User:Alahmnat/Timeline extrapolation

This is archived here in case my Tumblr blog ever goes down for some reason.

For a long time now, the Archive has had a number of specific dates in its timeline of D'ni history that aren't taken directly from an official source. Instead, they were taken from an old timeline originally constructed by Mark Jurries, proprietor of the long-defunct D'ni Archives website. Recently, I decided to review these calculated dates (as well as a number of other ones) to make sure they were accurate, and determine how Mark arrived at them in the first place, so that they could be properly cited and sourced on the Archive. (Specifically, this document exists to serve as that source.)

Primary anchor date: The Fall of D'ni

D'ni fell on Leesahn 8, 9400 DE. This is essentially the only officially-known date from this period in D'ni history, so every other nearby date on the timeline has to be extrapolated from it. Fortunately, the Book of Ti'ana mentions enough absolute time spans and hard numbers in relation to this event to make what I believe are some reasonably accurate estimates.

To start, there are several dates that can be calculated based on Gehn's age when D'ni fell. He was 8 at the time, having been inducted into the Guild of Books at the age of 4. Based on this, we can estimate that Gehn was born in 9392 DE, and inducted into the guild system in 9396 DE.

At this point, things start to jump around a bit. During the trip that Ti'ana, Aitrus, and Gehn took to the Lodge just before Gehn's induction, Ti'ana mentions that her mother died 35 years ago. This places her mother's death in 9361 DE. Earlier in the story, during a conversation with her father shortly before venturing into D'ni for the first time, the book notes that the accident that killed her mother was 6 years ago. Given this information, we can determine when she found D'ni: 9367 DE. The book also notes that she was 18 at that point, meaning she was born in 9349 DE.

When Ti'ana found D'ni, Aitrus was 55, meaning he was born in 9312 DE. He became a Guild Master at 38 (9350 DE), and was elected to the council 3 years later (9353 DE). Knowing when Aitrus was born also allows us to date the construction of the Great Shaft. Just before the Guild Council approved its construction, Guild Master Telanis revealed in a conversation with Master Kedri that Aitrus was 25. This means that the Great Shaft was built (or at least started) in 9337 DE.

(Note: Mark's D'ni Archives site put seven years between the death of Ti'ana's mother and her discovery of D'ni, placing it in 9368 DE and causing all of the dependent dates to be off by one. I think this is the result of a mis-reading of the text in that portion of the story, where a year's worth of surveys are mentioned in an aside. These surveys were not performed contemporaneously, but rather before Ti'ana's father discovered the stone ring formed by the soundings for the Great Shaft.)

From here, the remaining pre-Fall dates get a bit fuzzier. Ti'ana went to live with Aitrus's family roughly 5 or 6 months after she entered D'ni and was arrested by the Guild of Maintainers. Several months after that, Veovis found out that Aitrus had taken Ti'ana to his family's Age of Ko'ah. Ko'ah was confiscated, and Aitrus resigned from the Guild Council. While the controversy was settled in Aitrus's favor within a couple of weeks, he refused to re-join the Council for several years after that. These events took place somewhere between 9367 DE and 9368 DE, but there is no way to reliably date each them with any further accuracy.

According to the Book of Ti'ana, Aitrus re-joined the Council 15 years before Gehn was born, which means he did so in 9377 DE. This is the first occasion where the Archive's existing timeline is more than a single year out of step with these new calculations. Due to an error on my part in reading the text of the novel, I thought Aitrus and Ti'ana had married 15 years before Gehn's birth. However, they were actually married "[a] few years" after Aitrus returned to the Council, and *that* is the date from which Gehn's birth is measured. Thus, Aitrus and Ti'ana were married some time after 9377 DE, but the novel is not specific enough to determine a firm date.

As a matter of interest, there is a possible chronological contradiction in the Book of Atrus with regards to A'gaeris's expulsion from the guild system. The novel notes on several occasions that this took place 50 years before Gehn's birth, which would place his expulsion in 9342 DE. However, the novel also notes that when A'gaeris was expelled, Veovis still a cadet in the Guild of Writers. This is difficult to square with the rest of the chronology. By 9342, the Great Shaft had been finished for 5 years. Veovis and Aitrus were of a similar age, and Aitrus was no longer merely a cadet by then—he was only a few years from becoming a Master at that point. It's possible that this works out on a technicality, but it's equally possible that "fifty years" is David Wingrove's go-to "long period of time" value. Ultimately, I'm just not confident enough in the text to assert the 9342 date as definitive.

Beyond the Fall

Moving forward in time from the Fall, the first solid date we can extrapolate is when Gehn first left the Cleft. When he returns to collect Atrus from Ti'ana at the age of 14, he notes that he was the same age when he first left. This means that he did so in 9406 DE, and returned for Atrus in 9429 DE. The Book of Atrus also notes that Gehn was 19 when Atrus was born, putting his birth in 9411 DE.

According to information from the no-longer-available official Myst IV: Revelation website, Achenar was 50 when the events of Revelation took place, and Sirrus was 47. Since we know that those events took place in 9480 DE, this means that Achenar was born in 9430 DE (before, it should be noted, Atrus and Catherine got married). RAWA has also noted that Sirrus is roughly 2 years younger than his brother, meaning he was probably born after Achenar's birthday in 9432 DE, and that Revelation took place between Achenar's 50th and Sirrus's 48th birthdays. Using this and Catherine's personal journal in Revelation, it's possible to determine roughly when Ti'ana died. Sirrus was reportedly 8 at the time, meaning her death occurred around 9440 DE.

After Riven

Myst and Riven both take place within the same year: 9462 DE. The exact dates are recorded in Atrus's personal journal, which he gives to the Stranger in Riven's opening cutscene.

Based on calculations from time spans supplied in the Book of D'ni and the definitively dated point at which Atrus began documenting his efforts to write Releeshahn, I believe that he wrote Averone in 9463 DE, and finally broke out of his prison on K'veer in 9467 DE. The rest of the Book of D'ni takes place in the remaining portion of that year and the first few months of 9468 DE, with the end of Section 7 coming just days before he wrote the first entry in his personal journal from Myst III: Exile.

The epilogue of the Book of D'ni also states that Catherine spent a year in Terahnee researching their ancient prophecies, and that she started working on that project at about the same time that Atrus started writing Releeshahn. Working on the (probably quite reasonable) assumption that the last entry in his Exile personal journal is from the day before he began the actual writing process, he spent all of 9469 DE working on Releeshahn, and finished it some time in 9470 DE. According to RAWA, Yeesha was born in 1815 CE; assuming she was born after April 21st of that year, this puts her birth in 9471 on the D'ni calendar. Given that Exile is commonly described as taking place 10 years after Riven, and that Yeesha appears to be less than a year old at that time (but still old enough to hold her own head up), it seems likely that she was born in the later part of 9471, while Exile takes place in early 9472 DE.

Revelation is often thought to take place 20 years after Riven, but it's actually closer to 18; all of the journals from the game place the events in 9480 DE. This brings up an important discrepancy, though: Sirrus mentions in a journal entry dated 9475.8.3 that it had been fifteen years since he burned the Books in Atrus's library on Myst. However, this would put that event in 9460 DE, roughly a year before the boys send their mother to Riven in 9461. It seems unlikely that Sirrus would have been able to set fire to the library before they did this, because Catherine rarely traveled to other Ages at that point, and you would think she'd notice something like one of her sons burning an entire bookshelf full of Descriptive Books. For this reason, I'm inclined to treat Sirrus's "fifteen years" remark as an offhandedly round number, not an absolutely precise one.