I'm still working at a re-doing of the whole timeline, trying not to guess or estimate anything but basically I crawl through every EQ2 and EQ1 lore piece and write down each numeric or relational mention and then go from there. And only use material I have proven evidence for, links and references I can quote. This is indeed now starting to shape up into something that mostly works.I have the calendars of Nameless, humans, Greenmist and Runnyeye goblins aligned now. So far so good, filling in spots. But ... there is a major numbers clashing in the younger history and I would desperately like to know if anyone knows if that was ever cleaned up somewhere along the lines. I'm refering to this http://loreofnorrath.wordpress.com/category/combine-empire/page/2/ * Combine was breaking down 5000-5100 * EQ1 started (this is from the EQ1 forums) around 300 years later * numbers referencing to After Nameless So far not a big deal, we know that Bayle IV was crowned in 5299 and the whole other numbers point out that EQ1 started around 5450ish, quite the long living Bayle IV but oh well. The problem comes when you consider that Erud founded Erudin AFTER the Combine crumbled ( http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=19968 and http://loreofnorrath.wordpress.com/...me-to-the-present-day-the-history-of-norrath/ ) . So lets say that was 5100 then. Civil war in Erudin for quite a while and the hole created a few centuries (! http://loreofnorrath.wordpress.com/2012/06/11/places-of-norrath-qeynos/ ) after founding of Erudin, becomes a bit tight with the numbers. It totally blows at this point "For many years, thousands in fact, Miragul continued increasing his knowledge and power" ( http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=2662 ). Miragul was in Erudin student of all 4 disciplines before he decided to build his retreat - but it is only 300 years between Erudin founding and EQ1 ingame time. So ...? Either the Miragul-studying-thousands-of-years-before-the-Phylactery is nonsense (or he put it back in time lol, so he should still be in Erudin today and study ...) or the statement of that Dev above is not true and EQ1 did not start 300 years after the Combine fell. Anyone any factual information or is that just an ignored flaw? As far as I know the internal calendar is A.N. so it puzzles me a lot if a Dev makes such a major error.
Btw does someone know when the hole appeared in relationship to the EQ2 storyline? Because that one is clearly a "historic" statement "Over two centuries ago, our forebears were faced with a great misfortune. ..." (http://www.lorelibrary.com/?page=book&bid=457 from http://eq2.wikia.com/wiki/A_Night_at_the_Theatre )
One thing to remember, when trying to dovetail EQ and EQ2 is that they are on separate timelines. They diverged, if I remember correctly, right around the time of the Planes of Power expansion for EQ. (So anything that occurred after that point in EQ lore doesn't necessarily have a bearing upon EQ2 - and vice versa.)
I prefer this website for timelines its the most accurate ive found, http://lorenorrath.free.fr/timeline.php Miragul was one of the first mortals to obtain the power to travel to other planes, dimensions and times. I know I have read numerous references to him having these powers but I can only find this one example at the moment. Its a quest from EQ2 http://eq2.zam.com/db/quest.html?eq2quest=c5ad2926780696010f8edebda1ce11a3 In addition to having the power of time travel I believe there is also lore someplace that indicates him finding the plane of time in his travels; which could also explain his age.
Miragul was one of the first HUMANS to travel between dimensions. The Shissar way back when did it to collect the runes for their calendar. Also the Rallosian Army traveled to the Plane of Earth long before humans existed. Time Travel? Sorry to say but in EQ2 world Miragul was probably beaten by the Claws of Veeshan to cronomagic. Though Miragul was revealed to us before we went to Skyshrine. Though...it could of been Miragul himself that lead to the creation of draconic chronomages... And all of this is EQ2 stuff. This lore doesn't exist in EQ1. Combine Lore has always been a mess. I believe the Age of Blood comes after the Lost Age so there should be more than 300 years between the fall of the Combine and the start of EQ1.
Which begs the question... is Miragul actually defeated? In EQ2 though dragons probably had Chronomagic first. Combine lore... I don't follow it it's too messy.
Depends on what you mean by defeated. If your asking was he destroyed? The answer is no. Miragul is trapped inside of his own memories. Captivated by his own genius you might say. Once he transformed the Eternal Prism into his phylactery he lost all desire to leave it, or to even continue his studies (from what we know). Now its certainly possible that Miragul could leave the prism if the devs wanted him to. This is a soap opera death for Miragul. He is only "trapped" in there as long as the dev's don't want to reuse the character. They could have the whole "trapped in his own memories" thing be a ruse so the adventurers don't mess with his grand experiments. It could be that our actions actually rouse him from his slumber and reawaken his desire to experiment. He could actually be time traveling and the "body" he left in the crystal is nothing more than an empty shell. Or a young Miragul full of vitality and quite definitely alive could emerge. Either as a past Miragul that discovered Chronomagic before he became a Lich, a future Miragul that learned more advanced magics that allowed him to revive himself in a living and "immortal" body, or even a Miragul from an alternate dimension that never became a Lich but found a different path to immortality. It could even be that Miragul left the Eternal Prism with a fragment of his personality to guard it when he first became a Lich and he's been in a series of secret laboratories since that time. But until something new happens Miragul is trapped in the Prism.
This is correct, as far as it goes; the EQ2 time line diverges in the aftermath of PoP, when Time got rewound and rewritten so its events didn't happen and the gods bugged out. The problem is, it actually seems to have diverged prior to that point, as the issues surrounding Anashti'Sul illustrate all too clearly. The timeline's a mess. I just chalk it up to a bad job papering over the consequences of PoP which is now starting to show the cracks big-time. (Well, technically it's due to less than coherent lore in EQ2, but I'm being charitable...)
From my observations/tales been told I was always under the opinion that too many hands in EQ1-2's cookie jar crumbled them. Some devs being too arrogant or bullheaded to listen to reason b/c god forbid they could be wrong or a bad storyteller. So I could forgive it for the original EQ game at launch/until Kunark since back before the game launched it was pretty untested for 989-Verant-SOE as a successful business venture at the time. So you had people making stuff up because it looked cool ala the chess boards around Norrath/Hands in Innothule were made by artists and later story written around them. Or devs that were coming on working on stuff and leaving and such and any huge coherency wasn't as much a priority as making a successful game that was the 1st game to ever REQUIRE a video card to be used on a PC. So you had tons of hands in the cookie jar back then and i guess Bill Trost didn't mind letting others twist the original stories/campaigns back then, perhaps they weren't coherent D&D stories to begin with. That's really the only reason I could see for him not caring/wanting to stop other devs from throwing in stuff that made no sense timeline/storyline wise and not stepping up to the plate to make it all coherent or speaking up and stopping it from happening. Anashti is an example of it, however the powers that be were able to "fit" her in and smooth that out. Making the EQ lore coherent isn't exactly easy I should say either since certain names have said it took years to smooth out the original timeline/plot holes from EQ1-EQ2. Only a few who know the entire timeline were able to put it together in a 3 ringed binder which we often refer to as the "tome of lore" on the boards. But some have made an effort to say doesn't/nor ever existed. I scoff at that attempt this late into this grand game.... this grand scheme.. of not just lore of EQ but the EQ Fanchise(1,oa,2) devs internal conflicts of deceit and ego at the levels of which would make Falcon's Crest or Knotts Landing jealous... or the Lanisters and Starks. It's hard for the layman who doesn't know the amount of hate that is contrived from one Eq team to the next to understand. Perhaps it's simmered down in the last 6 or 7 years to where it isn't a nerd-rage fest as it's been rumored to be from time to time. Professionally they were too deep in inter-office politics IMO and it hurt the game's coherence over all. I'm hoping we'll have less of it in the future of this franchise.
Consistency in lore goes in cycles. When the producer thinks it is important a dev gets put in charge of making sure the big important things all match up and fit with the other big important events that have already been talked about in game. You know, what we call lore. When the producers are stressing out and stressing other aspects of the game, lore remains important but there isn't the extra time spent to double check everything. Sometimes in the name of making an interesting story certain numbers get made pretty big and...a conflict occurs. Or would occur if certain events matched up against other certain events. Logical inconsistencies when you look not just at the area the adventure is happening in, but the whole world. Everquest isn't alone in that. Any fiction that produces a lot of material and uses a lot of writers has this happen as well. Star Trek and Star Wars are both guilty of this. In a manner of speaking, its actually a sign of success in that the Franchise has outgrown a small stable of writers that could keep this all straight.
FWIW, it seems the lore pretty much got burned to the ground and rebuild in Next, which is probably the best thing for it under the circumstances. Frankly there's the seeds of it in the structure of the 'multiverse' that's evolved in the lore--many threads of the same cloth, different, but weaving one tapestry. (Remember what the lizardmen said about all worlds being real?) Anyway, I've come to just view EQ2 and EQ as parallel--EQ2 didn't actually branch off from the original, it followed a mostly parallel course until a given point. I suspect that's how they're handling it now, too. And I'd go so far as to say that the effects of tampering in time can be blamed for most of the mess creating causal 'artifacts'...but Zeb warned us about that, didn't he...?
That whole "All worlds are real" is why I don't think of my Dungeons and Dragons characters as characters. To me Mialune, Estred, Assira, Thelix, Thire, Ashakti, Elise, Mittlenark, Krithic and Grizzmund are all real to a point. They just don't live in the same world I do. Wow, didn't realize I had that many characters. and I didn't know I had 5 Males and 5 Females. the things you realize sometime. Anyway yes EQN is a separate universe/timeline from EQ and EQ2 which are oddly becoming close again.
The devs from the two different teams are talking to each other again. I blame lunch. If lunches were banned I think EQ2 would have a more unique history. (hate mail incoming in 3...2...)
