Dungeons & Dragons & Planescape....... Opinion of Timeline

[Solauren]

Hello Everyone.

Since there is no 'canon' timeline or dates for things like the creation of the planes, the law vs chaos wars, the pact primeval and so forth, I've decided to make one.

The base frame I'm using is real world/real universe history

While trying to figure out where to drop things, one event stood out to me to be a good point to 'launch' the legendary law vs chaos wars.

What does everyone think of the (real world) Toba Volcano super eruption either being the signal that launched, or a 'metaphysical side effect' caused by, of the Queen of Chaos leading her forces out of the Abyss against the universe?

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

If I had a stinger for every clueless berk who thinks he's got the dark on the whole multiverse...

You're trying to impose absolute, physical sense on a universe whose very existence is predicated on the conceptual. We're talking about a universe with an infinitely-tall spire, here. Hell, time doesn't even flow in anything remotely resembling normalcy in many parts of the planes, so I'm not sure what point there would be in trying to impose some arbitrary dating scheme - the Chaotic planes would just re-arrange time itself just to spite you. Or because bananas. Whichever.

There's no physical, objective point around which the planes revolve, so objective measurement of time means nothing. A canny cutter might remember something that happened to him yesterday, or a year ago, but the Signers would probably be pleased to note that the time and date of that event revolves around him and him alone.

[Solauren]

Consider the timeline in question a 'DM Said' tool.

[LadyTevar]

*stares at Solauren*
Tell ya what, Prime. You get a hunnerd berks to believe in this "DM Says" thing, and maybe, just MAYBE, the Hub might turn your way and listen. But when I walk through a door one minute an' be inna pub, but if I go back thru that door from the inside carrying an apple an' wind up in Olympus, yer not gonna have much logic ta stand on here. Yer also fergettin' the Rules of th' Hub:
1. Belief is Everything.
2. The Lady knows Everything.
3. What the Lady Believes GOES.

[Simon_Jester]

Okay. Delightful joking aside...

1) Granting that the rate at which time flows in different planes in D&D universes (including Planescape), it is still possible to have some kind of overall framework that could conceivably be used as a timestamp for multiple events. You just have to be able to factor in time dilation between certain locations and the "proper time" defined by, oh... I'd go with Mechanus, honestly. There'd be isolated locations (i.e. the entirety of Limbo) where time is too wonky to use the calendar, but this would be good enough to produce satisfactory results for most mortals.

2) Planescape isn't just Sigil, so what's true in Sigil may not be true or relevant elsewhere, and to say otherwise is, arguably, well... provincial. Hilarious for those of us in the audience who were fans of Planescape: Torment, but provincial.

3) The Toba supervolcano on our particular Earth, which is one of an infinite number of worlds on the Prime Material Plane(s), would not make a logical signal for events of multiverse-shaking significance. It was a fairly ordinary disaster as such things go; a big deal to us because we live here, but not to the universe at large.

3a) Making it be a side-effect of the great changes and events taking place on other planes of reality is less iffy, but then how do you explain all the other supervolcanoes? It's like saying that this rainstorm was caused by an archangel mourning its friend- compelling in a literary sense, but if so then we don't want to imply that all rainstorms are caused this way, or it cheapens the event.

3b) Nitpick: wouldn't it make more sense for a volcanic eruption to be the consequence of events on the elemental planes? Unless one side or the other in an interplanar conflict just happened to be operating directly on Earth, and just happened to use a gigantic volcano as part of a conflict, I can't see it being connected.

4) It's a good idea to make such triggering events be far enough in the past that even an 'immortal' being may have come into existence recently enough to still not remember them. A volcanic eruption 60000 years ago qualifies, so that's good.

[NeoGoomba]

You could have a starting point of this personal canon perhaps be something that the majority of the denizens of the Planes somehow agreeing on as to have happened "in the beginning". As in, some deity or another finally conned a large enough group of followers into believing strong enough to actually mold the Planes (or a large, localized region) according to, more or less, how he/she/it/they dictated it?

That way instead of having to say simply "DM said it" when PC's wonder or complain, you can pull the "The Tennents of Glittergold deem it true" or "As the Lord Asmodeus states..."

[Vendetta]

While trying to figure out where to drop things, one event stood out to me to be a good point to 'launch' the legendary law vs chaos wars.

What does everyone think of the (real world) Toba Volcano super eruption either being the signal that launched, or a 'metaphysical side effect' caused by, of the Queen of Chaos leading her forces out of the Abyss against the universe?

Bearing in mind that you're already living in a universe where linear time is not a fundamental property of the universe, you're then trying to relate it to the Outer Planes where abstract concepts like "order and chaos" are far more important than dull things like physical reality.

Time and the perception thereof is an attempt to impose order, and so might be recognisable in lawful planes, but chaotic planes could well be quite happy with effect preceding cause or even effect preventing cause.

[LadyTevar]

And just remember, on a Lawful Plane, your idea of Order may not be Their Ideal of Order. Mechanius, for example, where everything is tick-tock clockwork that doesn't stop, even if someone falls between the cogs. Order and Law doesn't stop just to save a life: that's what the Good Planes do.

Thus, for Mechanius, "In the beginning was One, and the cogs began to move"

[Esquire]

A timeline might be a hopelessly impossible goal, but a regular line might not be - most major events in the D&D multiverse seem to have intelligent actors behind them who probably stick to something close enough to causality to be comprehensible. For convenience's sake, if nothing else; can you imagine trying to figure which of things you haven't done yet will have caused that demon prince to attack you last Saturday?

So while you may not be able to arrive at "11 million years Before the Time of Troubles, the opening skirmishes of the Blood War begin," you might be able to justify a simply linear "First A, then B" kind of history. Kind of like the length of lines in a Hjelmslev disk, if anybody remembers their imaginary geometry.

[Simon_Jester]

Agreed; it should be possible to define a sequence of events much more easily than a timeline for the distant 'prehistory' of the known multiverse.

Which is in line with the mythology that provides our basic point of reference for the Outer Planes and ur-history of most D&D settings anyway. Mythological 'history' consists of a collection of stories and legends that emerged in parallel. It may be possible to piece together a narrative. Something like (to borrow from Greek mythology)...

First the creation of the universe, then the rise of the titans and the age of gods fighting apocalyptic monsters, then the gods rebelling against the titans, then the gods creating man, then the heroic age of men fighting the last of the monsters, then the legends of men fighting other men.

But it's meaningless and impossible to say "exactly how much time passed between Zeus's birth and the time at which he overthrew his father" or "how many years passed while Hercules was performing his twelve labors" or "how long did Hades reign in the underworld before taking Persephone as his queen?"

You could have a starting point of this personal canon perhaps be something that the majority of the denizens of the Planes somehow agreeing on as to have happened "in the beginning". As in, some deity or another finally conned a large enough group of followers into believing strong enough to actually mold the Planes (or a large, localized region) according to, more or less, how he/she/it/they dictated it?

That way instead of having to say simply "DM said it" when PC's wonder or complain, you can pull the "The Tennents of Glittergold deem it true" or "As the Lord Asmodeus states..."

An obvious candidate for such a thing would be the moment in time at which the known planes 'crystallized' out of some primordial, intermingled state.

In that case, they became clearly delineated or polarized into the form we know them to be. Thus, there may have been a cosmos before that time, but it wasn't divided up into the "multiverse" in a recognizable sense.

The impact of that change would be far-reaching enough that everyone in every plane could agree that it was important enough to serve as the beginning of 'known' history. Events prior to that time would be in essence mythical rather than historical, even if some beings now alive remember them. Because while the immortal participants may still be around, the physical evidence of what happened has been greatly transformed. You can't go back and check what happened in the Storming of the Keep of the Four Alignments, because said keep ceased to exist when the aligned planes crystallized out of the primordial mixture.

Having this event serve as the 'start' for history also creates the possibility for multiple sets of powerful beings, both adherent to the same basic alignment, who date to before or after that great change: "old gods" and "new gods." The old gods may have lost out somewhat in the transition, creating tension... and the old gods would be uniquely qualified to comment on the state of affairs both before and after the transition.

[LadyTevar]

I think Simon and Esquire have the right of it. There isn't really a way to work out Time, but there are Events that happened, and we can work out a If/Then from these Events. Most of the time....

But, then there's the Illithids. We that the Ilithids will have a great Empire that conquers the Known Planes, they'll breed a slave race called the Githyanki, and then the Githyanki revolt and tear down the Empire. But... this has already happened, because the Githyanki are here "now", and we have the ruins of the Empire.... but the Ilithids are centuries away from ruling their Great Empire. This is Faerun Canon: The Ilithid Empire happens in the Far Future, and the Distant Past simutaneously. Welcome to the WTF of Cosmology.

[Simon_Jester]

Just to be sure- not two separate Illithid empires, but a single one?

[EDIT: goes digging...]

Ah, I see. They are supposed to be a race that arose near the end of time, then traveled into the past to escape the end.

Well, I can handle a closed timelike curve as well as the next man; in and of itself this kind of thing doesn't stop you from putting together a timeline. It just means there are GOTO loops in it.

[LadyTevar]

Yes, there are many "GoTO" loops in Canon. Dragonlance has the "Time of the Twins" trilogy, Faerun has the "Fall of Netherel" and the "Rise of Shadow" trilogies, and I'm sure Greyhawk has it's own problems.

Then, you have the big unanswered questions, like Which Plane did the Elves come from? They're 'dying off' everywhere but Spelljammer, where they have a huge naval fleet that goes from Sphere to Sphere (managed to aquire a small tree-ship for myself once). The Spelljammer elven lore says they made/discovered 'jammers and used it to spread out. This does NOT say if it happened before, during, or after Lloth split off and declared herself a DemonQueen, dooming her dark-skinned followers to become drow.