly based his work on, and finishes with:

"The result is the most complete and modern account of Urza and Mishra and the conflict that swallowed them and their world. It is a rendition of the classic tale set for the present age. The reader should trust this version and no other."

We can try and say "So both sources are versions what could have happened" but that last sentence makes it all pretty clear: this book is now canon, the comics no longer are. If further proof is needed, later Weatherlight Saga stories directly reference The Brothers' War, not any earlier incarnation of the Antiquities story.

Originally, this quote did not receive a warm welcome from the storyline community. This was still a few years before my time, but as Jeff Lee remembers things, this claim seemed to confirm already present rumors of a continuity reboot of sorts. His fan website is certainly not positive about the revisionist continuity. There he calls the new continuity "a weaker substitute" to the original stories and on the front page he makes explicit that it is only the pre-revisionist material that his website cares about.

Over time though, the altered story has come to be accepted. Certainly in the case of the Brothers' War. The original Antiquities story had never been finished, as the Armada line had been cancelled before the third mini-series in the trilogy could be published. So fans were glad to now have an ending to their story. As time went by the comics became more rare, so the novel became the only widely known source on the Antiquities story. Oh, and The Brothers' War is far and away the greatest novel ever published in the Magic canon. That certainly sweetened the pill.

The Brothers' War may have been a major transplantation in the canon, but it was brought in with a very clean operation. The comics and the book covered exactly the same events in exactly the same time period. Just cross out Antiquities War and Urza-Mishra War on your list of canon stories and fill in The Brothers' War instead. Unfortunately, the same can't be said of Wizards' second retelling of a Armada story: Ice Age.

I have already written an entire article on the differences between the Ice Age comic and the novel The Eternal Ice, so I wont bore you with rehashing all that. What it boils down is this: Eternal Ice retells the story of Lim-Dûl in a way that is entirely incompatible with the appearances of the necromancer in the comic. Yet the other events of that comic, most notably the Summit of the Null Moon and Tevesh Szat's attempt to intensify the cold, are still alluded to. The Invasion novel then makes it even more tricky, since it directly refers to that plot by Szat! Even weirder, Eternal Ice's sequel, The Shattered Alliance, directly references the events of the unpublished Alliances comic!

There is no clean way to solve all this. The only solution I see is to chuck Ice Age #2 entirely out of continuity but put Ice Age #3-4 and Shandalar #1-2 kind of half-in and half-out. As my timeline currently puts it "Events similar to Ice Age #3-4 and Shandalar #1-2 take place." Just try to mentally alter the Lim-Dûl scenes, or imagine that those comics are a distorted telling of events by Jaeuhl to impress Kaysa or something like that. There really is no neat way to solve this.

There is one benefit of this all though: Shattered Alliances mentions that it takes place 20 years after the World Spell. This means we can now put the unpublished Alliances comic, which according to the solicitations would also have involved the split between Kristina and Taysir, on the timeline in the relatively specific period of "between 2934 and 2954."

In 2001 the novel Johan was published, the first part of the Legends I trilogy with Jedit and Hazezon. These three novels replaced the Jedit Ojanen comic in the canon. It was to be the last of these replacements. Although an old FAQ on the storyline (it's the very last question) mentioned that there had been talks about redoing the stories of Fallen Empires, Alliances, Homelands, Arabian Nights and Mirage, the novels that weren't tied to new sets clearly didn't sell as well as WotC had hoped, for after the Ice Age cycle and two Legends cycles the line was cancelled.

Legends I is, like The Brothers' War, a neat replacement. Jedit Ojanen was an entirely stand-alone story to begin with, so it could easily be replaced in the canon. There is one interesting wrinkle here though. Author Clayton Emery (Yes, the same who did the Greensleeves cycle for Harper Prism!) tells a funny story about how this trilogy came to be, from which it is clear that he did not get much information from WotC before writing the story. Apparently he was even given an empty map of Jamuraa and was told to fill it, no one telling him that the north-west corner of that continent had already been filled by Zhalfir, Femeref, Suq'Ata and all the other locations from Mirage. He did have the original comics though. No wonder then that he put the story several centuries after the Ice Age, which is when the comic took place!

Now, the timeline placement here is clear. Whether you believe the last released source always has trumps or story trumps articles and summaries, here both those options give the same result and put Legends I several centuries after the Ice Age. What does that mean for Serra Angel and the Summit of Minorad? They are supposed to happen between Jedit Ojanen and Homelands, according to the list given in Urza-Mishra War #2, TSOTBR and even the comics themselves! So should they also be pushed back several centuries? Hrmmm... not necessarily.

Jedit is a stand alone story, so it could easily be moved to happen after the Summit. The Summit however is directly tied to the end of the Flood Age and the beginning of "modern" Dominaria. (What I would now, in these post-Invasion days, would call "classic" Dominaria.) So if, in months to come, sources like Planeswalker and Shattered Alliance will prove that the Flood Age indeed only lasted decades, I will keep Serra Angel and the Summit where they are now, and move Legends I to after the Summit, treating it as a ret-con to the order of events. If on the other hand those sources, or even Legends I itself, prove that the Flood Ages did last centuries, then I will treat the original order as still standing, and move Serra Angel and the Summit to after Legends I.

Final words
As a wrap up, this is the order in which everything ends up at the end of all the ret-cons.

• Millennia after the Thran, centuries before the Brothers' War - Fallen Angel, Dakkon Blackblade, The Dragon War
• Between The Dragon War and The Brothers' War - Elder Dragons and Arabian Nights
• 0-64 - The Brothers' War (replacing Antiquities War and Urza-Mishra War)
• ~170 - Fallen Empires
• ~2400 - Ice Age #1
• 2934 - Events similar to Ice Age #3-4 and Shandalar
• Between 2934 and 2935 - Alliances (unpublished) Kristina leaves Taysir
• Between Alliances and (probably) ~3000 - Ravidel is apprenticed to Taysir, Leshrac is imprisoned in Phyrexia, Ravidel duels the Ash Warlord Embereck over the Sylex, Serra Angel
• ~3000 - Summit of Minorad (probably)
• ~3560 to ~3800 - Homelands
• 4178 - Shadowmage #1, prologue
• 4185 - Shadowmage #1, second half
• 4193 - Shadowmage #2-3, Nightmare, Shadowmage #4
• 4194 - Wayfarer
• 4196 - Magic the Gathering: Battlemage

By the time the Legends I books was published Wizards had already wrapped up the Weatherlight Saga with the Phyrexian Invasion, a storyline that also served as a farewell to that fabled period "about 4000 years after the Brothers' War". After Invasion several jumps into the future were made, and apart from Kamigawa block, Wizards has committed itself to putting its stories in consecutive order. It is thus unlikely that they will ever ret-con another comic, and the timeline above will probably stand forever. (Barring the provisional placement of the Summit of Minorad of course)

I hope this... maybe it is too much to hope that it cleared everything up, but at the very least I hope this confused you all less than my original, comic-by-comic discussion of all the ret-cons!

With all this done, I have satisfied my inner historian for the foreseeable future. Time for some fun! Like I announced last time, I have two things in the pipeline. A summary of the unpublished plots of the Prelude to War and Planeswalkers War comics, and reviews of the earliest storyline info from The Duelist! Both of these cover stuff that is actually entirely new to me, so I am looking forward to it! I hope you will all join me for those articles in the comic weeks!