Talk:Announcement: New Unofficial History Timeline Page

There are a lot of subtle inconsistencies or unexplained cross-relationships between historical documents. This now idle Wordsmiths project on the history of necromancy was built as my model for reconciling tons of them. This copy of it has a thousand footnotes. INIQUITY (talk) 19:29, 24 April 2023 (CDT)

Undead War

The Undead War in particular has a lot of contradictory dates and time spans and inconsistent fine details across documents. The most serious of these is "History of the Faendryl". It has "Eight Patriarchs watched over the conflict" before the Battle of Maelshyve, which most (but not all) documents date as -15,185 Modern Era based off "Timeline of Elanthian History" (sometimes converted into Illistim or Vaalor calendar systems with their House founding dates as year 0), during the reign of Patriarch Unsenis who is number 34. Patriarch Rythwier is number 37 at the time of the Ashrim War in +157 Modern Era (which is itself a few centuries earlier than the reign of Caladsal implies for it in Ta'Illistim Monarchs, and Istmaeon's reign is two thousand years too early in it for the Kiramon war.) The current Patriarch Korvath Dardanus refers to himself in letters as Patriarch 39.

The eight Patriarchs could maybe be handwaved as referring to the entire five thousand year period Despana was known to exist, since most (but not all) documents have the Undead War being short on the scale of a few years. But then there are just two Patriarchs covering almost 15,000 years up to Rythwier Faendryl and the Ashrim War.

(The timing descriptions of the advance to ShadowGuard and its duration are also pretty deeply inconsistent between "History of Elanthia" and the Vaalor journal documents which have that one battle lasting months using Vaalorian calendar dates, while its present northern position on the Elanith map makes it seem like there is no reason the undead army should have even bothered stopping in that location. If ShadowGuard were instead further south between Nevishrim and Ta'Nalfein, it would be more consistent with History of the Sylvan Elves, and would be the Undead blocking in that relatively narrow pass around the mountains while they wreaked havoc in the "outlying provinces" west of the DragonSpine. In that position ShadowGuard's purpose could then be defined as a guardian position on the edge of the Elven Empire's core territory for dark stuff coming out of the southern wastelands, and you could have an extended period of stagnation in the forests around ShadowGuard before Dharthiir suddenly shifts gears and tries to surge northeast into the Elven Empire itself.)

The entire underground period for the Faendryl has almost no definition. The original intent was for much of (New) Ta'Faendryl to be an underground city, and then "built on a hill overlooking Rhoska-Tor" with regional sinister and eldritch ruins/relics, and then later documentation had NTF as a brand new surface city built after moving out of Rhoska-Tor to a nearby spot only after the Ashrim War. Except there had to have been other surface constructions prior to that point, such as the port where they launched their war ships and maybe Chesylcha's wedding party. (Which I think should be defined to be Gellig so that Gellig is something major enough to explain why the Faendryl reacted so much more severely to the Turamzzyrian Empire invading it in the Third Elven War. Tedronne, Creyth, and Harald's Keep would then be oriented west to east on the Faendryl northern borderlands, with Barrett's Gorge and Brantur to the west and Gellig on the east coast, and those three fortresses meant to cut off potential intervention from the Elven Nations and possibly to eventually pincer New Ta'Faendryl. Then there is a road from Gellig toward New Ta'Faendryl with the army going around the wastes and the Breaking happening southwest of Gellig and Harald's Keep, with northwest fleeing and Tedronne more in the direction of Brantur and the Wizardwaste, and Creyth more in the direction of Barrett's Gorge.) I think the sensible thing to do here is for there to be an old underground city and for what's now called New Ta'Faendryl to connect down into it, and this surface facade and its five boroughs were centrally planned for organizing the whole society governance structure from the top down. I also think the "Patriarchal Palace" should be part of a center city within NTF where the Enchiridion Valentia is kept underground, something akin to Vatican City, so that the Basilica is architecturally a basilica like it is in OTF and the Palace is its own building. Analogous to St. Peter's Basilica versus the Apostolic Palace. This would reconcile some tensions between Faendryl documents about the roles of the Basilica and the Clerisy and the Patriarchal residence and the Enchiridion archives.

So, either Unsenis and Cestimir should be pushed back to something like Patriarchs 27/28 and those eight unnamed monarchs can be between Cestimir and Rythwier, or a premise can be framed that state sanctioned history by the Faendryl is somewhat revisionist / propaganda in nature and the Faendryl basically redacted that 15,000 year underground period and renumbered the Patriarchs after the Ashrim War to make the underground period sound relatively brief (allowing only one then living memory predecessor for Rythwier.) Rythwier is officially Patriarch 37, for example, but might "in reality" be something like the 53rd Patriarch. I would add an NPC note by an Illistim scholar to the top of "History of the Faendryl" saying the Faendryl have revised their Patriarch numbers to omit things, and generally exaggerate and distort historical precedent or continuity for their current practices with dark magic. That would also take pressure off "History of the Faendryl" and "Introduction to the Enchiridion Valentia and Summoning" making it sound like demonic summoning was widespread and public in the capital of the Elven Empire for roughly 20,000 years leading up to the Battle of Maelshyve, while "Path to Palestra" has the Palestra academies not being founded until after the Ashrim War (and the lesser academies founded under the current Patriarch.)

INIQUITY (talk) 19:29, 24 April 2023 (CDT)