Time and Landmarks
Every Scene can carry a story-time — free text like “the day before the trial” or “4 Emberfall, Third Era”. Without more, those are just labels. Give the Manuscript a Time system and they become comparable: Trove can parse them, order them, and place them on the Timeline.
Open Time from the Board toolbar.
The invented calendar
Section titled “The invented calendar”Fantasy months, alternate histories, second moons — the calendar is yours to define:
- Months with their own names and day counts.
- Eras in ascending order (“Second Era”, “Third Era”).
- Seasons, for flavour and for parsing.
- Weekdays, reference-only — handy for keeping “market day” consistent.
Writing contemporary fiction? Skip all of it — ordinary dates parse without any setup.
Landmarks
Section titled “Landmarks”A Landmark is a dated world event with no Scene of its own — “The Fall of Meridian”, “the flood year”. Landmarks render as pegs on the Timeline axis, so your Scenes sit against the events they orbit. Era starts appear as Landmarks automatically.
Landmarks are continuity anchors: when a character says “ten years since the flood”, the Timeline can show you whether that’s true.
What it buys you
Section titled “What it buys you”- The Board’s Timeline view orders Scenes by resolved story-time, not just tree order.
- Contradictions surface — a Scene claiming to happen “before the coronation” but dated after it stands out.
- The dates live in the Manuscript’s manifest as plain TOML, portable like everything else.
On disk
Section titled “On disk”The Time system is a [time] block in the Manuscript’s manifest.toml — calendar, eras, seasons, and [[time.landmarks]] entries. Edit it in the app or in the file; same thing.