Talk:Dwilight/Timeline

Guidelines for Inclusion of Events

Items to include on the timeline

• Founding/destruction of realms
• Capturing/change of ownership of cities/strongholds
• Tournaments
• War declarations
• Founding/destruction of religions
• Changes of ruler

Things not to include on the timeline

• Capture/change of possession of minor regions (anything not a city or stronghold)
• Minor diplomacy changes
• Non-ruler elections/appointments

Template

Make all entries using Template:DRC.

If we add too much minor stuff, then the timeline will rapidly fill with all kinds of useless minutia and make the history too ponderous. If a specific series of events, each too minor to include by itself, occurs and makes a significant aggregate event, then add a subpage with a single entry on the timeline, such as was done with the Timeline of East Continent for The Krimml Incident.

Conversion to Dwilight Years

Since Dwilight has seasons, we actually have a concrete reference for IC years on Dwilight. I have converted the timeline over to use years based on 1 year = a four-season cycle. Since Dwilight started in Summer, I have set the year rotation to be the start of summer. I have converted the years back to 2008, and put them in italics. Ideally, they are just for our reference anyway. --Indirik 23:41, 3 September 2008 (CEST)

Great idea. Year 1, Year 2, ect... looks and sounds kinda bland though. Maybe change it to something like "The First year of Colinization" or "The First Year A.C. (After Colinization)."--Athins 08:20, 4 September 2008 (CEST)

I thought about that. (Actually, Arakiss started the idea, we hashed it out, and I did the conversion.) I prefer to not use abbreviations like AC/BC, or stuff like that. Too much like BC/AD (or the new-fangled, politically correct BCE/CE garbage). Naming the years is a good idea, if we can think of enough good names for them. The "Year of Arrival", "Year of Colonization", etc. are good places to start. Perhaps when we start a Second Age, like perhaps if one of the original realms fail, or the netherworld invades, etc., then the Age itself can be named, too. --Indirik 15:02, 4 September 2008 (CEST)

The initial idea was that we use AC, BC (AC for After Civilization) but then the list could go on and on, as every major historical change could be seen by individuals as a need to change the era - which simply needs too many different references. I also thought that it would benefit RP if major realms have their own different calendars, but after consulting with Indirik I changed my mind as probably every realm would wanna have their own calendar then. To name the years is good, but naming ages or eras sounds even better to me. This first age could be called something like the Age of Survival, Age of Infancy, Age of Colonization... But it is clear that it'll be a hard job on agreeing which event marks the beginning or the end of an era, but it has to be something really really big. --Arakiss 20:10, 4 September 2008 (CEST)

I guess that makes sense. I like you idea for the first two as the first year was primarily the original realms and the second year is when the colonies started to spring up. Maybe for the third, something to do with the battling of monsters and undead. As for eras, I like how the EC timeline is done, not really naming the era, but stating the events that begun it and ended it. Figuring out when eras change is fairly hard to do, as some people will have different opinions. It's really something that has to be done way after the fact as well. It will take months to know that an era has actually changed in most cases. --Athins 21:56, 4 September 2008 (CEST)

Well, good luck getting others to adopt it. People have been trying for as long as I've been in the game to get one non-RL dating system or another into widespread use, and all have failed (except for the mostly-RL convention of subtracting 1000 years from the current date, as below). --Anaris 14:18, 5 September 2008 (CEST)

I know. It may never get adopted in any way at all. However, the game itself does give us an actual framework we can use now, so why not? It's not like we're making up some completely artificial reference. We have seasons! The simple convention of four season per year, making the not-unrealistic assumption that we're on a nearly-parallel Earth, is perfectly reasonable. So why not track time as a function of those season? --Indirik 15:36, 5 September 2008 (CEST)

At first I was going to object because we know characters age a year about every 3 to 4 months(can't remember which). But before I ended up looking foolish, I decided to check season lengths(3 weeks). With 12 seasons equaling 3 months, I conclude that it is safe to use this as a year in Dwilight, possibly all of BM. --Vita Family 16:28, 5 September 2008 (CEST)

I believe Tom has stated (something like) that a year in BattleMaster is equal to a year on Earth, it's just that seasons run faster in BattleMaster than they do here. I'll have to go digging to find the quote, though. --Anaris 18:07, 5 September 2008 (CEST)

I'm glad to see positive opinions. Certainly, it'll be hard to get others to adopt it, but the best way to do that would be that as many as possible simply start using it; which should not be a problem as for now there hasn't been any extreme objections. The best thing about the idea is that the years are realistic. It would be hard to imagine that in a year (actually 8 months) since Dwilight exists, so many realms have managed to be born and destroyed, and vast land conquered. Since this is a RP island we should use as much as we can from the game. --Arakiss 18:41, 5 September 2008 (CEST)

12 seasons per "year" is a bit ridiculous. How would you come up with that as a believable measuring of time? And how would that correspond with the fact that when we talk about character age, we say that we age 1 year per four seasons, but 12 seasons make a year? We get three years older every year? I know the difference between the supposed "physical age" and "calendar age", but having a 3x disconnect between the two? At some point you just need to dump the old, contradictory interpretations and just go with what makes the most sense, based on what the game itself is telling you. The fact that the seasons correspond pretty much exactly with the rate the game ages you is pretty much a dead giveaway. --Indirik 20:04, 5 September 2008 (CEST)

Well, I don't know exactly how long Delvin was 49 for, but it was a lot longer than 3 months. I'm pretty sure that in the same D-list thread as the point above, Tom said that our characters do not specifically age at the rate you propose, and that if people were noticing it, it was likely a coincidence. And yes, I do indeed need to dig up that post so I can corroborate my points. --Anaris 20:11, 5 September 2008 (CEST)

My fault mate. I meant 12 weeks, not seasons. Does it make more sense now? --Vita Family 20:07, 5 September 2008 (CEST)

I think I crossed arguments in there, too, and mixed up Vita's and Anaris' comments. Basically, my point is that if you have 22 RL-day seasons, that's just over 16 seasons per RL year. I know Tom says that BM time runs at the same rate as RL time (I can't remember if he specifically said 1 RL year = 1 BattleMaster year), but for the purposes of the timeline it allows us to separate things out a bit better, and add a bit of RP flavor by considering the IG seasons as defining the IG year. (Especially considering the devastating effects of winters!) The fact that the seasonal rotation seems to correspond almost exactly with the rate at which the characters appear to age: 4 IG years per RL year (discounting the effects of wounding), only adds to the appeal of the system. --Indirik 20:29, 5 September 2008 (CEST)

Dates

What's with this 1008 non-sense? The game works with societies that are 1200-1500, really, so the relation really has little relevance, and was never supported by the game, it was just proposed by some players, and besides, it could also be interesting for different realms to have a different calendar, an eventuality, perhaps (like the chinese don't use our western grogorian calendar). I'd say we leave it to 2008, to avoid any possible confusing, not to mention alot of those things are OOC. -Chénier 15:37, 28 March 2008 (CET)

First, we do not need to use our planet earth / western cristian calendar at all, so there is no reason to use 1200-1500 either. However, quite a few people have started using '1008' here, corresponding to '2008' in the real world. It gives you an easy reference frame to how long certain wars for example did last...and it does just look quite a bit more medieval than '2008'. So I guess its a matter of preference...basically anything is better than 2008...grin TanSerrai 18:00, 28 March 2008 (CET)

Chénier, please, dont offend people by saying "this nonsense". As TanSerrai said, there is no reason to use the gregorian calendar or the 1200-1500 range. Some people, me included, began to use it in 2007, to reflect a more "medieval" feellig of that notation. You want to use other notation type in your proyects, good for you, it would be fun to see another calendar in the game, but this is as valid has what you can think. --Baldur Mekorig

Speaking as the person who has done the majority of the work on this project, I see nothing wrong with using 1008. I used 2008 because I was copying the format of the EC timeline, which was not originally started by me. Also to whoever added color, nice touch.--Athins 02:09, 29 March 2008 (CET).

Chenier, The Middle ages were from 900 AD to 1350 AD. After 1350 it was called the Renaissance. So the 1200-1500 timeline wont work. There is nothing confusing, I'm sure everyone can add or subtract 1000 here. Ceorl 14:00, 29 March 2008 (CET)

Officially, 1008 is somewhat in the middle of the Middle Ages, because officially the Middle Ages started in 476 with the fall of Rome and the Western Roman Empire, and lasted until 1453 with the fall of Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire (Eastern Roman Empire). The feudalism that Tom is trying to reach with the oath systems and such things went from the 9th to the 14th century, like Ceorl says here above. So there's nothing wrong with 1008, back then people were waking up early to stand in a line for their Lord's early greeting and food for that day, as was the case in the period of feudalism. Medium 15:54, 29 March 2008 (CET)

"From the 9th to the 14th centuries—the heyday of feudalism—" - Wikipedia. I think this is BM time period. Ceorl 18:11, 29 March 2008 (CET)

I believe I may have been the first person to use the 100X year system. I tried to work out a calendar based on BM seasons and all, failed completely, and so resorted to the simple 100X notation. It allows us to escape the mundanity of 200X (that is to say, the obtrusive presence of obviously modern dates) dating conventions, without doing any complex math. Its a simple system, though I usually reference each RL year as a "cycle," lasting anywhere from 2-4 actual game years. Its just that backdating the cycles would be an extremely difficult task, and it'd warp time to start using 4 yr/1 yr conventions now. I started using the 100X dating conventions in... 2006 I believe? I can't remember seeing it before I used it, but my memory might be failing me. Vellos 06:55, 30 March 2008 (CEST)

seasons

should the date of new seasons be recorded? someone going back in date to add stuff will find it hard to remember what season it is when things happened... all they have is a date

eg 2008-07-21 Margel Founded the religion "Estianism". (in Panabuk)

That's a good point. I have the dates recorded here in an Excel file. They are approximate, as I recalculated them based on the first change from Summer to Autumn (which I know) and the most recent spring/summer transition. I will see if I can find a way to add them unobtrusively. --Indirik 15:23, 16 September 2008 (CEST)

Incidentally, instead of saying year, we might just want to say season... 1st spring, etc. though one might have to think of a term for 1 complete cycle of 4 years. I seem to remember Tom had quite clearly said 1 rl month = 1 bm month or something to that effect, so it only makes sense for that to apply to year. it doesn't matter a jot here because it's fairly obvious what everyone's on about as it's all listed out... but it's really really complicated when people use years meaning different things in the game. I seem to remember saying 1 year.. as in RL year.. then someone else think I merely meant 4 seasons. heh. --Fodder 21:49, 16 September 2008 (CEST)

The 1:1 correspondence between RL time and IG time is just an insane proposition. I know that Tom has been quoted as saying IG and RL time are the same, but that just doesn't work. The statement simply cannot be reconciled with available data unless you assume some really insane basis for time measurement. You'd need some kind of logical reason why people would organize 4 years into some larger organization, like a "Great Year" or something. Why would they do that? As such, I don't bother trying to reconcile the logical impossibilities of the two systems. IG time just is, and that's that. --Indirik 23:18, 16 September 2008 (CEST)

I think no one can deny 1 bm month is about 1 rl month, like 30 days or whatever it is. That's how the election are set up. it's the seasons that are dodgy, not the months. the tricky bit is the year (is there a new year message? forgot..) It's simply very, very difficult to keep track of it on an every day basis inside the game. We are not talking about using it in this wiki page as that's easy when everything is laid out and looking backwards. It gets even more awkward if people start using numbers like x008, and what not. How do you change the year without changing the number? --Fodder 08:09, 17 September 2008 (CEST)

No, there is no message when the year changes. The only message you get about the passage of time is the change of season. The labeling of years here on the timeline is just a system for keeping things organized, and to do so in a way that is familiar to everyone. --Indirik 14:42, 17 September 2008 (CEST)

I deny that 1 bm month is 1 non-virtual month. I believe Tom has said before that a character ages(avoiding faster ages for wounds and such) at about 3 non-virtual months to 1 bm year. This is one reason I really like the seasons. Four seasons, or 1 year, is equivalent to 3 of of our non-virtual months. --Vita Family 16:24, 17 September 2008 (CEST)

the wonders of google 1) http://news.battlemaster.org/pipermail/discuss-moderated/2007-November/014096.html 2) http://news.battlemaster.org/pipermail/discuss-moderated/2007-November/014098.html ...note.. age is not chronological age, I think most people die in their twenties or thirties (or something like that) back then --Fodder 21:49, 17 September 2008 (CEST)

Yes, I know that's what Tom said. It just doesn't make sense from our character's point of view. Yes, you can have three complete sets of seasons per year, but *why*? What set of circumstances could cause people to group three sets of seasons into a unit of time by which to measure their lives? Talk about inconvenient... "Hey, Joe, is this the second winter of the year, or the third? I never can keep track of those things." Agrarian societies, as BattleMaster is mostly, measure time based on harvests, as most of their is occupied with producing food so they can stay alive. And harvests are based on ... seasons The whole reason things like calendars are made is so people can track when to plant the crops. Now perhaps you could make some case for a theological reasoning behind grouping three sets of harvest into a unit of time that we could call a year. But what two religious groups could possibly ever agree on that, let alone a dozen or more? The reason we converted the time line to a year based on IG-seasonal progression was just to remove, to the extent possible, the use of RL dates in the time line. (We left them there, in gray, so people could more easily relate to them.) To a great extent I believe we succeeded with a time scale that almost everyone can agree on. The use of season-based years like that removes the need for using "2008" or the very annoying (to me and many others) "1008". So we now have a time scale that intuitively makes sense, is easy to use, and agrees to a very large extent to the apparent character aging rate. A year lasts long enough to make it seem a long time, yet changes fast enough to not make it seem that time is moving at a glacial pace. For me the new time scale makes sense, feels right, and is very internally consistent. --Indirik 00:55, 18 September 2008 (CEST)

Cut Off

Obviously, with the amount of events happening per year, the length of this page is eventually going to grow to unwieldy amounts. Should we, after every five, ten, or X years, cut the page line off and start a new page? (That is, something like "Dwilight/Timeline/First(or Second, or Third, ect)Decade") If so, what would be a good year? --Anabellium 07:37, 22 December 2008 (CET)

Yeah, dividing by decade sounds like a good idea. We might want to divide East Continent's too. I want to get a few other people's perspectives on this before we do anything though. --Vita Family 08:30, 22 December 2008 (CET)

I have been thinking about this on and off for the past few months. Given the loss of Springdale today, this may be a good point to consider a split into a "Second Age". When Year 5 ends, we could split off the first five years into an archive subpage and continue on with Year 6. --Indirik 20:04, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I still like dividing by decades. It's a nice clean break by the year with a decently lengthy page. Five could work as well I suppose, but I like ten better. I don't like dividing by ages with our timeline system because it is built on a yearly basis, not an events basis and changing that now would be too much work. Other continents had poorer record-keeping and so an events basis works better for them. --Vita Family 21:29, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I would add that Dwilight/History could later be subdivided by ages like normal. --Vita Family 16:22, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Judging by what's going on, Morek is the dominant realm of Dwilight. Perhaps the first age can be called the Age of the Great Theocracy and end whenever Morek diminishes in power somehow. If we base the timeline off that it will reflect actual in game history. We could split it by calculation, but making it organic is more fun. How about we wait a little longer? D.west.ton 16:41, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but Springdale was the first dominant realm of Dwilight. I understand the argument for cutting it off there if we cut it off by events. However, I would rather see the timeline done by years, not events. It makes a cleaner break. Dwilight/History makes more sense to be done by ages as its more events-based anyway. --Vita Family 16:46, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

My concern is that if we go ten years, the page will get very long. With the population growing, more realms being formed, and older realms getting more and more developed, more events will occur, and the timeline will get very long and unwieldy. Do we really need to be in Year 9 and still have Year 1 events staring us in the face? Also, splitting ages by a significantly large enough event does not cause any work at all. When such an event occurs, we simply wait until the end of the year, then grab all the year up to that point and turn them into a subpage. It doesn't mean we have to restructure anything at all. --Indirik 18:52, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Oh ya, I guess Dwilight/History would be a better place for event based cut offs. Okay, then if we say every five years (or lustrum) then we'd eventually have a lot of subpaging. Maybe better to wait every decade so that the subpage would be a full ten years? Can't be that hard to tough it out when we get to seven eight or nine? Can it? And if we subpage special events into special pages, then that could be a way of showing the timeline of significant events, though it would ruin the calculated cut off. D.west.ton 23:42, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Does it matter if we have several subpages? Considering that 5 IG years is about 15 months, you would generate four subpages every 5 RL years if you went with approximately 5 IG years per page. Alternatively, if Tom approves of my suggestion to include Semantic Result Formats, then we could do some awesome timelines, like this: http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Timeline_format. --Indirik 00:06, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

That looks nice as far as the semantic stuff. I still think 10 years would be best, but I'm not completely opposed to 5 years. And that looks like the one thing the three of us can agree on, so let's say we go with that? --Vita Family 08:42, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Now that Darfix has been finally colonized, perhaps it is the time to make the cut? As one player nicely said it, the time of Dwilight as the frontier has finished, and now comes the Age Of Kingdoms. The takeover of Darfix surely can be considered as something that will mark the beggining of the new era for the whole continent, since the city has been attempted to colonize for at least 6-7 times. --Arakiss 22:17, 26 May 2009 (CET)

I wanted to split it after five years. Six is close enough. I also agree that the Age of Colonization has mostly come to an end. There are only maybe two viable locations left, and one is perilously close to daimons. I also think the Age of Colonization is a good name for it as well. --Indirik 21:50, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, I think by decades or by 5 year periods is best when using an timeline. Dwilight/History would make the most sense to be broken up by ages. However, I must say that the colonization of Dwilight does mark a significant change in the way that realms will be founded from now on. I see very few new realms being founded through colonization at this point, so I'd be in agreement for cutting it off after this year, and calling it the Age of Colonization Silverfire 22:05, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm in the process of splitting it now. I still think Dwilight/Timeline and Dwilight/History should be done differently, but Age of Colonization does seem a good cut-off point for history. I'm also keeping what I think are the most significant of changes(beginning and ends of realms and religions) on the timeline page. Hopefully there won't be as many after these first 5 years or we may have to find another way of giving a brief highlight. We also need more recent history done for that section. --Vita Family 03:18, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Well technically the Age of Colonization ended with the Darfix founding so, IF we are breaking it by the age concept then it should be changed away from this pent annual idea, as the Age of Colonization should end at the end of the 6th year.

Ahh I mixed up the two conversations. I really do not like the way it is done currently, it is kinda messy still. I suggest instead of having a link to the full list and then a partial list, we should have a template which would include major events (basically the heading of every even in Dwilight/History), realms founded, realms lost, religions founded, and religions lost. Thoughts? --Athins 06:35, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

New Designation?

Hey, I was writing up a summary of a little event that occurred in D'Hara to be placed on my characters wiki pg and I came up with a cool new way to refer to the dates of Dwilight. Normally I would write out the whole thing, so in this case I would have written that the duel took place on the 18th of April in the Sixth Year of Dwilight. Then, today I wrote it like this: 18 April 6 YD. YD standing for Year of Dwilight.

Would anyone object to making YD the standard way of recording dates in all Dwilight chronicles/news articles etc,.? It has a nice ring to it, and it is applicable to anything that happens in Dwilight (not an exclusive measure). D.west.ton 17:30, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

It is an interesting concept. However, there are a few significant issues. First, that kind of date is not compatible with the Semantic Wiki. I hope that at some point in the future Tom can get things like the Timeline format working with multiple entries on one page. If that happens, then dates will need to be specified with real dates in order to work with the format. Second, there is quite a backlog of items that would just never get converted. Third, it could not work with certain newspaper setups, such as those used by the Dwilight Daily and the new Niselurian Herald, which use RL months/years. And fourth, the Dwilight year changes every 3 months or so. This means that you would have "1 Jan 6 YD", "1 Feb 6 YD", and "1 May 6 YD". Then you would change years to "1 Apr 7 YD", etc. There would be only three months per "YD". Rather confusing, I think. --Indirik 22:04, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

We could always separate them by season, such as "the 7th day of winter of the sixth year of Dwilight", or 7 Win 6 YD. Seasons are not too long that it would get unwieldy. vonGenf 07:15, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I was thinking about it that way to. Indirik is entirely right, one of our years has twelve months, whereas one Battlemaster year has roughly three months. If we count it by season, that should remove confusion. If anyone really wants to know what specific date it is generally, they can look at the timeline to see what months fell within the season and year in question. Good thinking vonGenf, you read my mind :) D.west.ton 21:29, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

For simplicity's sake, can't we keep RL dates too? -Chénier 03:56, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

No offense, but this new system is ugly, I for one think it was much better the way it was before. --Athins 05:08, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

What new system? The dates? I don't think such a system will ever see widespread use. It's too confusing for me to bother using. (Sorry. I do find it interesting, but it's way too much work for an unofficial system that will never be widely adopted.) The new timeline format being done by User:Bishamon Family? --Indirik 13:20, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Well I meant the design, but yea I am not too fond of the new dates system as well. It's a good idea but a huge hassle. --Athins 19:08, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Designation of Weeks

Well, I have been practicing my method of dates a bit differently than I originally figured it in this post. Instead of the day and month plus the dwilight year, I have been using the dwilight season and the dwilight year. It has occurred to me lately in my work that it is difficult to pinpoint when in the season such an event occurred. I have been loosely trying different things like early, late etc. but I feel this is very vague. Early this evening I came up with a new idea I would like to propose (and probably try out myself in the next use of this date system) and would like to hear your comments.

So, we know that there are four seasons to one year, and four weeks to one season. I have been recording events like this: Winter of 10 YD. Sometimes I say early Winter, or late Winter, to emphasis roughly the time such an event occurred. Now I want to name/designate each of the weeks to clarify what part of the season an event occurred. I feel this is as far as we need to specify since this is not an attempt to pinpoint every single date that ever happened, but this level of specification will be useful to me. I have been thinking of themes to use for the names of the weeks and have hastily come up with a theme of "aging", a theme of "growth" and a mixed set. Each theme would be used for every season. For aging, we would use words like the Infancy of Summer, the Youth of Summer, the Maturity of Summer and the Elderly of Summer for the first, second, third and fourth weeks respectively. I don't particularly like this so much. The growth theme would use words like the Seed of Autumn, the Bloom of Autumn, the Prime of Autumn and the Rescind of Autumn. In the mixed set I use other words like the Juvenile of Spring, the Summit of Spring, the Deep of Spring and the Retreat of Spring. Again, I don't particularly like these.

What do you guys think? Any suggestions on a theme or better words to use? I believe this will work fine so long as everything sounds right. I would hate to confuse people or to disappoint the game with a lame flourish to each season. D.west.ton 03:40, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

I prefer a simple waxing/waning. Waxing (season) would be the first 10 days, waning (season) would be the last ten days mid(season) would be the middle day. Vellos 06:47, 6 April 2011 (CEST)

First Pentannual

I'd like to get rid of the entire shortened version of the "First Pentannual" on this page, and only have a link to the full version on the subpage. The shortened version is just too long. Besides, people going to the page now want to see what is happening in recent history, not ancient history. --Indirik (talk), Editor (talk) 00:47, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Season Dates

It's every 21 days. Not really that tricky. Vellos 16:24, 24 March 2011 (CET)

Either my counting is off or something was readjusted...things aren't matching up properly. D.west.ton 06:58, 25 March 2011 (CET)

Missing Things

The death of Aquilegia, and all the declarations of war between SA vs Averoth, Caerwyn vs SA and Madina vs SA are missing. I may add them as soon as I find the time to, leaving the note here for record and in case someone wants to do that. ivel 12:30, 5 Apr 2011 (CET)

If you have the dates for something add them in. I use only what the World News offers. I wish I had access to the more detailed lists of the devs....if any are listening it would be a wonderful Christmas gift to me, especially since Bowie is the Dean of History and always needs dates and facts ;) D.west.ton 19:38, 8 April 2011 (CEST)