Timeline

A Galaxy Shaped by History

The StarForgeRP Timeline brings established Star Wars: The Old Republic history and StarForgeRP community developments into a shared chronology.

It serves as both a historical reference and a continuity tracker, helping players understand what happened, when it happened, what changed afterward, and which consequences still matter to characters, organizations, locations, and ongoing stories.

The Timeline is intentionally selective. It does not attempt to reproduce every event in Star Wars history or preserve every individual roleplay scene. Its purpose is to record the history needed to understand the shared setting and the developments that later roleplay may build upon.

StarForgeRP currently uses 3621 BBY / 32 ATC as the present-day anchor for its shared continuity. Established SWTOR story material through Game Update 7.9 — Legacy Reborn is treated as having occurred.

The year itself is a StarForgeRP chronology decision rather than an official BBY date assigned by SWTOR to Legacy Reborn. Where official material establishes sequence without an exact calendar year, the archive preserves that uncertainty instead of presenting reconstructed dates as confirmed canon.

The Timeline section approaches history in four different ways. Choose the page according to the question you are trying to answer: what the galaxy is like now, what a historical period was like, when something happened, or why a particular event mattered.

Current Setting

Use Current Setting when you need to understand the galaxy as characters encounter it now.

Use Era Overview when you need the wider circumstances of a historical period rather than a list of individual events.

Use the Galactic Timeline when the main question is when something happened.

It is StarForgeRP's central chronological record, placing significant SWTOR history and StarForgeRP developments into a common sequence while identifying the source of each development and the certainty of its date.

Use the Event Directory when a significant development needs more explanation than a chronological entry can provide.

Event records preserve the causes, outcomes, and lasting consequences of wars, crises, discoveries, political changes, disasters, conflicts, and StarForgeRP developments that continue to matter to the shared setting.

StarForgeRP distinguishes between two different questions when recording history: where the information comes from, and how certain its chronological placement is.

An event may be firmly established by SWTOR while its exact year remains approximate or reconstructed. A StarForgeRP-created development may instead have an exact recorded date even though it belongs to community continuity rather than established SWTOR history.

Dates

StarForgeRP primarily uses BBY — Before the Battle of Yavin — as a common archival dating system so that dates across the site can be compared consistently.

Where useful, SWTOR's BTC and ATC systems may also appear. BTC means Before the Treaty of Coruscant, while ATC means After the Treaty of Coruscant. The Treaty of Coruscant is the zero point of SWTOR's official Galactic History chronology.

Not every SWTOR event has a firmly established calendar year. When available sources establish only an approximate period or sequence, StarForgeRP preserves that uncertainty rather than assigning an unsupported exact date.

Continuity Source

• Established SWTOR Lore — Events directly established by Star Wars: The Old Republic or closely related official SWTOR material.

• Supplementary Legends Lore — Compatible information from broader Star Wars Legends material where it can reasonably supplement SWTOR without contradicting it.

• StarForgeRP Continuity — Events and developments established through StarForgeRP characters, organizations, locations, campaigns, and collaborative roleplay.

• Interpretation / Expanded Material — Clearly identified reconstruction, interpretation, or extrapolation used where established material leaves useful room for it.

Date Certainty

• Confirmed — The date is directly established by an appropriate source or by the StarForgeRP record of the event.

• Approximate — The general period is known, but the precise date is not.

• Reconstructed — The placement has been inferred from established chronology, story sequence, or other available evidence.

• Uncertain — Available information does not support reliable placement beyond a broad range or sequence.

The Roleplay archive preserves the stories themselves. The Timeline preserves the historical developments those stories leave behind.

A mission, conversation, encounter, gathering, or character scene does not automatically require a Timeline entry. Most roleplay can remain within its story record and the histories of the characters involved.

A Timeline entry becomes useful when later players may reasonably need to know that something changed.

What Belongs on the Timeline?

• the beginning, conclusion, or major turning point of a campaign or story arc

• the formation, dissolution, merger, or significant transformation of an organization

• a change in leadership with consequences for other characters, organizations, or stories

• the creation or collapse of an important alliance, rivalry, agreement, or political arrangement

• the destruction, occupation, abandonment, discovery, rebuilding, or transformation of a significant location

• a discovery, loss, revelation, or decision that continues to affect later roleplay

• a military, political, criminal, commercial, cultural, or social development affecting multiple characters or stories

Routine missions, private conversations, minor encounters, and self-contained scenes usually do not need separate Timeline records. They can become historically significant later if their consequences grow beyond the circumstances in which they began.

The goal is not to preserve every moment. It is to preserve the developments that the setting needs to remember.

What Should a Timeline Record Preserve?

• What happened? — What development is being recorded?

• When did it happen? — What date, approximate period, or chronological position can be established?

• Who or what was involved? — Which characters, organizations, factions, campaigns, or locations were materially affected?

• What changed afterward? — What consequence became part of the continuing setting?

• Where is the fuller record? — Which character dossier, Roleplay record, organization entry, location page, or Event Directory entry provides additional context?

Using History for Roleplay

History can help place a character inside the galaxy rather than beside it. When developing a background, consider which events occurred during the character's lifetime, which conflicts affected their homeworld or family, which governments or organizations held influence around them, and which events they could personally remember rather than knowing only through education, family stories, propaganda, news, or historical records.

Chronology can also reveal believable connections. Two characters may have served in the same conflict, passed through the same refugee route, worked for an organization during the same period, witnessed different sides of an occupation, or inherited consequences from an event neither personally caused.

Shared continuity does not mean universal character knowledge. A Timeline entry establishes what happened within the setting; it does not establish that every character possesses the same information. Public events, classified operations, propaganda, rumors, private conversations, incomplete reports, and deliberate misinformation may all produce very different understandings of the same history.

Past consequences can become future roleplay hooks. A damaged settlement may still be rebuilding. Former members of a dissolved organization may have unfinished business. A broken alliance may leave personal loyalties behind. A failed expedition may leave missing personnel, disputed discoveries, or unanswered questions. A conflict that ended years earlier may continue to affect families, institutions, careers, communities, and relationships.

Use the Timeline alongside Characters, Lore, Roleplay, and the Galaxy to move between the people affected by history, the setting around them, the stories that created new developments, and the places where their consequences remain visible.