Timeline of the NJO...

I've been wondering if there's some kind of accurate timeline for the events in NJO, like the one we have for LotF.

While I doubt there's anything that accurate, I'm sure there is at least something reliable.

 

I think the New Essential Chronology does a good job of it.

 

Well, in terms of years and events itself, it does... but I'm speaking of an accuracy like months, at least. We've got a timetable in days for LotF, after all.

 

There are a couple of problems with the NJO timeline, and until recently, all precise dating was internal, based on references that established the differences in time between individual novels... However, now that we have exact to-the-day dates based on those in Legacy of the Force itself, we can start to reverse-engineer.

We now know for sure that the end of Edge of Victory: Rebirth is [EXILE SPOILER!!] exactly fourteen years before Ben's birthday in Exile, thus relatively late in 26 ABY (I'll try and work out the exact day later tonight)....

Early sections of Balance Point are, in turn, nine months before that, which would probably be at the end of 25 ABY. The start of the NJO is ten months before that, which probably means around the start of 25 ABY....

BUT:

1.) The first problem with this is that the Solo twins had turned seventeen by the time of Agents of Chaos: Jedi Eclipse, which should almost certainly be dated more than eleven months before the "fixed" date we can now establish by reference to Legacy of the Force...

... and this would place Jacen and Jaina's birth in 8 ABY, not in 9 ABY as it should be.

Thankfully, there is a solution here, and one that hopefully doesn't involve any interference with canon: we know that there are two "start dates" for the Star Wars year, one in the Calendar's historic winter season, and another at the anniversary of Yavin. Now this second date is usually read as being in March, but the original intention was to make it equivalent of May 25th, the release date of the movie in 1977.

Especially if we go with the May date, there should be no problem fitting everything together if we assume that the "year start" for "Legacy of the Force" is the Yavin anniversary, not the older Fete Week, several months before....

Alternatively, we could simply move the date "Legacy of the Force" to 41 ABY.

2.) The second problem is that dating in the second half of the NJO is a lot more vague. As it now stands, with Rebirth in 26 ABY, we need to pad in three full years until the end of The Unifying Force, which measn exploiting the vague gaps.

In particular, the gap between Destiny's Way and Remnant seems undefined at the minute (though there's also the gap between Rebirth and Star by Star - we only really have Han's off-the-cuff claim that Ben's four months old to date this - it could be much longer)...

Again, this can be made to work one way or another - though, once again, I suspect it might be easier to move LotF to 41 ABY, which would allow us to move Vector Prime to near the end of 25 ABY, rather than the start of the year....

- The Imperial Ewok

 

It's actually quite simple. Each NJO Hardcover takes place at the beginning of the calendar year. The authors are mistaken when they make references to the Solo twins' ages. They are not seventeen in Agents of Chaos, and Jaina is certainly not nineteen in Dark Journey.

Leland Chee confirmed at the official site forums that each NJO hardcover is at the beginning of the year. See this page for confirmation. Thus, Wookieepedia is wrong when it places The Unifying Force at 30 ABY. It takes place at the very beginning of 29 ABY. The rest of the Wook's timeline seems to confirm this, with everything from Vector Prime thru Jedi Eclipse at 25 ABY, and so on, until 29 ABY contains nothing but The Battle of Mandalore. They literally have a year of nothing on their timeline.

The fact is, the authors were mistaken. I asked Leland the following question:

To which he responded...

It seems that LFL and Del Rey are trying to confirm that timeline by having Ben turn 14 towards the end of 40 ABY, as Rebirth lies towards the end of 26 ABY. However, there are still some odd references to The Unifying Force being in 30 ABY in LOTF, such as the opening of Bloodlines being "ten standard years after the Yuuzhan vong invasion", and the constant references to Jacen's journey being five years, rather than six. If Del Rey and LFL are going to insist on a 25-29 timeline, they should really start reflecting this in their books.

Unless Jacen began his sojourn one year after the end of The Unifying Force, it was in fact six years long, not five. The fact of the matter is, authors make mistakes. In reality, Jacen and Jaina are fifteen during the events of Vector Prime, and shouldn't turn sixteen until some time during Agents of Chaos. Authors make mistakes with ages (recall Ben being identified as seven, eight, and nine in The Joiner King), and these can be chalked up as errors. The NJO is 25-29 ABY, with each hardcover at the beginning of the year, and it seems that LOTF is slowly beginning to reflect that.

 

One thing is that the final hardcover for njo is rumored to cover the majority of the 29 aby with the end of the book right at the final month or so of the year. after all esb dur to the falcon's dead hyperdrive actrully was covering roughly 3 months the the reguler 2 to 3 weeks each of the other movies take.

 

I think the official word on Empire is that the Falcon patched together an emergency backup hyperdrive. Travel from one star system to another would take very long; longer than a few months if I'm not mistaken. There's definitely a lot of debate on just how long Luke was training on Dagobah, though. The Falcon did make it from the Hoth system to the Anoat system, but I believe that that was when they were attached to the Executor, which jumped to the Anoat system to dump their garbage.

Could The Unifying Force really have taken eleven months? Think about how much of the book features Luke and co. on Zonama Sekot, traveling from the Unknown Regions. I'd guess a month, at most --- certainly nowhere close to eleven, in any case.

Does anyone else have any thoughts on the whole 25 - 29 vs. 25 - 30 timeline? Anyone challenging my whole "the authors were wrong, and that's that" theory?

 

Straight away, I'll concede that, from [EXILE SPOILERS!!] ]Ben's birthdate as established in Exile, we would - if we assumed a nine-month term - actually expect early sections of Balance Point to take place in the last month or so of 25 ABY....

[EXILE SPOILERS!!] ]From a skim-read of Exile to try to work out dates, I get a minmum of Day 238 of 40 ABY for Ben's fourteenth birthday, and probably not more than a few days more than that...

However, with respect, I don't see the logic of overriding the detailed references in the novels to the characters' ages. Jacen and Jaina turn 17 by Jedi Eclipse, Anakin turns sixteen by Balance Point; Anakin is seventeen in Star by Star, and the Solo twins probably already nineteen by this date (Mara and Leia's POVs here seem more reliable to me than Kyp, Jaina and Ganner's POVs in DJ and Traitor)....

I can see two ways to deal with this: a "they changed the date of the end of the year" retcon to explain why the Solo twins are 17 at least three months before the end of 25 ABY, and Anakin turns sixteen in 25 as well; or pushing LotF up a year to 41 ABY, and dragging the NJO forward with it.

Quite apart from the character birth-dates and the problem of 30 ABY, moving LotF forward a year (and starting VP at the end of 25 ABY, too) has the added advantage that it makes it easier to explain the dates of the concluding YJK books. Otherwise, these would now seem to take place in between the early NJO books, and while I'm sure Abel Peña could do brilliant things with that idea, I doubt it'll work in contiunuity...

I can't see any point to a "solution" that doesn't help resolve the timeline tensions. Chee only came in around the end of '99, after VP was published and while the other early books were well underway, and his comment to you also seems fairly cautious to me - "That has always been my understanding. Internally, I've never been asked to address it as otherwise".

 

Well, I'm not really ignoring the evidence that there is. My assumption is that when the NJO was underway, there was no concrete rule that the hardcovers took place at the beginning of the year, and as such, it was assumed that Jacen & Jaina were sixteen in Vector Prime. My guess is that the hardcovers taking place at the beginning of the calendar year was a retcon. At the official site forums, a poster called "Tramp the Wanderer" has a beautiful theory that has the end of the Young Jedi Knights books taking place at the beginning of 25 ABY, and each NJO hardcover taking place at the end of the year. I agreed with it until we got the official word that it was wrong.

The fact of the matter is, if we judge the timeline based on evidence from the books, there's no way for all of it to work out. Even if each NJO hardcover is at the end of the year, Jacen & Jaina still wouldn't be nineteen by the time of Star By Star. The Last Command didn't take place at the beginning of 9 ABY. If the end of the YJK is at the beginning of 25 ABY, considering the Lando was present at Jacen & Jaina's graduation, their comment in Vector Prime that they haven't seen Lando in over a year doesn't work out.

Well, that's what a retcon is, isn't it? My reasoning behind overriding the detailed references to the characters' ages is that despite all of their detail, they're inconsistent throughout the series. Heck, Ben is called seven, eight, and nine, all within The Joiner King. I see a very relevant comparison with the ages of Luke & Leia --- for ages, it was assumed that they were eighteen at the time of A New Hope, and that was reflected in some EU. However, it's now known that they were nineteen, and thus, descriptions of their ages in past EU are considered false. Similarly, I believe that during the writing of the NJO, it was assumed that the hardcovers were taking place later in the year, and the ages of the Solo children were reflected as such (despite the inconsistencies ). However, that has since been retconned.

Though I agree that Leland's wording was cautious, I still see it as official word from him. Thus, I believe it's safe to assume that there has been a retcon. And that's why the authors should be wrong. My theory is certainly not without a coherent basis in evidence --- it's widely accepted that each NJO hardcover is a year after the previous one, is it not? If so, then Ben turning fourteen when he does in Exile seems like enough evidence in itself to place each NJO hardcover at the beginning of the year.

Quite simply, due to retconning!

The way I see a retcon, is that it deems whatever it is retconning to be a mistake. See Boba Fett's backstory in The Last Man Standing --- it's not S-canon, but the details of

 

The 238th day of the year is at the end of the eighth month, however if we go by Sue Rostoni's timeline then it's 75:7:25 instead of 75:8:26 (as it would be on a Gregorian calendar). I have explained this inconsistency to her here and here... But of course I got no answers.

---

[b]Based on references from the NJO books themselves I got the following timeline for the first two years:[/b]

Onslaught starts 2 months after VP [O]
Onslaught ends 3 months after VP [O]
Ruin ends 4 months after VP?
AOC1 starts 6 months after VP [AOC1]
AOC1 ends 7 months after VP [BP]
AOC2 starts 8 months after VP [AOC2]
BP starts 10 months after VP [BP]
Rebirth ends 19 months after VP [R]


[b]Here are the quotes from the books:[/b]

[i][u]Onslaught:
At the beginning of the book:[/u]
Glancing back over her shoulder, she saw Danni Quee, the young woman who barely two months ago had survived an attack and capture by an aggressive alien group that had assaulted several worlds on the galaxy's Outer Rim.

[u]At the middle of the book:[/u]
Just over two months had passed since Yomin Carr had destroyed the ExGal facility here,...

In the week they'd been on the planet (Dantooine), he'd been relying less and less on the Force,...

[u]At the end of the book:[/u]
Rogue Squadron has lost two-thirds of the pilots it had two months ago.

It was hard to believe a month had passed since he had left for Dantooine with Mara.
[u]
Ruin:
Near the end of the book:[/u]
"You are fortunate, Lian, for I will not let you disgrace yourself. You shall accomplish that which is the will of the gods." Shedao Shai folded his arms across his chest. "You will plan for me an assault on Ithor to commence a month from now.

[u]Agents of Chaos 1:
At the beginning of the book:[/u]
Chewbacca had died six standard months earlier,...

[u]Agents of Chaos 2:
At the beginning of the book:[/u]
She had had trouble with him during the Rhommamoolian crisis eight months earlier,...

[u]Balance Point
At the beginning of the book:[/u]
The situation was hauntingly similar to Sernpidal's last hours, almost ten months ago.

For three months, she'd been in remission. The tears of an alien creature, Vergere - briefly in custody, with a Yuuzhan Vong agent - had restored her strength.

Two months ago, the New Republic had called him and his brother Anakin to Centerpoint Station,...

Fondor had resisted one of his supreme commanders, Nas Choka, less than a klekket ago - two months by the infidels' calendar.

[u]Rebirth:[/u]
"But Mara's in her final month," Luke said. "If it took eight months for the toxins to build up...[/i]


[b]The New Essential Chronology also gives a timeline for the books[/b] and of course it completely ignores the references from the novels[face_happy] :
AOC1 starts 4 months after the end of Ruin
BP starts 4 months after the end of AOC2

[b]The book has also got a decimal timeline:[/b] (which of course ignores the references in the novels)
25 ABY - VP
25.2 - Onslaught
25.3 - Ruin
25.5 - AOC1
25.7 - AOC2
26 - BP
26.5 - Rebirth
[b]This would look something like this on a 12-month calendar:[/b]
Onslaught: 2 months after VP
Ruin: 3 months after VP
AOC1: 6 months after VP
A

 

Modi, that is very well put together. The question it poses, then, is: Since the New Essential Chronology was published more recently, is it an official retcon, or a mistake?

OK... I read Balance Point immediately after Jedi Eclipse in the summer of 2004, and I recalled a scene in JE where Luke and Mara got a little frisky, and it was kind of implied that they engaged in a good rogering. I always took this to be Ben's conception. We do know that giving Luke and Mara a child was the idea of Kathy Tyers, but keep in mind that Jedi Eclipse and Balance Point were released on the same day. Also, Luceno is known for using the ideas of other authors, and the NJO authors did work closely with one another in planning (at least, with the authors immediately preceding and following them)). If I'm correct, then Mara was pregnant for ten, rather than six months.

If the NEC is correct, then that gives credence to my "the ages and dates written by the NJO authors have since been retconned" theory. Also, the dating in the NJO wasn't being planned as closely as it is for LOTF, with Sue's down-to-the-day timeline, so some references in the former series have to be taken with a grain of salt.

Again, though, infinite props for digging up those quotes, Modi.

 

That's not quite the problem you make it out to be, I think: Lando says "It's only been a year" to the kids - and that's far easier to explain as loosely accurate, compared with reliable POVs on characters' ages. ;
Also, I think you're making the mistake of assuming that there needs to be a ratio of one hardcover to one year - which seems slightly silly for a group of five books spread over six years. Star by Star could easily be (IMHO, should be) well enough into 28 ABY that the Solo twins have turned nineteen.

In fact, why not say that Vector Prime begins at the start of 26 ABY - Fete Week rather than the Battle of Yavin anniversary, if you want to keep it inside 25 ABY "from a certain point of view"...?

And is Chee's comment really "official word that it was wrong"? The man seems to have enviable patience and cool to phrase things flexibly all the time. He's not had any formal cause to challenge the dating that he understood (for whatever reason) to be in place...

However, I put it to you that evidence - strong evidence - exists to challenge that dating.

Is he? I know he's seven and then eight in TJK, nine at the start of TUQ. I just took that to indicate the passing of time - since there's a full year (at least) between the middle of TJK and the start of TUQ....

Oh? It was my understanding that while RotS is now in 19 BBY, Luke and Leia's nineteenth birthday happens after Ep. IV...

This was always an inconsistency, though... but one where various continuity-minded attempts to define it were kept off the pages of the novels until fixed ages were established by RotS and Allegiance...

Similarly, I'm arguing that the fixed ages in the more recent novels override abstract continuity-minded attempts to define the timeline that don't take them into account...

 

Voren's a doofus-- his writing isn't worth the flimsiplast it's viewed on.

Didn't Rostini say they were making a day-to-day timeline for pre-LotF stuff, too, or am I misremembering? (And using the GrS method, which gives me much joy.)

 

Well, the ratio of one hardcover per year isn't something invented by me. I'm under the impression that this was, in fact, the intent of the NJO planning team. Leland Chee stated that it had always been his impression, and Wookieepedia's timeline, among other timelines, has the NJO as so. I understand that you're proposing a timeline that takes into account the ages presented in the actual books, but the fact is, fan-presented timelines don't take precedence over the official word. We, as fans, can come up with as many convenient retcons as we can, but that doesn't make them canon. Sure, Leland's resonse to my query didn't imply the firmest convictions on his part, but as he's the keeper of the holocron, the fact remains that that is where the books are placed on the timeline. I think I should establish what I'm arguing for --- I'm not arguing for what makes the most sense, but rather, I'm trying to establish what the official canon is. The official canon may not always be the answer that we as fans like, or even what makes the most sense given internal dating, but it's still official. Leland is flexible, but with Ben's birthday and the strict dating of LOTF, I don't see the timeline of the NJO changing due to logic presented by fans. If it happens some day, I'll eat my words, but right now, I don't see it happening.

I admittedly don't own The New Essential Chronology, but can anyone who does elaborate on what Modi began? He finished at Rebirth. The NEC states that VP is at the beginning of 25 ABY, and I'm arguing that as much as we as fans may not like that, it's still the official word.

There are a lot of things that fans would rather retcon, but it's not going to happen. If Dan Wallace intended the NEC to be accurate, then it's an official retcon. This leads into your next points...

Did the continuity of the NJO originally work fine? Not if placing one hardcover per year was their original intent. Even if not, retconning can serve other purposes, such as creating a timeline that dovetails with the obsession at placing every major event at an even number before or after the Battle of Yavin. Even if it invalidates continuity that works fine... it's still retroactive continuity, and it still overrides.

Placing each NJO hardcover at the beginning of the year may be an abstract continuity-minded attempt to define the timeline --- it may deem character POVs from the NJO as incorrect --- but it's still the official retcon (I'm basing this off of the NEC, not off of Chee's comment).

In regards to the th

 

after reading tuf and the joiner king that jacen's journey would be five years if he left several months after the end of the tuf and arrived back roughly the same time of year in 35 aby. anything with the falcon that even with a backup hyperdrive it still would have taken several more days after leaving the vader fleet to get to cloud snice the drive would not have been as fast as the main drive.

 

She has said several times on TOS that they have a rough day to day timeline that she's polishing up as things go along. I think it's based on the "x number of days after Betrayal starts" model from what I remember her saying. How exact people will be able to date things should she ever make that day-to-day calender public, I'm not sure, as it would depend on if they nail down an exact start for Betrayal.

 

Sue has nailed down an exact start date for Betrayal.

This is pieced together from two of Sue's blogs at the official site --- Here and here (spoilers from Betrayal thru Tempest). I believe that the original intent was for Tempest begin on Day 56, but Day 51 works as well, as Bloodlines ended on Day 49.

 

I left out the dates from A Practical Man. It says that:

Intelligence report to Prefect Da'Gara. Yuuzhan Vong fleet.
Time to invasion: eight standard weeks. 25 A.B.Y. In the Infidel calendar.

So it's 25 ABY two months before the occupation of Helska IV, and the earlest place for the beginning of VP is the end of the second month.

Well... no. VP spans less than a month based on the novel references. If I remember correctly VP's timeline looks like this:
Coruscant and Rhommamol scenes
The heroes are on Reecee 1 week after that
Mara and Luke travels to Belkadan 1 week after that
Less than a week after that the 3th YV world ship arrives (that's after Chwie's death, shortly before the Battle of Helska IV)
Though the Balance Point fix could work.

Thanks for the Golden Ewok!

The Battle of Hoth is on 38:6:9 not 38:9:6. Remember: year:month:day
ROTJ is either 39:1 or 39:2 (first or second month of the year)

Examine that last quote. 173 days into year 40 means the second half of the 6th month on a 12-month calendar but it gets the date 75:5:21. And all the other dates are based on this one...

---

I will eventually post the NEC dates and the novel refs from the later NJO books.

 

I interpret 75:5:21 as meaning 75 years, 5 months, and 21 days. Which means that it's in the sixth month. I could be wrong about this one, though.

Intelligence report to Prefect Da'Gara. Yuuzhan Vong fleet.
Time to invasion: eight standard weeks. 25 A.B.Y. In the Infidel calendar.

Or does that mean that it will be 25 ABY in eight standard weeks?

 

Aren't there also two time scales in the GFFA? One 12 month and the other 10? I believe Traviss has said she's used the ten month one since HARD CONTACT because that's what she was given originally to work off, and she's set it up as the default for her stuff so she can keep track of the dates in her own work.

 

Isnt ABY Fan time?
It makes more sence for time and years to be based either at the Founding of the republic making it
25,009 republican reckoning or 0028 Imperial Calendar? this fan based stuff makes no sense for in-universe chracters to be using.

Terran soucres is either based on dates of religious importance or the founding of Dynaties and empires. Having the resedents of the GFFA use ABY is Like having Octavian of "Rome" say BCE.

 

Day 56 is when the book starts however day 51 for exile is when jania and zekk started their turn on watching the assault fleet

 

Yep, you're absolutely right --- Karen has said on the official site forums that she uses the ten month calendar. Sue uses the twelve-month calendar for her Legacy of the Force timeline, though. I wonder if Karen uses the twelver for her LOTF books, then.

As silly as it seems, the ABY calendar made its way into the Star Wars Universe. This is from Wookieepedia:

After the fracturing of the Empire, the New Republic reclaimed the calendar. The New Republic Historical Council set the year of the Battle of Yavin to the year zero, adopting the current date system. However, it was by no means the most accepted calendar in the galaxy. It was used almost exclusively by the Rebel Alliance [source?], the New Republic, and the Galactic Alliance. Many regions had their own calendars, including the Imperial Remnant.

I think you mean Tempest. But what happens on Day 56? Sue's blog jumps from 51 to 59.

 

75:5:21

Based on the Great ReSynchronization timeline, this means Year 75, Month 5, Day 21.

for more about the Great ReSync (from an official Lucasfilm website):

http://www.holonetnews.com/45/life/13228_2.html

 

Jeff Fergusson: the way I'm reading it is this - if specific canon dates haven't been explicitly retconned, then they're implicitly C-canon.

If one author's intention contradicts with another's, it doesn't create a retcon - it creates a contradiction; the retcon is what happens when you resolve the contradiction.

And as it turns out, it seems that the mistake isn't in the NJO: it's in the Bantam era. Working out their dates relative to both the movies and the NJO, the Thrawn trilogy actually takes place in 8 ABY, and Children of the Jedi is in 11.

The problem is due to people putting events dated relative to Endor into a new year, when in fact, Endor is close to the start of the calendar year.

More on this later on....

Modi: thanks for the corrections... I might quibble with a few details in the VP one (I don't think the gap between the Jade Shadow's return from Rhommanool and the scenes on Reecee is ever defined clearly, and there are a couple of places there could maybe be gaps of a few days on Dubrillion, both before and after the major events) but that's not vastly important - I can PM you my analysis if you want...?

***

Now, though, the important stuff. The Great Big Timeline of Everything.

Until recently, the Battle of Hoth was pretty much the last clearly-fixed date we had.

But Sue dated the start of Tempest to "Day 51 - 75:5:21" in 40 ABY.

This connects 75 GReSy to 40 ABY, but it also shows, via the equation that "Day 1" was the 122nd day of the 75 GReSy/40 ABY, that the year starts at the beginning of Fete Week, rather than on the Yavin anniversary.

Now, we can work out a useful fixed point from Ben's birthday - this is about ten days into Exile, maybe a bit more, and if Tempest ends on day 70, that means we're on "Day 80" of the novel series, day 201 of the year, or maybe just a little after that...

So Ben's birthday is on - or just after - the 14th of Sixth, which means he was born on or soon after 61:5:14 (and 61 GReSy corresponds to 26 ABY).

Now working back from there, we find that he ought to have been concieved about sixty-five days before the end of 25 ABY, around 60:9:5 (or maybe a bit after that).

Now, this date should be around the start of Balance Point... although that creates a problem, because Sernpidal was then "almost ten months ago", and Sernpidal should be about two months into 25 ABY, according to "A Practical Man"; even if we use the twelve-month calendar, the date implied in "A Practical Man" is towards the 20th of Second Month, whereas the date implied in Balance Point would still be around the start of First Month.

Now we could, as Jeff suggested, read "25 ABY" as referring to when the YV invasion would begin; or we could simply say that that's a typo. But both of those solutions involve tweaking, I think...

There are two more ways we can deal with this:

1.) We can read "almost ten months" to mean "almost a year" - and from the perspective of Ninth Month, looking back to Second Month, that makes a certain sort of sense. It's like being in November, and thinking that February is "almost twelve months ago".
2.) We can take the date nine months before Ben's birth back to somewhere in the Hero's Trial books. Now, I don't think this fits well with Balance Point, but of course, this is technically just the date when Luke thinks the Skycrawler was concieved, so I don't really have any issues with it - and it also allows us to place Balance Point at the start of 26 ABY...

;
EDIT: In support of option 2, I'll note that in Balance Point, Mara thinks of herself as "still [having] a few precious drops of Vergere's tears", and she finds the Skycrawler when she runs a check on herself "efore she used the last of Vergere's miraculous healing dose"; but in Rebirth, she says she "was taking the real tears in the first months" of the pregnancy. It doesn't sound like she has several months' supply left when she discovers she'