Timeline confusion

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Soon
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Timeline confusion

Post by Soon » Sun May 15, 2022 11:05 am

Hello!

Since new characters aren't newborns when they arrive on Arelith, I'm trying to establish what my character has experienced in his/her life before coming to the island, given a certain age upon arrival. However, I'm having some trouble due to the time speed shift + AR vs DR and was wondering if there's a solution.

Let's say my character was 303 years old when arriving in the current year 176 AR/1376 DR.

That means that this character's childhood started 303 years ago, but when exactly would that be in DR? 1073 DR? If I want to research the circumstances my character grew up in, I figure I need the correct DR date.

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Hazard
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Re: Timeline confusion

Post by Hazard » Sun May 15, 2022 11:25 am

"1372 DR: Bane has been resurrected, but Lolth has never gone silent. This puts the setting after the Time of Troubles but before the Spellplague."

Your character would be from year 1069. (nice)

Arelith's timeline never really moves forward from the divergence from 3.5ed. So we are forever stuck in 3.5 and none of the 4th ed/5th ed stuff events ever take place.

Here is the wiki page for it
http://wiki.nwnarelith.com/Time#:~:text ... pellplague.

Explains it better than my peanut brain can.

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Skibbles
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Re: Timeline confusion

Post by Skibbles » Sun May 15, 2022 11:26 am

It can be quite confusing, yes, so don't try to think about it tooooo hard but here's what I can find that hopefully answers the question. For the fullest details on time you might browse this link: http://wiki.nwnarelith.com/Time
The Arelith timeline diverges in early 1372 DR: Bane has been resurrected, but Lolth has never gone silent. This puts the setting after the Time of Troubles but before the Spellplague.
AFAIK there should be nothing different about FR's history, as it relates to Arelith, provided you only look at history prior to 1372.

Looks like Hazard and I posted at the same time... whoops.
Irongron wrote: [...] the super-secret Arelith development roadmap is a post apocalyptic wasteland populated with competing tribes of hand-bombard wielding techno-giants, and strewn with the bones of long dead elves.

So we're very much on track.

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Re: Timeline confusion

Post by Soon » Sun May 15, 2022 11:32 am

Thanks for the replies!

Hmm, all right. Not quite sure if that made it any clearer though, it was that Wiki-page that led me here, specifically about not being able to backdate AR events prior to 173 AR using DR:
Dale Reckoning cannot be used to 'backdate' events that happened before AR 173:
"Backdating events on the DR calendar will not be possible with the time scale changes. Because all time prior to the changeover happened at 3.33x speed to all time that will happen after, we would get crazy and/or ambiguous dating issues like the Fall of Benwick or the Baronial Age being backdated to centuries ago, as opposed to mere decades.

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Re: Timeline confusion

Post by Skibbles » Sun May 15, 2022 11:54 am

That relates to a time*flow* change a while ago and, if you're new, then don't even mind it. I think it's referring to the conversational quandary of time flow changing in the middle of a persistent world.

In almost ten years here on Arelith I haven't seen a single PC ever even talk about DR, much less comparing it to AR, so I'm imagining this will be a problem 0% of the time.
Irongron wrote: [...] the super-secret Arelith development roadmap is a post apocalyptic wasteland populated with competing tribes of hand-bombard wielding techno-giants, and strewn with the bones of long dead elves.

So we're very much on track.

Soon
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Re: Timeline confusion

Post by Soon » Sun May 15, 2022 2:38 pm

All right, thanks! Then I'll just subtract the amount of lived years from the current DR and base my backstory around what happened on the mainland since then, excluding everything 1372 and beyond :)

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Re: Timeline confusion

Post by Aelryn Bloodmoon » Sun May 15, 2022 9:28 pm

Soon wrote:
Sun May 15, 2022 11:32 am
Thanks for the replies!

Hmm, all right. Not quite sure if that made it any clearer though, it was that Wiki-page that led me here, specifically about not being able to backdate AR events prior to 173 AR using DR:
Dale Reckoning cannot be used to 'backdate' events that happened before AR 173:
"Backdating events on the DR calendar will not be possible with the time scale changes. Because all time prior to the changeover happened at 3.33x speed to all time that will happen after, we would get crazy and/or ambiguous dating issues like the Fall of Benwick or the Baronial Age being backdated to centuries ago, as opposed to mere decades.
Maybe I'm thinking about it wrong, but I feel like this is not correct despite being on the wiki. AR 173 is 173 years of IG history, but it was approximately 17 years and four months of REAL LIFE time. You don't multiply these 173 years by another ten. With that said, it has been almost two centuries. So while you wouldn't backdate the fall of Benwick on this unknown island of Arelith to somewhere around 1199 DR, there's nothing stopping you from saying "my character was born during the fall of Benwick, the current year is 1372 DR, so he was born in 1199 DR- even though the Fall of Benwick didn't necessarily happen in 1372 DR."

Hypothetically, if you wanted this to make sense in character, you can get by with a lot of narrative hand-waving. How do we account for the fact that in all points in Arelith's history Bane is alive? Well, maybe he was here in pretty little time stasised Arelith all along, recouping his power from the battle in the time of troubles and doing nothing on the mainland until he was ready to alien-baby out of his son's chest. Lloth never goes silent on the island, because she's here on Arelith, hiding out from the rest of the world and letting everyone be afraid of what she's doing (which gives her more power).

TL;DR
It's true you shouldn't think about it too hard- but make sure you don't limit yourself, either. If you have a specific historical event in the setting you want your centuries old character to have been around for, go for it, and when people ask how, well... "magic" is always a valid response in FR. :lol:
Bane's tyranny is known throughout the continent, and his is the image most seen as the face of evil.
-Faiths and Pantheons (c)2002

Soon
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Re: Timeline confusion

Post by Soon » Mon May 16, 2022 2:02 pm

Thanks Aelryn, that makes sense!

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Amateur Hour
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Re: Timeline confusion

Post by Amateur Hour » Mon May 16, 2022 4:33 pm

I think a lot of timeline confusion can be addressed simply by having any "older" characters arrive fresh to Arelith as every part of the AR timeline is particular to Arelith. It's very realistic that a 500-year-old elf from Silverymoon or a 300-year-old dwarf from Waterdeep wouldn't have the foggiest idea what's happened on the Arelith archipelago even though they were alive for the entirety of Arelith's recorded history.

Rolled: Solveigh Arnimayne, "Anna Locksley"
Shelved: Ninim Elario, Maethiel Tyireale'ala
Current: Ynge Redbeard, ???


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Re: Timeline confusion

Post by Aelryn Bloodmoon » Mon May 16, 2022 7:17 pm

Amateur Hour wrote:
Mon May 16, 2022 4:33 pm
I think a lot of timeline confusion can be addressed simply by having any "older" characters arrive fresh to Arelith as every part of the AR timeline is particular to Arelith. It's very realistic that a 500-year-old elf from Silverymoon or a 300-year-old dwarf from Waterdeep wouldn't have the foggiest idea what's happened on the Arelith archipelago even though they were alive for the entirety of Arelith's recorded history.
Sure, but what if the character is born on Arelith? At this point in canon storyline, Arelith gets exports/imports from the mainland, and one can presume major news events also generally reach them (after all, we're aware of Bane's rebirth). What if the elder elf or dwarf are from Amn, which has political and financial ties to Cordor?

I'm not saying your premise never applies- just that there's a lot of interesting fields around it where it doesn't, sometimes, too.
Bane's tyranny is known throughout the continent, and his is the image most seen as the face of evil.
-Faiths and Pantheons (c)2002

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