Figuring out the post-Mending timeline

WHY THIS ARTICLE IS A WEEK LATE...

This article was always going to end with a call for criticism. Figuring out a framework for the post-Mending timeline is a bit of a challenge as we don't have an official timeline to use as a base like we did before. Instead you have to piece it all together from in-story references, meaning everything is contingent on everything else. I'd hate to have to redo the entire thing in a few months or even years after I've already used it to place a whole lot of stories, so I was going to invite you all to comment on any mistakes I had made or important sources I had missed.

Then on the day I was going to post this, I was made aware of a Tumblr post made two months ago by Vorthos extraordinair and writer of the "Magic: a Visual History" books Jay Annelli, in which he gives an overview of the entire timeline I'm covering here. And guess what? On first glance, it didn't seem to line up with mine.

What to do with that information? Since Jay is a published Magic author these days I was tempted to chuck all my work in the bin and just declare his Tumblr post official canon, but it only covers in which years blocks happen, and the post-Mending timeline is so compressed that in order to place individual stories you have to work with references to months and sometimes even weeks. The timeline I came up with does go into that much detail, and re-reading it for the third time since finding that Tumblr post, I did still think my logic was sound. So I decided that the article was going to have to be delayed for a while so I could figure out how I could harmonize my timeline with Jay's.

It took a week for me to find a quiet moment to do so, but in the end all it came down to was some tricky conversion between ZC and AR dates. In fact, using Jay's timeline and one or two assumptions I could make my timeline even more detailed! So below you'll find the article I had intended to post last week, and then a short addendum where I put my results next to Jay's for an even more specificity.

All that said, the call for criticism still stands. I haven't re-read all the post-Mending sources for this article (I mean, obviously, the whole point of this was to create a framework for the future re-reading I'll do for the blog), so if you think I'm missing a crucial bit of information, please do share it with me so I can see how it fits with my conclusions thus far.

THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Up to this point the foundation of my timeline has been the official timeline that first premiered in The Duelist issue 34, and was updated on the Magic Multiverse website until Mirrodin. Mirrodin only got a relative placement though, not a date, and immediately massive inconsistencies appeared. The first planeshopping blocks proved difficult to place, and we required sources that were released years later to get anything to stick. But with the Mending we've come to another sad milestone. When Freyalise told Teferi in Time Spiral he had been gone for 300 years, that was the last time we could connect anything to the official timeline for nine real-life years. It was only with Kaladesh that we could tentatively place the current day at "about 60 years" after the Mending. It wouldn't be until Dominaria, eleven years after the Mending, that we got a certain date!

On my timeline I've currently got everything from Shards of Alara onward either on 4560 AR, or "shortly before 4560 AR". That sufficed for now, but when we're actually going to cover those stories that's way too vague. So today I'm going to try and figure out at least the skeleton of the modern timeline. Once we know where most of the sets happen, we can then fill it up further with individual stories.

Without an official timeline for this era, we're going to have to make our own based on references in the stories themselves. Magic's story wouldn't be Magic's story though if there weren't a whole bunch of contradictions, so it's not as easy as simply listing all these references. We're going to have to do some weighing of sources. After that, we also have to make a bunch of assumptions in order to weld it to the timeline we've used up to this point. So I'll warn you in advance, this isn't going to be a definitive, air-tight timeline. It'll be the best I can do with the information we've been given, and we can always change it later if contradictory evidence shows up. If you want more than that, feel free to send WotC a message telling them you want an official timeline. (Or, editor Squirle from the future here, just use Jay's version as that definitive source!)

When weighing the sources we have, I think we can make a distinction between three post-Mending era's. The first lasts from Lorwyn to Magic Origins, and it's characterized by giving us barely any temporal reference at all. Brady Dommermuth and Doug Beyer have said during this era that they didn't want to released maps of their planes because fans would only use those to point out inconsistencies. (For an example, search for "map" in this No Goblins Allowed post collecting Ask Brady answers) This philosophy seems to have extended to timelines as well, because for years we were told basically nothing in that regard. We were even left guessing as to whether we were years, decades or centuries beyond the Mending! Of course, not making a map or timeline only leads you to make more inconsistencies, which is exactly what we see happen when we do get temporal references in this period. Depending on which sources you believe Elspeth was either on Bant for 2 years or for 9, and that's not even getting into Brady's claims that she was a pre-Mending 'walker... In other words, sources from this era aren't going to help us setting up a coherent timeline.

From Magic Origins to Ixalan we've got a much more cohesive story, which even payed attention to its own timeline! Kaladesh's story especially is full of references to Eldritch Moon, Scars of Mirrodin, Agents of Artifice and Lorwyn block being a certain amount of months or years ago. This allows us to make an pretty detailed timeline based on "X months before Kaladesh" dates. Unfortunately this era only gave us a the rough "60 years since the Mending" date, so we couldn't match it to the original timeline yet.

The final era stretches from Dominaria to War of the Spark (I'm not covering anything post-War yet, as it's still too up in the air, with too little information to say much definitively). This era is a bit of a contradiction. On the one hand this is were we finally get the official dates of Dominaria happening in 4560 AR, as well as the Ravnica D&D book stating it's 10.076 ZC. Those are the concrete dates we need to merge our timelines! On the other hand, between the move from the story team to hired external authors, and the move from web fiction back to novels, some continuity issues occurred which are pretty dire when trying to make a timeline based on months. Ixalan made it abundantly clear months passed between Hour of Devastation and Jace's reunion with the Gatewatch. Dominaria seemed to condense that to a much shorter period. Dominaria then again seemed to have mere days between that reunion and the end of the story, which leads directly into War of the Spark. But the War of the Spark novel said Jace spend "weeks" in that time looking for Nissa.

For our timeline project to succeed we need the official dates to anchor everything to the original timeline, but we also need a consistent collection of dates to anchor everything to each other. So I'm going to use this hierarchy of sources:

1. At the top: explicit dates, which are the 4560 AR and 10.076 ZC references, as well as the dates given in the short story The Ledger of Hidden Fortunes. Remember that one, it's going to become important later on.
2. The list of relative dates given in the Origin to Ixalan era.
3. Any other dates from pre-Origin or post-Ixalan sources. We'll need them to place some stuff, but I'll disregard them when they contradict stuff higher in the hierarchy.

I admit, it's a bit clunky to have certain post-Ixalan sources high in the hierarchy and other low, but with the info we have, it's the best I can do. I would like to go a bit deeper into the Ixalan/Dominaria/etc inconsistencies to justify going with the Ixalan version of events though. In addition to the meta-explanation that inconsistencies seemed to increase post-Ixalan, there is also the fact that the Ixalan story, especially Jace's mental and physical development, just doesn't work unless Jace is marooned on the plane for months on end. For later stories we either have to ignore a single word (change a reference to weeks to months, that sort of thing), or to put a bunch of time in between chapters. It's much easier to put some off-panel travel time into the Return to Dominaria story than to compress the timeline for Ixalan. We'll have to see how things shake out exactly when I re-review Return to Dominaria, but I've seen several other fan timelines go with the longer, Ixalan-based timeline, which strengthens my conviction for going with that one.

With all that preamble out of the way, let's get into some actual sources. What are we actually working with?

• Homesick, the first Kaladesh story, opens by saying it's been 3 months since the end of Eldritch Moon.
• The Eldritch Moon story Stone and Blood has a flashback to "one year ago" that shows Nahiri being released as the Hellvault is kerploded. During that flashback it's said the Eldrazi emerged "last year".
• Homesick goes on to say Nissa had a connection to Zendikar for "two score years". Nissa gaining that connection was shown in her origin story, which also features the Great Aurora on Lorwyn.
• Finally Homesick also references the story The Gorgon and the Guildpact (The Duel Decks: Jace vs. Vraksa tie-in) as "about a year ago". This is another obscure one that is also going to become important later on.
• The later Kaladesh story Release has a flashback to "six months ago" which shows Ajani and Tamiyo discussing Tezzeret. Ajani mentions Elsphet meeting him on Mirrodin and says "That was...two years ago?", to which Tamiyo replies that's impossible because "Tezzeret died...three years ago, I think?", referencing the end of Agents of Artifice.
• The Aether Revolt story Burn says it's been two months since the beginning of Kaladesh.
• After that it gets a bit more vague, but Aether Revolt leads directly into Amonkhet. Amonkhet's story lasts mere days and follows directly into Hour of Devastation, which lasts, well a few hours.
• The Ixalan story is a bit harder to put together, but we know Jace was on his island for 40 days, and then we have a reference to him being on the Beligerent for a month before a reference to several more weeks passing, so let's say about 3 months in total.
• We also have several references, starting with this Checking in on the Planeswalkers article but also repeated later, to the Eldrazi having been free for two years. 

Which gives us the following timeline:

• ~ K minus 40 years - Nissa's ascension, Lorwyn block
• ~ K minus 3 years & 6 months - Tezzeret defeated by Jace (Agents of Artifice)
• ~ K minus 2 years & 6 months - Elspeth meets Tezzeret (Scars of Mirrodin block)
• ~ K minus 2 years & 3 months - Release of the Eldrazi (Zendikar block)
• K minus 1 year & 3 months - Destruction of the Hellvault (Innistrad block)
• K minus 1 year - The Gorgon and the Guildpact
• K minus 6 months - Ajani arrives at Taymio's place (Release flashback, some time after Theros block)
• K minus 3 months - Eldritch Moon
• K - Start of Kaladesh
• K plus 2 months - Aether Revolt, Amonkhet block
• ~ K plus 5 months - End of the Ixalan story, halfway point of the Dominaria story.

I've added "~" to the earlier dates because they don't come from narration or clear statements, but from people saying something happened "last year" or "three years ago I think". Since we need to rely on those dates I'm going to assume it's all correct, but we've got some extra wiggle room for those if we need to shift things around by a few months.

Okay. We've got a timeline. But in a way, it's too detailed. If we're working with dates in months relative to Kaladesh, we need to know at what point in the year Kaladesh happened before we can merge this into the larger timeline. But surely that's not possible, right? Well... I've got my doubts about doing it in AR, but I actually think we can manage it in ZC!

You see, the Ledger of Hidden Fortunes (told you that one would become important!) reveals that Kaya killed the Ghost Council between the 15th and 24th of Dhazo, which is the second month of the Ravnican year. The elimination of the Council happens in chapter 7 of The Gathering Storm. Vraska's return after Ixalan and her elimination of Jarad happens in chapter 2. Furthermore, The Gathering Storm leads directly into War of the Spark. It's hard to say exactly how much time passes between those two chapters, but this would put the end of Ixalan either at the very start of the War year, or at the very end of the previous year. From that we can work out Kaladesh starts about halfway into that previous year, and from there we can puzzle out the rest of the timeline!

But what years are we talking about exactly? The Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica says it is currently 10.076 ZC. Since that book was released shortly after Guilds of Ravnica, and that set and Ravnica Allegiance are generally seen as the lead in to War of the Spark, I think most of us assumed all of those happened in 10.076 ZC. There's just one problem with that: the Guide also states Jace became the Guildpact in 10.075 ZC, but we know from the Gorgon and the Guildpact reference in Kaladesh (told you that one would become important!) that there is at least 1 year and 5 months between that event and the beginning of The Gathering Storm. So if The Gathering Storm starts at the beginning of 10.076, that pushes Jace's ascension to Guildpact into 10.074. So what gives?

Well, if we take a closer look at the Guildmaster's Guide, we see that it doesn't actually cover Ravnica during the Guilds of Ravnica "block". It describes Borborygmos, Zegana, Isperia, and most importantly the Ghost Council and Jarad as the reigning guildmasters. That's the post-Dragon's Maze, pre-Gathering Storm version of the setting, which lasts at most into the first days of the War year, before Vraska and Kaya come in to change the political landscape at the very start of that year. If we thus assume that 10.076 date refers to the Release-to-Ixalan year everything falls in place. Jace becomes the Guildpact in 10.075, the setting the Guildmaster's Guide is the one in 10.076, and The Gathering Storm and War of the Spark happen in 10.077.

(Quick aside: if the Guildmaster's Guide has such a specific placement... do I put the sample D&D adventure involving Krenko on the timeline? Should we count that as canon? Ah well, questions for another day.)

One problem remains though: we've now got pretty decent dates in ZC, can we convert those to AR? The short answer is unfortunately "not really". The only certain AR date we have is the line "the present day is 4560 AR" from the Dominaria art book. But the Dominaria story overlaps partially with Ixalan and partially with The Gathering Storm, thus happening right at the overlap between 10.076 and 10.077 ZC. So unless there is a sneaky new year's day hiding in between the pages of Return to Dominaria (it could happen, Weatherlight takes place in 4204 and Tempest in 4205, but there is no mention of a new year starting in Rath and Storm...) 4560 AR falls partly in two different ZC years. Which would actually make sense. It's already a bit odd that Dominarian years and Ravnican years are the same length (despite conflicting accounts on that, which I've discussed here), but having them both have their New Year's at the same time would be completely ridiculous. 

So what now? I do wan't to put these stories on my timeline, which is in AR, so here's my workaround: The last bit of the timeline will be given in ZC dates first, with an approximate AR date attached, which will just be the AR year that starts during the equivalent ZC year. So you'll get something like this:

• 10.076 ZC (~4560 AR) 
• Release (flashbacks)
• Shadows over Innistrad block
• Kaladesh block
• Amonkhet block
• Ixalan block & the first part of Dominaria

I'll have to do some experimenting to figure out the perfect formatting for this period. Mentioning every short story separately will result in a huge mess, but some of them have to be put on their own, like parts of Release or the Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty flashback stories. I'm also wondering whether I should include stuff like "at the start of the year" or "two months after Kaladesh" in the timeline itself, or keep those in the discussions on the articles to keep the timeline more legible. So expect me to fidget with the layout a bit the coming months.

So after all that, what do we end up with? 

• ~10.035 ZC // ~4520 AR 
• Lorwyn/Shadowmoor block. ("two score years" before Kaladesh, which is long enough to work with approximate, rounded off dates.)
• 10.073 ZC (~4557 AR)
• The end of Agents of Artifice ("three years ago, I think?" from the Release flashback. I'm not giving this or Scars of Mirrodin a more precise beginning/middle/end of the year placement. That would be unwarranted considering how vague Ajani and Tamiyo are in their dating. I'm still assuming they are correct though, as these are the only dates we have for those events.)
• Alara block (placement a bit unclear, but it has to come after Agents of Artifice due to Nicol Bolas's status, and before Zendikar due to Sarkhan's status. As explained below, Zendikar most likely happens at the very start of the next year, thus pushing Alara into this one.)
• 10.074 ZC (~4558 AR)
• Zendikar block ("last year" from Innistrad block. Probably at the very start of this year so there can be two years between the Eldrazi's release and Battle for Zendikar)
• Scars of Mirrodin block ("two years ago?" from the Release flashback)
• 10.075 ZC (~4559 AR)
• Innistrad block ("one year ago" from Shadows over Innistrad, so probably at the start of this year)
• Return to Ravnica block & The Gorgon and the Guildpact ("about a year" before Kaladesh, so probably about halfway through this year)
• Theros block
• Tarkir block
• I've got no clear dates for these last two blocks, other than that Theros has to happen post-Scars of Mirrodin due to Elspeth and pre-Release due to Ajani, and that Tarkir has to happen post-Innistrad due to Sorin and pre-Battle for Zendikar due to Ugin. There could be overlap between these blocks or between Theros and Return to Ravnica or between Tarkir and Release for example. Since pretty much everything else happens in release order I've put them here, but we'll have to delve into their precise placement when we actually cover these stories.
• 10.076 ZC (~4560 AR)
• Release flashbacks (6 months before Kaladesh)
• Battle for Zendikar block (Happens shortly before Shadows over Innistrad block, and at least two years after the release of the Eldrazi)
• Shadows over Innistrad block (3 months before Kaladesh)
• Kaladesh block (starts probably a little over halfway through the year, lasts 2 months)
• Amonkhet block (immediately after Kaladesh block, lasts days)
• Ixalan block & the first part of Dominaria (immediately after Amonkhet block, lasts 3 months)
• 10.077 ZC (~4561 AR) 
• Second part of Dominaria, The Gathering Storm, Guilds of Ravnica & Ravnica Alligiance short stories (all concurrently. Chapter 8 of The Gathering Storm happens between 15 and 24 Dhazo, anchoring the entire timeline)
• War of the Spark
• War of the Spark: the Forsaken

And that's it, the timeline we're going to be working with for the coming... I don't even dare speculate how long! Going forward I'll try to figure out more precise placement for some of these stories, especially Theros and Tarkir, as well as trying to place non-set releated stories like the Dack Fayden comics somewhere around these dates...

...was how I was going to finish this article, but now let's turn back to that other timeline.

TIME TO COMPARE

Here's Jay's list:

• 4556 - Agents of Artifice, the Purifying Fire, Alara Block
• 4557 - Zendikar Block, Scars of Mirrodin Block
• 4558 - Innistrad Block, Return to Ravnica Block
• 4559 - Theros through Eldritch Moon
• 4560 - Kaladesh through War of the Spark
• (Eldraine Through Strixhaven don’t have confirmed dates but are probably between 4560 and 4561)
• 4561 - Innistrad: Midnight Hunt through Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty
• I’m not sure we’ve gotten timeline information SNC yet, but it does culminate with a New Year’s party.

As you can see Jay doesn't putz around with the Ledger of Hidden Fortunes and subsequent AR/ZC conversion. In a way that's neater. It's certainly a lot easier to say "Dominaria was in 4560, it led directly into War of the Spark and was directly preceded by Kaladesh & Amonkhet, so all that goes into 4560 as well". But as I stated above, I would really like to make a version based around those references to months instead.

Now perhaps I've missed a source, and if it was stated anywhere that Kaladesh and War of the Spark definitely happened in the same AR year, or if the dates from Ledger were confirmed as continuity errors somewhere, we can throw all the calculations above out of the window and just go with Jay's list. Even if that's not the case though, we can still fix the seeming differences by simply assuming AR and ZC are about 6 months out of step with one another. that would result in the following list:

• 4560 AR = second half 10.076/first half 10.077 = Kaladesh to War of the Spark on both our lists.
• 4559 AR = second half 10.075/first half 10.076 = Theros to Eldritch Moon on both our lists, only I wasn't as sure about the Theros & Tarkir placement yet.
• 4558 AR = second half 10.074/first half 10.075 = Innistrad & Return to Ravnica block on Jay's list. I've got Innistrad at the start of 10.075 and RtR halfway through that year, so that fits. I've only got Scars block "somewhere in 10.074" and as established above we've got some more leeway to place that block due to Ajani only saying it happened "about two years ago", so we can easily move that into the first half of 10.074.
• 4557 = second half 10.073/first half 10.074 = Zendikar & Scars block on Jay's list. According to my list those two would end up in the first half of 10.074, leaving the second half of 10.073 empty.
• 4556 = second half 10.072/first half 10.073 = Agents of Artifice & Alara block on Jay's list. Again, according to my list those would end up in the first half of 10.073, with the second half of 10.072 empty.

That all lines up rather neatly! It leaves a few oddly empty half years alternated by ones with two blocks in them, but that could just be how events shook out.

Of course, hinging a timeline on the assumption that "Ravnican New Year happens halfway through a Dominarian year" is asking for trouble. We've seen before, with the length of Dominarian and Ravnican years for example, that such ridiculously specific facts tend to be forgotten eventually. I expect that in the fullness of time Ledger of Hidden Fortunes will be contradicted, and it will eventually be established that all relevant planes have their new year simultaneously, just for convenience sake. In fact, between me placing the release of the Eldrazi based on a Zendikari reference to it happening "last year", and Jay hinting at the New Capenna placement due to it featuring a new year's party, we're actually already making such assumptions for planes other than Dominaria and Ravnica. Still, with the information we have now (assuming I haven't missed anything crucial), this seems to be the timeline we're currently working with.

I'm going to leave my timeline as is for a few more weeks, to see if anyone has any information that really has to be included. Placing Lorwyn block isn't a big problem anyway. When we get to Alara though, we really get into the weeds of a more compressed timeline than we've ever had to deal with before. So I hope that by then we've figured this timeline stuff out, and I'll have figured out how on earth I can write out these half overlapping years in a way that is somehow still legible...

Well... that's it for today. I've done my final editing run and all these dates are swimming before my eyes, I clearly can't improve on this any further myself. All that's left is for me to post it and see if any of you can shoot any holes into my sources or reasoning!