The Timeline, according to Lexicanum

[m_r_parker]

I'm kinda 50/50 on this. 

 

On the whole, it's a fair idea and realistically could be something that happens the further towards the outside of the Imperium you get. Assuming that the date system is based on the Terra orbital cycle (never seen it confirmed, but 99.99% sure it is), then there's going to be no other planets that have the same natural cycle. A Terran day is not the same as a Rynns World day, or an Armageddon day. If each system is left to calculate what the date and time is based on Terran standard time, over the course of 10,000 years there will be discrepancies that go into months and years, maybe even decades. I don't think some of the quoted discrepancies are quite that bad, I can't imagine the discrepancy being >1% so 100 years at max feels reasonable. It makes sense, unless the Astronomican also sends out the current Terran date / time, like NTP in an IT system, that they would eventually get out of sync.

However, there should be one place where they know exactly what the date is - Terra. The entire planet is a home to the bureaucracy of the Imperium, so they should have an exact handle on what the exact date is. Since Guilliman makes it to Terra, I can't imagine he would let such a big discrepancy go on.

 

But part of it very much feels like "Hey, it's 8th Edition - by the way, different areas in the Imperium have different ideas on when it is, so that's weird and interesting", perhaps something more subtle would have been better. 

 

But then again, I did see something on QI (weird show here in the UK that rewards knowledge of random things) that mentioned an early conspiracy theory called the 'Phantom Time Hypothesis' that states the years 614 to 911 AD did not exist, proposed by Heribert Illig in 1990. See the following for more details (LINK)

[Bronze Beast in the Dark]

I certainly like it, mainly because THE CHRONOSTRIFE is the most metal name for people immolating each other over calender's and also basically sums up 40k in it's entirety.

That such a petty thing exists is the most 40k thing I have seen in a long time. At least the baroque, grimdark mired in bureaucracy 40k that I fell in love with.

 

This is a war game and I love for there to be more fluffy reasons for everyone to fight everyone. The more in fighting the better. I'd love for the Chronostrife to lead into a galaxy wide Badab type of civil war.

[Redtoof]

I'm also a fan of the confused timeline thing. I love the mess of legend, half truth and clerical errors that is the 40k Lore. I hate it when it tries to be neat.

[Scribe]

 

 

 

I can see how it could be shifted that way, but I find it hard to believe its a 'just as planned' moment, and wasnt an intentional retcon at the time. :]

 

We may be talking past each other, because I'm not sure what you mean. Everything with the 13th Black Crusade was an intentional retcon, that's my point. And the timeline was never, at any point, been planned to "move forward" in the way a lot of fans suggest. The plan was always to scrap dates and stay in M41 - just like they scrapped the previous 13th Black Crusade and rewrote what happened, they scrapped the end of the Dark Millennium and rewrote what happened / what's happening.

 

Now, I can't say if that'll always be the way, but that's what's happened now, and what's been planned for a long time. "We're doing away with dates" was literally the first thing I heard about the new edition of 40K, a long-ass time ago.

 

You can either take that at face value or call me a liar, but it is what it is - there's no "respectful disagreeing" with facts, if you get me. It'd certainly be a weird thing for me to lie about, with absolutely no benefit to me.

OK no you have laid it out now, I wasn't getting the message from how you had said it before.

 

My fault, cleared up now. :)

 

Regardless, I like this concept enough to make an army for it...

[Doghouse]

I love this idea to be honest with a passion.

 

One of the most frustrating aspects of the lore to me has always been the effect of the name of the game. Back when it first started Rick Priestly wanted to call it Rogue Trader, problem was they had been working on a lot of 2000AD IP games at the time and had released the game Rogue Trooper which they were concerned that people might get confused so someone suggested well it's Warhammer...and it's 40,000 years into the future...so...

 

For the earlier editions it wasn't a problem because there was no hard timeline, there were mention of events but no hard chronological order. Once the focus shifted to recording the dates and orders of events the game lore started to become a hindrance in my opinion because we were starting to lose some level of freedom if we were lore nuts. It became the accepted norm that there simply was nothing beyond the 41st millennium and the reason was it was all about the name Warhammer 40,000 .

 

I remember discussions and it was always a case of being told it's Warhammer 40,000 not Warhammer 41,000. For a lore junkie wanting to play in the current meta it was just down right frustrating, it started to lose importance to me because no matter what you did time was running out and as more stuff got added to satisfy the needs of people that loved the timeline it slowly began to creep to 999.M41 and we were running out of room to play around with things.

 

If you take into consideration (without going into too much hard science because that's a bit mad for a fantasy sci fi setting) things like regular time distortion involved at it's most base level in 40k, the base measuring stick being warp travel, you could effectively play a game set in gathering storm take a warp jump and effectively write yourself out of the lore because the ships may not emerge for another three years. This was something I was always very vocal about with the whole two minutes to midnight thing in the past, not because it was humanity making a last stand but because of the crushing claustrophobia of trying to justify events knowing it'll never move on past 999.M41. It was less about the stories of heroism and desperation and to me felt like being stuck in a perpetual loop where you have over slept and are rushing out of the house, toast in one hand, trying to do up your belt with the other and desperately trying to get to the station to catch the train.  

 

I think the timeline fell prey to the dark shadow of officialdom and to be honest now there is so much more freedom with such a simple concept as we just don't know what date it is. This is actually a really good move, the events of the timeline still happened in the same chronological order, A still leads to B which leads to C, but there is now doubt over the exact moments these events took place. It's still about ten thousand years or so since the Heresy but the exact dates of things between now and then are kinda grey and hard to pin down. 

 

This also plays nicely into the mess that is the Administratum with the horrendous book keeping, telepathic dial up email system and billions of employees religiously devoted to their given tasks being blind to the greater events of the galaxy. It rebuilds the dystopian setting of the game that I feel had been slipping of late in favour of 'bolter roaring lets destroy this well established thing we set up years ago' and hopefully we will maybe see more of the setting in a new light which will let the history take it's time to spread out and grow and not feel like we are being painted into a corner.

 

So yeah I like it a lot.

[A D-B]

 

My fault, cleared up now.

 

Bah! We were zigging instead of zagging, so to speak. I totally wasn't clear in the first post - not your fault, dude.

[Ordo Machinum]

My faction of the Ordo Chronos declares it to be 112.M42

Nearly mid-year. On a Saturday. sometime. around lunch time. I am feeling a bit nibbly. 

Anything else is a subversion. Man does not move Time, Time moves Man. 

 

Actually, I do like the muddled timeline. It is perfectly in line with a dystopic "1984" vibe.

In "1984" it was inferred how history was written and rewritten, to the point that the year 1984 may not be accurate and could possible be in the 2000's.  

 

Let the Chronostrife live on!

We shall bury any dissention beneath the sands of Time. 

Edited June 24, 2017 by Rashbold

[Sete]

Who cares. The Crusade is Eternal.