Post Cataclysm Timeline *SPOILERS*

This is a subject I've wanted to have a discussion on for awhile now. The caveat we have to deal with for any kind of dating prior to game launch is that Portalarium just hasn't (and possibly won't) give us any specifics.

We don't have year numbers.. an official dating system or any real specifics. What we DO have are two estimates and some scattered clues.

For discussion purposes I prefer to date SotA years as A.C. (After Cataclysm).

The first time estimate is that the Cataclysm was about 400 years ago. This is a pretty vague reference particularly when you consider what clues we have about the Cataclysm. I take this event not as an overnight happening but as a time period where the natives lived underground for a time and enough time had passed for the after effects of the Cataclysm to take effect in the form of both plant and animal mutations.

So the 400 year reference in my opinion is rather when this period of time ended and the natives returned to the surface.

The second estimate is that the events of BotA occurred "some time in the middle" or approximately 200 years ago. Give or take a possible decade or two.

This is our starting point. I don't intend to attempt to pin down exact dates but rather I think it may be reasonable to narrow known events down a bit.

I think the journey really begins with the character called The Obsidian Eye. We don't know much about him except that he grew up in a small town on the surface implying that we born after 1 A.C. There's been enough time for towns to establish or reestablish themselves as functioning communities.

He stole a book that used metal leaf for pages and bound in a style found in Northern Grunvald when he was a boy. The book itself was written either during the Cataclysm or after. So more likely this was a little later.. mid first century or so? That would give time for communities to settle, grow and for crafts (such as book binding) to reestablish themselves.

Before I continue I'm basis my analysis on a lot of guesswork. The Obsidian Eye was presumably an old man when he gave his Prophecy of the Obsidian Eye. The Obsidian Cabal had to have time to grow. It had to raise an army and conquer enough of the land to bring us to the events of BotA.. The fact that the Eye was attended by an apparent ancestor of one of the BotA characters.. and all that has to come into play within approximately 200 years.

Commentary and discussion is welcome of course. There's a lot of material to go through so I'm going to stop here for now.. before I write a 10 page wall of text.

 

I like the A.C. Bowen... "Bloody Good Indeed!"...
My suggestion would be to begin counting sometime after our stars, moons and planets become persistent without any wipes and consider the time we are now in as the age of enlightenment, where everyone remains as dumb as a stump until our world does become a constant environment...
~Time Lord~

 

There are quite a few assumptions here, and I know it is just your opinion. Some other things to consider. There is nothing saying the 400 years could not refer specifically to a specific time when the cataclysm began. Also, since there is a prophecy, maybe 400 years is an exact date. Again, nothing saying that it's only an estimate.

Also, can we assume that everyone had to live underground? Maybe there was a mix of those who tried to survive above and below.

All this does is show how hard it is to establish the timeline when the one clue we do have only raises more questions than it answers.

 

I think it would help this effort to list out of a series of "periods" based on the Story Sneak Peeks:

First period, survival - people are practical, no monuments except their own survival.
Second period, warlords - new magic, new monsters - these are the children of the previous generation. Does that mean one generation? Could be, but an assumption.
Third period, city states - again, the next set of "children" that started to band together to defend themselves from the warlords.
Fourth period, rise of the Obsidian Eye - as you mentioned above.
Fifth period, the ascendancy of the Obsidian Order and BotA
Sixth period, collapse of the Obsidian Order - can be assumed.
Seventh period, Formorian wars - perhaps unleashed by the collapse of the Obsidians, or concurrent with it.
Eighth period, now.

There is nothing to say that these are discrete periods, or that this is an exhaustive list. However, I think these are important markers. Please make corrections if you see any mistakes, but I think we can start hanging things off this skeleton.

Other events that can be assumed abound. For example, the arrival of the Titans happens somewhere in relation to the third period.

 

I don't think we can make that assumption about the Titans. Unless there's a clue I missed. We can say the arrived after the Cataclysm as their world experienced the same thing.

The problem I have with 400 years ago being the start of the Cataclysm is that we only have a limited time period to work with. It may well be that not literally everyone went underground, but we do know that large portions of the population did. One of the scene jams focused on underground settlements.

Another issue with the timeframe of the cataclysm is the resulting mutations that are meant to explain the appearances of new creatures and plant life. These would have to have taken more than 1 generation.

A few other details to consider. Warlords were still a problem when the Obsidian Eye was a young man and adopted the name he's known by.

As an old man (presumably old enough to require an attendant) he was attended to by Markus Dirae.. a mere acolyte when his prophecy was given. Interestingly, the prophecy was recorded on clay tablets.

I might speculate that clay tablets were used in the absence of the availability of better materials. Could be something.. or perhaps not but it was certainly a dated method of writing.

The prominent Obsidian mage in BotA is Evard Dirae. Son.. Grandson? One of these seems likely. Of course, any other family relation is just as valid but I believe son or grandson is the intended implication.

So in using the above "periods" I would place the Obsidian Eye during period #2. The formation of the Obsidian army during the 3rd period.

4th period would be the Obsidian War.. and BotA, the construction of Hilt etc Remember that the war is well underway during the course of BotA.

5th period begins the time of the Oracle and the past 150-200 years. The creation of the Oracle by the Titans occurred after BotA as eluded to in the final chapter.

Incidentally.. the term used generically for transformed creatures was fomorian not formorian. Only 1 R. I'm going to start nitpicking that now or everyone's going to be getting it wrong!

Commentary on the city states and warlords. It is probably that one or more city states were formed by warlords themselves but it probably wasn't after the city states had stabilized that safe trade routes were established. Warlords were a problem when the Eye was young so the city states were probably not stable.. but might very well have become so during the Eye's life time or after.

I might also note that it may well have been the Obsidian war that brought the city states together against a common enemy. I think though that even without the war, civilization would have calmed down within another generation or two.

 

They used both in the story sneak peaks. See https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?p=31420 for Formorian and https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?p=30888 for Fomorian.

Did they ever provide a correction? It's confusing because both have some range of usage in general.

 

i have the history of SoTA, youll have to look for it in the library... it will be there soon!

 

While I started with just the "Story Sneak Peeks" as I mentioned, you bring up the challenge of squaring them with BotA. Questions upon questions.

If we talk about periods, we must remember they are probably not discrete like I said above. They overlap. Maybe periods is not the best word then, perhaps "historical movements"? I don't know. But an example would be that some part of Novia could still be in survival mode even as the Obsidians are expanding.

So here is a list of the historical movements with your comments from BotA, again only in loose non-discrete order. We could talk about dependencies but there are really few that can be stated except the obvious.

Survival
Warlords
City States
Titans
Rise of the Obsidian Eye
Ascendancy of the Obsidian Order/Obsidian War
Collapse of the Obsidian Order
Fo(r)morian Wars
The Oracle
Avatars

"At some point" is a phrase we will have to use quite often I'm afraid!

 

Aha! So THAT's the source of the confusion. I thought it was just an easy typo that was catching on. Fomorian is what is used in BotA.

 

Hmm I may need a little enlightenment here.. where do Fomorian Wars come in? I don't recall there mention of such an event? Did I miss something somewhere? (Happens occasionally).

 

This story sneak peek: https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?p=31420
Same place as the alternate spelling of Fomorian.

 

SPOILER ALERT!!!!

In the book doesn't it say the Cataclysm happened 400 years ago? Well if my character is an ancestor of those people then the Cataclysm happened at least 600 years ago? Or is the book present day and the Obsidian Army is still marching around ?

Maybe that 400 number came from somewhere else?

 

400 is the number given at the beginning of the story sneak peeks, not in BotA. The Obsidian Empire has risen and fallen in the intervening time.

 

400 is also given in several dev chats. Looks like I'll have to review the sneak peaks again as that's what is likely to go into the player manuals.

 

seems like such an awfully short time frame... but life expectancies could have been extremely short early on, especially right after the Shardfall.

 

That's an excellent point. Unfortunately we have no data regarding average life spans. I could easily see something like that given the circumstances though.

 

Can I suggest a tentative numbering system for our own sakes?
AR - Avatar's Return?

Cataclysm: -400 AR
Survival: -400 ~ -300 AR
Warlords: -380 ~ -280 AR
City States: -350 ~ -250 AR
Titans: ??
Rise of the Obsidian Eye: -250 ~ -200 AR
Ascendancy of the Obsidian Order/Obsidian War: -200 AR
Collapse of the Obsidian Order: -200 ~ -190 AR
Fo(r)morian Wars: ?? (I expect this to be -50 AR+)
The Oracle: -50 ~ 0 AR
Avatars: 0 AR

Roughly?

 

I'm thinking some of these would overlap more. For example, not all of the inhabitants of Novia would have been affected in the same way. So, to use your numbering, the warlords period could go from -380 to -280. City states could have emerged again in -350 and some continued well into the ascendancy of the Obsidian order as BotA reveals, and maybe beyond.

However, all this is highly speculative still!

Here's a question... how detailed do you think the planning of the story arc is? Do you think LB and Tracy had specific dates?

 

Yeah I'm sure there's overlap. For now though, it's nice to have some numbers. I edited it a bit to reflect your insights. We don't have any details on the different eras yet either, so of course this is all tentative.

Knowing LB and Tracy they have actually traveled through a magic portal to Novia and talked to their own characters.

 

I was actually about to do something similar with 50 year segments.. but before I do that I don't think we can use avatars as a dating system for a couple reasons. First, they're not all arriving at once. In FL's stories she herself arrived a year or two prior to 400 A.C. (see OP). The Titans arrived very early on and they are Avatars as well. If you consider how well established some of them are.. they've been in the land long enough to become wealthy land owners and nobles.

So my current timeline looks something like this..

0-50
End of "Cataclysm"
Resettling towns
Warlords begin (later than sooner)
Titans Arrive - Titans mention in BotA they too had a Shard Fall on their world insulating that was a simultaneous multi-world event. They fled their world So they would've had to of arrived after the fact.
Lamentation of the Fall is written/published

50-100
Obsidian Eye is born
Warlords
City states begin to take shape.
Obsidian Cabal begins to form

100-150
Rise of the Obsidian Cabal
Prophecy of the Obsidian Eye (written on clay tablets)
Obsidian Cabal begins preparations for conquest.
City states stablize

150-200
Obsidians raise army
Fomorian experiments
Obsidian War begins

circa 200 - BotA

200 - 250
Obsidian War Ends
Fomorian Wars
Oracle is built

250-

At this time I'd like to make a point that we don't have to fill the entire 400 years here. Remember that BotA is in, or around "the middle". the middle is 200 years. The Obsidian war is well underway.. so everything leading up to that point has happened already.