The timeline
Date scenes and lore on your world’s own calendar, and catch continuity slips.
The timeline puts your world in order: when your characters were born, when kingdoms fell, and when each scene of each book takes place. It runs on your world's own calendar, with its eras and months, and it notices when a scene slips back in time.
Open the timeline
- On a phone: on a world's Home tab, tap Timeline.
- On a wider window: it's in the sidebar, after the Lorebook.
It starts empty. Dates come from your scenes and lore entries.
Set up the calendar
Choose Calendar on the timeline. Each world has its own:
- Eras: one per line, earliest first. Add a short name in brackets to show after years, such as
Age of Pyres (AP). Years count from the start of each era. - Months: one per line, in order. If you don't name them, set Months per year and they're numbered ("Month 3").
The sheet shows an example date as you type. Use the standard calendar goes back to January to December with no eras.
Date a scene
Open the scene's details (…, or the details panel on a wide window) and fill in When.
Date a lore entry
On a lore entry's page, fill in the Dates card. There are two dates, named to suit the category:
| Category | Dates |
|---|---|
| Character | Born, Died |
| Species | First appeared, Died out |
| Place | Founded, Fell |
| Faction | Founded, Disbanded |
| Event | When, Ended |
| Artifact | Made, Destroyed |
| An event category of yours | When, Ended |
| Anything else | When, Until |
Fill in one date for a moment, or both for something that lasts, such as a life or a reign. A new Event asks When as you create it, so it goes straight onto the timeline.
Ages work themselves out
Give a character a Born date and you never have to do the sum. Select their name in a scene that has a When date and the card shows Age in this scene: 34 in a scene set in 346, 41 in the sequel set seven years on. If the character has a Died date, a later scene shows "Died aged 61" instead, and an earlier scene than their birth shows "Not yet born", which catches flashbacks that go too far back.
- Months and days count: the birthday has to have passed. With only a year, the age is the difference between the years.
- A rough date (c. 300, early 312) gives an approximate age, such as "about 34".
- Ages are worked out within an era. If the birth and the scene fall in different eras, no age is shown, because Mythforge can't know how long an era lasted.
- The Age detail is still there for characters with no birth date, such as "late fifties" or "ageless".
For the example world, the Eras and Months fields read:
Before the Pyres (BP)
Age of Pyres (AP)
Thaw
Bloom
Highsun
Harvest
Ashfall
Deepfrost
Typing dates
Type a date the way you'd say it. Under the field, Mythforge shows how it reads ("Reads as 3rd of Ashfall, 312 AP"), so you can catch a typo before it's saved. All of these work:
- a year:
312,Year 312,312 AP,AP 312 - a month and day:
3rd of Ashfall, 312,Ashfall 3, 312,Month 4 of 312 - an approximate date:
c. 300,~300,early 312,mid-312,late Ashfall 312
If your calendar has eras and you leave the era out, the date goes in the latest era. If Mythforge can't read what you typed, it says so and keeps the date you had. Empty the field to clear a date. Days can go up to 100, enough for most invented calendars.
Reading the timeline
Everything dated is listed from earliest to latest, under era headings and years:
- Scenes are squares, coloured by manuscript.
- Lore is a dot in its category's colour. A hollow dot marks an end, such as a death.
- Lore with a start and an end also runs as a coloured bar beside the years it covers, so you can see whose lives overlap.
On a wide window, the world's history and your scenes sit in two columns either side of the years. Select anything to open it.
Filter it
- Show: All, Scenes or Lore.
- Manuscript and POV narrow the scenes.
- Category and Tag narrow the lore.
Each filter only narrows its own kind, so you can see one book's scenes against the whole history of the world.
Story order and continuity
Choose one manuscript in the filter, then switch Order from In-world order to Story order. The scenes are then listed as the reader meets them, chapter by chapter, with their dates.
A scene set earlier than the dated scene before it is flagged: "Set before the scene before it". That's either a flashback you meant, or a continuity slip to fix. The same ↶ mark appears in the manuscript's list, on the corkboard, in the outline beside the editor and in Scene details.