Timeline Comparisons, part 1

Something happening at different times on different timelines!? Oh no!

For a long time now I've thought about making my timeline a bit more legible. Maybe something with a few different columns, to make it so the Weatherlight Saga can sit in one without being interrupted by, say, the backstory of Benalia. Or perhaps just to have one column for definite dates and one for vague "approximately several centuries before..." references. But before doing such a big overhaul I want to make sure it's as complete as I can make it. Having crossed the Mending seems like a good opportunity to finish up the pre-Future Sight part (at least until we're getting another Brothers' War style flashback story of course). So I've put my timeline next to the one on the MTG Wiki (and the Sourced version on the same wiki, which is slightly different) and gone over all the differences to see what I've missed. In the proces I'll also adres a few discrepancies between our versions. Turns out there is quite a bit too talk about, so this will be the first in a series of articles. Let's start with...

...STUFF THAT DEFINETELY NEEDS TO GO ON MY TIMELINE

I've been quite thorough in my coverage of pre-Mending stories, so this article mostly just covers flashback stories that I haven't gotten to yet. The only pre-Mending things that made me go "Oh, right, I've missed that" were "The Mirari's mutating waves spread across Otaria" and "Thousands of Dominarians immigrate to Otaria." My blog covers the Magic stories rather than the sets, but with Onslaught block we had the bizarre situation that the cards told a completely different story than the novels. This stuff, as well as the Riptide Project dooming itself by reviving the slivers should probably be represented somewhere.

While covering the Alara Savor the Flavor articles we've already run into some more stuff that wasn't in any of the stories, like Progenitus waking up, and there's only going to be more of that in the future, so maybe my overhauled timeline should also display when all sets happen in general.

Sorin, Nahiri & Ob

A lot of the post-Future Sight pre-Mending dates come from the antics of a handful of old planeswalkers. This is what the Wiki timeline has on them:

• ~-2440 or earlier - Sorin Marvok born, Edgar creates the Innistradi vampires.
• From -1440 to -1400 - Sorin, Ugin & Nahiri hatch a plan to imprison the Eldrazi
• ~-1400 or earlier - Imprisonment of the Eldrazi
• 3385-3571 - Nahiri awakens, fights the Eldrazi and begins her search for Sorin.
• ~3840 (Ava. 1) - Sorin creates Avacyn & the Helvault.

The Sourced timeline is slightly different:

• -2442 or earlier - "Sorin's Origins" from the article Sorin's Homecoming (aka his birth and the creation of vampires on Innistrad)
• A 40 year period between -2440 to -1442 AR - "The Lithomancer" (aka the imprisonment of the Eldrazi)
• 2559 or earlier - "The First World is the Hardest" (aka the origin of Ob Nixilis)
• ~3557 - "Stirring from Slumber" (aka Nahiri wakes up, fights the Eldrazi and starts to look for Sorin), "Promises Old and New (flashback portion)" and "Stone and Blood (Reunion portion)" (aka Nahiri and Sorin fight, Nahiri imprisoned in the Helvault) 
• ~3557-4558 - "Stone and Blood (Repose portion)" (aka Nahiri's perspective from inside the Helvault)
• ~3840 (Ava 1.) - "Sorin's Creation from the article Sorin's Homecoming" (aka the creation of Avacyn)

All of this obviously has to go on my timeline, though for most of these dates the placement is going to end up slightly differently.

The dates given above for Sorin's origin come from him being "at least a thousand years old" in The Lithomancer, which itself takes place "more than 6,000 years ago". I think more recent sources allow us to be a bit more specific. The Visual Guide puts the imprisonment of the Eldrazi at -6000 ME (so about -1440 AR). And while it does says Sorin is "over 7000 years old", he refers to himself as having "seven thousand years of existence" in the recent Innistrad story. So I think we can safely put "The Lithomancer" at ~-1440 and Sorin's origin at ~2440. (I prefer to name the events when they haven't happened in a story, rather than putting articles on the timeline). The three planeswalkers' 40 year period of work just falls away into the "~" part of "~-1440".

Everything from Nahiri's awakening to her imprisonment has been consistently referred to as "one thousand years ago", and the Visual Guide puts it on "-940 ME", aka ~3560 AR, so that's what I'll be using. The sourced timeline's more specific date comes from calculating back from Rise of the Eldrazi. The "3385-3571" date seems to come from an editing error where these events got stuck to the first part of the Bloodlines novel, which happens around the same time but is completely unrelated.

So far these have been minor differences, but my placement of the Ob Nixilis story (and his imprisonment on Zendikar, which the Wiki timeline seems to be missing) are going to differ a lot more. The "2559 or earlier" comes from the intro to the story Dreams of the Damned saying he was stuck on Zendikar for "thousands of years". Later sources have shortened that period though. The Visual Guide has him there for only "a millennia". It also calls him "over 1000" years old, which seems to give us some wiggle room, but that's just how dates are written in that book. Sorin is "over 7000", but called 7000 elsewhere, Ugin is "over 25.000", but called 25.000 elsewhere... So all evidence points to Ob being "just" 1000 years old, which would put his whole pre-Zendikar career around the same time as Nahiri & Sorin's scuffle. I would actually prefer moving everything Ob related a good bit back in time. Not only because that would give him more time to conquer multiple worlds, but also because Stirring from Slumber really doesn't read like Nahiri has recently fought another planeswalker, nor like such a fight would fit in between scenes of that story, but that seems to be what the timeline as currently presented to us requires.

The other issue is the creation of Avacyn. The placements above come from The Cursed Blade, the viral marketing campaign for Innistrad that somehow ended up as one of my favorite post-Mending stories. It is presented as a bundle of letters, diary entries and wanted posters and gives dates in "Ava". The assumption is that this means the Innistradi count the years from Avacyn's creation. The problem with that is that it puts her creation almost 300 years after Nahiri's imprisonment... an event for which Avacyn was present. The notes section of the Wiki timeline tries to explain this away by saying "a thousand years" could be an approximation, but I want all the events on my timeline to at least be chronological. So if I were to stick to those Ava dates I'd have to pull all the "1000 years ago" stuff after that, yet that also seems wrong, as there are far more sources talking about those 1000 years than about the Ava count.

I do get the alure of definitive sounding dates. In a vacuum I'd have said "719 Ava" sounds like a date somebody actually thought about while "a thousand years ago" is often just shorthand for "a long long time ago". But we have a lot more data to back-up the older date. Like I mentioned before, the Visual Guide directly gives it as a date for Nahiri's imprisonment, and we have stories mentioning Avacyn killing Liese "a thousand years ago" and Sorin taking "six millennia" to come up with the idea of making an angel. AVA dates haven't been used since the marketing campaign. It thus seems to me that that is the more reliable option. If we do want to keep the Ava dates as canonical, I don't think we were ever explicitly told it counts from Avacyn's creation. Perhaps it took a while for her to restore balance to the plane, and the count starts after some final battle against evil, or perhaps from the foundation of the Avacynian church, rather than her creation?

All of the above does mean that ~3560 AR becomes quite a crowded date. If it were up to me I would like to see this section of the timeline spread out a bit more. Either through WotC re-embracing an older age for Ob Nixilis, over even just through them generating a bunch of random numbers between 3450 and 3650 to divide all those events over. But for now I think we're going to have to live with one crowded entry on the timeline.

The Brothers' War (2022)

Okay, from a tricky one to something easy. The recent Brothers' War story contained a lot of flashbacks, but these were conveniently labeled with dates in AR. So we're just going to use those. The non-linear nature of the story might look a bit odd on the timeline though.

• 28 AR - The Brothers' War - Episode 3: Sword One
• 44 AR - The Brothers' War - Episode 4: The Ink of Empires
• 63 AR - The Brothers' War - Episode 5: As Cruel, As Necessary (climax)
• 69 AR - The Brothers' War - Episode 1: The End
• 69-85 AR - The Brothers' War - Episode 2: The Beginning

Chapter 5 also has a present day portion, an epilogue set in 69 AR that repeats the epilogue from The Brothers' War (the novel), and snippets set during the other stories. I don't think I'll go into that much detail on my timeline. As long as the bulk of each story is represented I'm happy.

Fate Reforged

Another big addition to the older timeline comes from the events surrounding Sarkhan's time travel adventure to save Ugin. My timeline already has that at 3279 AR, which is 1280 years prior to Tarkir block. We can expand on that a little though:

• ~3260 - Sabotage (past portion)
• 3279 - A New Tarkir of Old, Unwritten, The Reforged Chain & The Truth of Names.
  
• Between 3281 and 3297 - The Doom of the Golden Fang, No End and No Beginning & Khanfall.
• 3297 - Chronicle of Bolas

Sabotage is easy to place, as it's past portion is labeled "Around 1.300 Years Ago". This is a flashback during Ixalan story that shows Ugin and Azor hatch their plan to trap Bolas. The first three stories in 3279 are the main Fate Reforged story involving Sarkhan, and we're told time and again he traveled back 1280 years in time. The last three stories all happen close together, and we know Khanfall happens a few years after Ugin's death. We also know all of it has to happen before Chronicle of Bolas in 3297, eighteen years after the main Fate Reforged plot (Which I see I still have at ~3298 from back when we didn't quite know the year Tarkir was supposed to happen. Good thing I'm doing this exercise!). This is one case where I think we can be pretty sure a flashback date is specific. "1280 years ago" is such an odd number that it doesn't sound like a generic "long long ago" date, which is further strengthened by the Visual Guide putting it at "-1221 ME", which is exactly 1280 years before the rest of Tarkir block.

The only tricky to place story is The Truth of Names, which was released right between the stories that definitely happen in 3279 and the ones that definitely happen a few years later. The sources timeline actually has it just before A New Tarkir of Old, perhaps because there is no mention of the dragon storms going haywire in it? I think I'll leave it in publication order, but if anyone knows a way to date it more precisely please let me know!

Liliana

Liliana is said to be 200 years old in a whole bunch of sources, most recently the Visual Guide. Figuring out where she sparked (as told in the webcomic The Raven's Eye, and her story in Magic Origins, and the Magic Origins campaign in Duels) is trickier. The Wiki timelines just have it somewhere between 4300 and 4400.

The epilogue of her Magic Origins story puts her deal with Bolas and the demons at "more than a century later" than her ascension, but also after the Mending. If she's born around 4360 (200 years prior to the current story), the Mending would happen when she's 140, but Liliana is definitely not 40 at her ascension. Actually, the Origins story also mentions that she spend "decades" after the Mending trying to fix herself before turning to Bolas, so it's at least 4520 at that point and she's definitely not 60 when she ascends!

How old she actually is at that point is hard to say. In the comic she's written more like a teenager, in the Origins story she comes across as a little older, with "years" of training as a healer, but neither gives a definitive age. In the Duels of the Planeswalkers character bio she's said to look like she's 26, while in Kaladesh block she calls herself "two hundred going on twenty nine", but we don't know for sure her demonic pact de-aged her to when she ascended. "Luckily" her birth 200 years ago is probably also an approximation, so I'm going to put her ascension at 25 years after that and have all the uncertainty fall withing the "~" again. Oh the joys of admitting we can't be absolutely certain about some things! (I'd still like a definite date though, if anyone who can make that happen is reading along!)

Her deal with the demons falls post-Mending, so it's not an issue for me right away, but I don't think we can get any closer than between 4520 (two decades after the Mending) and 4555 (as she shows up looking young in Agents of Artifice), though I would expect it to be closer to the earlier date. Otherwise it would've been a pretty bad deal if it's already payment time in 4556.

Odds and Ends

The sourced timeline has a few more stories that I'm missing. 

First there is "The Saint, The Geist and The Angel", a Savor the Flavor entry which straddles the line between story and article, which is placed at "Between ~3880 and 4558". ~3880 because the story mentions Saint Traft becoming a saint "before his fortieth year", and that date being 40 years after Avacyn's creation (using the Ava years from The Cursed Blade, so I would actually have to move this back even further), and 4558 because we know Traft is a geist by the time we get to Innistrad block. In fact, the story says he died "generations ago".

As much as it pains me to say it, I think for this story, and some backstory material about which we also only know it (most likely) happened "centuries ago" like the Sundering of Alara and the Skoti overthrowing the Einir on Kaldheim (more on all that backstory stuff in the next entry in this series), we're best of putting an "unknown dates between 3500 and the Mending" entry on the timeline. Preferably somewhere off to the side in an "vague dates" column. For now I'll use "Unknown date after 3560, generations before 4560" for the Saint Traft story, as horrible as that sounds.

It looks like we've got a similar problem with Beneath Riverroot Tree, placed at "4360 or earlier" on the sourced timeline because it features Obuun alive, who is said to be centuries dead in other Zendikar Rising sources. The article Zendikar: Things Have Changed however states that the skyclaves fell "over the course of a century or so", then lists a pre-spirit Obuun as toppling one, but ending its list with the fact that the last skyclave fell when the Eldrazi were imprisoned. This allows us to put Beneath Riverroot Tree at somewhere between ~-1540 and ~-1440. (This casual use of "centuries" in one source for something that happened millennia ago does of course put everything I just mentioned about the sundering and the skoti on loose ground, but... well, we'll talk more about it next time, but it all comes down to having to use whatever information we have at this moment.)

Second, something I didn't even know about! Selected Field Reports on Kami is apparently an in-universe publication about, well, Kami sightings. The sourced timeline says "This in-world guide occurs in 1053. As it takes place during the Age of Enlightenment, it is likely Kamigawan years are counted from the end of the Kami War." I've got the Kami War ending in 3227, so that would put the Field Report in 4280. (The Sourced Guide has got it between ~4273 and ~4334 because it is a bit less sure about the dating on the Kami War, but I'm pretty confident about the date given in the Visual Guide.) Using another dating system we only know through an obscure source is of course risking the same trouble as with the Ava dates somewhere down the line, but I think that with the current information we have this is the best we can do.

And finally, in more ways than one, we've got the flashbacks in The Hour of Revelation, which shows Nicol Bolas reshaping Amonkhet to prepare for his return to power. This has to happen during Time Spiral block, probably while he's absent for Planar Chaos, as he's dead for a while before Time Spiral, and nobody saw the Mending coming back when he was still alive.

Up next... well, more Alara coverage, but up next in this series, whenever that might be, a whole bunch of backstories.