The World of Cynalon is vast place having numerous games both live and message based ones taking place in its setting, or at the very least, adding some elements to it. Given just how much has happened it is very difficult for new players to pick up on many details from the past that may become important in the future.
So what exactly does the World of Cynalon encompass? It all started around 1981-82 with a live game that I ran. The main character in that game is basically King Victor Vaughn the First, although he didn't became King until the end of the game and in a completely different manner. The was my first campaign and it showed. By today's standards, it was quite awful, but we had fun and that was all that really matters. Only broad strokes were taken from this campaign. The royal family and the Sculley family were created in this era.
Victor the Second was the next campaign and it was also done live. I believe the whole thing played out in just 8 months, but we crammed a lot into those months! Many things from this era were added to the World of Cynalon. The Stone House first appeared in this era, along with the Lost Valley.
When we got around to doing a game for Victor the Third, it was the first to be done in written form. This was still the early 80's and before I had a computer, so it was all written by HAND. And sadly some of those primitive posts ran over 20 pages long! The game started with an interesting idea, but then seemed to wander away from that and became something of a mess. Broad strokes here as well.
Next there were a series of small games, mostly done live. This was the era here Kharyna, Sherwood and Jylsera were born. There were other short lived games some of which added more details, but most were just forgotten and rightly so. Kharyna's game added her adventuring band, Swanny, Lara, Talia, etc, along with Jallarzi Sallavarian and Edwina. Sherwood's game featured Darya, the warrior he married and eventually killed after she had been turned into a vampire. Jylsera's game added much about Alphatia and Thyatis and other things beyond Cynalon's borders. All of these games ran for years and overlapped what came next.
By now it was the late 80's and we had Commodore 64 computers. Finally, actual word processing! Introduction to Q-Link followed and a new way to play message based games came along. When it came time to run a D&D message based game, I took the existing setting, tweaked some of its history. In a sense the World of Cynalon came into being with The Frontier game. For one thing, the setting hasn't called Cynalon before. It was actually Cynadecia and I wanted a simpler name. Much of the history was lifted from those past games, but much new history was added.
The Frontier came first and was followed a year later by Sword of Doom. There was short lived live game called 'New Frontiers'' but it only ran 10 sessions or so before it folded. While a few of the players there transferred their characters into The Frontier, the events of the live game are not compatible.
Later came Borderlands, the last of the World of Cynalon games on Q-link. Much of this game can still be used, but a lot of it has been overwritten by the newer games. Several NPC's who appeared in Borderlands simply could not now as they are elsewhere in the modern games, such as Sherwood for instance. Fortunately, beyond these few points there are things that can be used as they are mostly adventurers off doing their own thing. Many characters had their first appearance here, such as Elspeth of Azrella.
During the Q-Link era, the older live games still ran somewhat. For instance, Jylsera met Argent during the time the later was done with her appearances in Sword of Doom and Borderlands. There was a period that I called Borderlands 2, which was done by Email in the middle 90's with a few players from the Q-link days. Only some broad strokes will carry over from those Borderlands 2 days. Most of it is best forgotten and incompatible.
Now we jump ahead to 2003 where the World of Cynalon returned as New Frontiers here on the forum. This picked up Validar's story from the older The Frontier game and advanced things forward. A few years along and Black Flame/Elfquest spun out of New Frontiers. This was followed by Cynalon Knights and then Hammerfall. Kharyna was brought back in New Frontiers and her adventures continued on in Tower of Magic. Jylsera put in an appearance in the Clash of Empires game.
The games ran for years but eventually ran out of steam. There have been a few attempts to restart things, but nothing has stuck until recently. At any rate, here we are some 36 years since this world was first played in. That leaves a huge amount of things to cover and brand new players would be lost. The Argent's Adventurers and Stephanie's Tales was my attempt to streamline existing game continuity and fix any errors. But I found myself not only treading over old ground, but adding a lot of new ground. In the end that wasn't what I really needed to give players easier access to the games history.
So I decided another track. I do have a timeline file that gives me short hand notes about past events Much of that will be covered in the Campaign History file. This file will cover the events leading up to The Frontier game. Most of this material is things that have come up in the games on the forum itself. There are some mysteries not meant for players eyes!
From there the timeline will be done in smaller sections, sometimes as much as a year, or a month or even a day. These posts will cover what happened on what day in what game. A recap of sorts, to save everyone time from trying to find something in an old game. The file I have these recaps in is already over 90 pages long! And I'm not done yet, but there is a lot that I can post.
To get all of this into order, I started at the beginning with The Frontier and tried to finally get an accurate timeline on what happened when. Back in the early days of Q-Link we were using the first edition of D&D and switched to second edition in mid-game. There were some rule changes and I never really did overland movement all that well. By strictly applying the rules on overland travel I was able to figure out better how much time things took to occur. There were also a few places in The Frontier where large amount of time just passed, so I had to work in some new things to explain those gaps.
I started this process with these ground rules. The Frontier came first, so everything starts there and the other games would work themselves around it. For instance the day that Validar left to go home in The Frontier #101 would be the day that New Frontiers would start, regardless of what day I posted it was in the new game.
Likewise, when the Sword of Doom game merged with The Frontier, I figured out how many days passed in Sword of Doom and once I found the day they merged, worked backwards to determine when Sword of Doom started. That ended up being much later than I had expected it to be. In my mind it was suppose to be before the Siege of Gateway, but played out to be actually be much later on.
Argent was in Sword of Doom/The Frontier, so her later appearance in Borderlands was dependent on those dates and gave the starting time for Borderlands itself. Since the modern spin-off games, Elfquest, Hammerfall, etc, came out of New Frontiers, they were dependent on those dates. There were places where I had to pad out some time, such as the time when those leaving in the Blackflame game were away in between their appearances in New Frontier. In short more time passed during Blackflame than for those in New Frontiers, so I had to stretch time out in New Frontiers to put them back into sync. Those are just some of the many, many issues that came up during this project.
This also allowed me to 'fix' things, to smooth out the errors and inconsistencies. New players in MB games tend to be introduced in haphazard fashion, so I changed that. There were some characters that I simply removed from the game. Not in The Frontier so much, but there were players who I listed as members in the Sword of Doom game who never posted once, so why list them? I just eliminated them and did somewhat modify how the start of Sword of Doom played out.
I even swapped names with two characters that were played by the same player. A player made a Sword of Doom character called Omni Tuens, which is great name for a bard. But this one was a warrior and a nobleman and the leader of the Company of the Sword. Later he added a second character in The Frontier that he named Armon Flamehilt who actually was a bard. So I switched the names around. Lord Armon Flamehilt lead the Company of the Sword while the bard Omni Tuens was a member of the Seekers.
Overall, I am very pleased with how this turned out. As I write this now, here is my progress on each game/series in order of chronological appearance when they appear in the timeline, not when they started in real life.
Operation: Graystone - This is a brand new game that started in 2018. I got around having to deal with the weight of so much history by placing the game in the past. This game was to cover the epic recovery of Gateway from enemy forces. This game started in early 569 and is thus to earlies occuring game.
Argent's Adventures - This series started late in the year of 569 CR and I have recapped everything that has been posted so far. Later on there are some snippets of important future events that would be fleshed out here someday. The events of the Sword of Doom series would be told here, along with her activities in Borderlands. Argent's Biography will help to fill in some of the missing details as well.
Stephanie's Tale - This series started in March of 571 CR and would cover the events of the Frontier and beyond. Much like Argent's Adventures, some fill in new stuff will appear under this heading. Stephanie's Biography will also fill in the gaps.
The Frontier - This is the backbone of the whole project as everything spins off from it. The first post takes place on April 11th, 571. As befitting its status as the game with the most posts, 209, it also has the last entry in this timeline. The final The Frontier post occurs on December 21st, 571 CR. The recap of The Frontier is complete.
Sword of Doom - This game started separately, but later merged with The Frontier in post #125. Sword of doom ran 69 posts and started on September 9th and ended on October 3rd. The recap of the Sword of Doom series has been completed.
New Frontiers - The first of the 'modern' games started up on September 22nd, 571 CR. The game is no longer active with its most recent post taking place on November 20th, 571 CR. The recap of New Frontiers is complete.
Borderlands - This game starts on October 12th, when the other Argent arrives at the Highroad Inn. Borderlands was more an anthology game with multiple characters and groups. The main game ran 21 post with numerous side group posts. This series has not be recapped as of yet, as there is many changes and editing that needs to be down before it can be added.
Blackflame/Elfquest/The Sylvan Realm - These games spun out of New Frontiers. Blackflame lasted 9 posts and ran from October 19th to October 26th. Elfquest started on October 27th and the final post takes place on November 25th. Recaps for both of these series are complete. This particular game has been restarted after an 8 year break. When it returned, the game was renamed The Sylvan Realm. The first post took place on November 24th and is current.
Tower of Magic - I have not started to recap this series as of yet, but I do have it starting on October 19th.
Cynalon Knights - This is a series for side issues that are too large to cover in the main game. The first 11 posts spun off from New Frontiers. The next 2 posts were a seperate event from The Sylvan Realm. The original 11 posts ran from November 4th and ran to November 11th.
Hammerfall - I have not yet started to recap Hammerfall. It does start on November 5th.
The format of the recaps is easy to follow. The series name is noted a the beginning, followed by the body of the recap ending with the posts the recap took place in. Remember I am breaking things down by day, not by post, so in some cases many posts can be covered during a single day. If there is a change in group membership this will be noted as well.
My final assumptions is that a new day starts at Midnight, so actions taking place late at night will be early in the recap. Since actions in several games do take place on the same days, the older games come first with the newer ones afterwards. Unless a newer game crosses over into an older game, then that game would be listed first with the combined game afterwards.
Lastly, when it comes to the recaps, you may just want to follow along in one game as so much happens in so many places it can get hard to follow. Now you can! You can either follow along with just one series and read it from start to finish or see everything that occures during a specific time period. Your choice!