Can anyone explain the Indomitus Crusade timeline? (Devastation of Baal)

[Krelious]

I am confused having just finished Devastation of Baal it seems in the novel the Circatrix Maledictum opens during the novel, the nids were beaten then Guilliman shows up with Primaris Marines after the rift is opened. 

As per the events of Avenging Son which is by the same author, Guilliman declares Indomitus after the Circatrix Maledictum is open as a response to it and Chaos incursions directed by Abbadon and he is deploying forces of the crusade to cut off a swing towards Terra.

 

How are the time line of events between these two novels reconciled because it doesnt really seem to add up? Additionally Guilliman spends (I recall) 14 weeks with the Blood Angels helping them rebuild and get back on their feet with a large section of his fleet. Will further Indomitus novels cover these actions or provide greater context? If Guilliman is say on terra fighting demons and then meeting with Cawl to get the Primaris Marines and tech upgrades/declaring his crusade how is he then also personally delivering the Primaris Marines to the Blood Angels on the other side of the rift? The only way this makes sense is if Guilliman traveled to Baal in secret before he goes public with Cawl about the introduction of primaris marines.

 

 

[Sothalor]

Quote

Karlaen and the rest had done their best to bring Dante up to date on all that had happened in the wider Imperium. Since Cryptus fell less than six months had passed from Dante's subjective point of view. Beyond Baal, seventy years had gone by. Time had been bent out of shape by the opening of the Great Rift

- Devastation of Baal, p. 502

[Lord_Caerolion]

As the quote provided by Sothalor says, the Great Rift basically broke time. As the Rift was opening, the galaxy basically got temporarily melded with the Warp as its influence came to a peak, and so the same event in some places took only days, or was even near-instantaneous, whereas in others took months, years, or even longer. 
 

On Terra, I believe it’s said to have lasted 4 days, but it’s roughly 70 years for the Baal system, long enough for Guilliman to launch the Indomitus Crusade and reach Baal. 
 

It’s why there’s no set timeline post-Rift, it’s too much hassle to find a baseline year now. Instead, everywhere now just counts the date as how long it’s been for them since the Rift opened. 

[DarkChaplain]

I'll note that the 70 years aren't accurate anymore. It originally was in relation to Dark Imperium's original placement ~120 years after the Rift opened. That placement has been moved to 12 years after.

We know that Dark Imperium: Godblight ends with Guilliman planning to set out to Nihilus and eventually Baal, which means we're talking about probably ~15 years post-Rift. The Dark Imperium trilogy (redux) seems to cover the end of Guilliman's crusade through Imperium Sanctus, and while he's sent emissaries to Nihilus via Rogue Traders (and Fabian Guelphrain just returned from his trip by the time the trilogy started), he hasn't personally crossed the rift yet. He sent Fabian during Dawn of Fire #4, so we might some clarification on timeline shenanigans and Nihilus in upcoming volumes (whenever they get announced), but other than that, it is how it is.

 

But yeah, this is all warp shenanigans. During the Tyranid invasion of Baal, the system is engulfed in a warp storm, closing it off from the rest of the galaxy. This is a fairly common thing in the fluff, but hasn't happened to a homeworld in a while. Sometimes, the warpstorms will result in sped-up time within the storm, with civilizations passing centuries when the thing blew over in a year, galaxy-wise, and sometimes it's like no time has passed at all while millennia passed. Kinda like how the Fallen were spat out of the warp rift at Caliban at some point from right after and sometime in the future.

 

I'm not sure if Haley's Darkness in the Blood accounts for the rejiggered timeline yet, however.

 

Track of Words has a good reading guide here:

https://www.trackofwords.com/2021/01/10/black-library-new-40k-reading-list/