Pelnepi Security

Then, if that becomes part of canon, we may end up with contradictory canon. Which would seem somewhat unfortunate.

(I do think of course that some Negavians, particularly those in power, should remember it - but that it shouldn't be so recent that it's within living memory of a large proportion of the city's inhabitants. Given the potentially long lifespan that life in Negav provides, a couple of centuries seems quite ideal.)

rcs619 wrote:

Jætte_Troll wrote:

The Great Destruction and the switch of total control to the Magiocrats only happened 128 years ago. Negav itself as a city is only 282 years old and was controlled by nekos in its early history, though that control slowly faded.

I could have sworn the Great Destruction was older than that. It may need to get pushed back slightly, because 128 years would be kind of recent.

Agreed. Everything else in Negav has a more expanded time line, I've always felt it awkward how recent all the Negav related events seem very close together. For one, there would still be a lot of people who were born in or remember the era close to the Great destruction then. Bael has been living in Negav for about a hundred years give or take a few, and that's a bit closer than I thought the Great destruction was to when he arrived at the time of his creation ^^;

French snack wrote:

Then, if that becomes part of canon, we may end up with contradictory canon. Which would seem somewhat unfortunate.

(I do think of course that some Negavians, particularly those in power, should remember it - but that it shouldn't be so recent that it's within living memory of a large proportion of the city's inhabitants. Given the potentially long lifespan that life in Negav provides, a couple of centuries seems quite ideal.)

Yeah, I mean it probably took a decade or two just to get the city pieced back together.

Personally, I think it'd be better in the 160-180'ish years ago range. Although, we'd probably have to get together Jeatte, Cauldron and Karbo to be sure an edit to the date of the Great destruction won't mess everything else up too much.

Those three are probably the most knowledgable on the chronology, especially concerning Negav.

Well, the 1940 date was originally used by CB and was incorporated into a greater theory.

I personally like this closer date because it makes the political situation with the Magiocrats have more weight and make more sense.

Also, I understand people wanting it to be "forgotten" slightly and taking the extended lifespans of Negavians. However, I think you underestimate the power of the forgetfulness of the general populace. I'm not saying outright forgetting things - but forgetting their significance. We tend to lose the weight of events after 20 years and even get fuzzy at 10. (That's how we have two world wars 20 years apart. )

Even with longer-lived people, I don't think it needs to be set back too far.

But in the end it really depends on how the situation in Negav is intended to be portrayed, and the political situation of the Magiocrats.

I believe when I'll get into finally doing the Negav era chronology I'm going to make Negav a little more ancient. Nothing too drastic of course, but as it is now I think the city is just a little bit too young when you look at the rest of the history ^^ ;

Ok, so it seems some of us are at odds with the date of the Great Destruction, well while I have my reasons for dating it when I did it is open to change; I'll just have to reorganise the rest of the time line wich shouldn't be an issue. Any way rather than de-rail this thread any further I'd like to hear your ideas and reasons, contact me via PM, MSN or Ventrilo and hopefully I'll come up with something that suits the general concensus.

People need to sit down in a chat and work this out.

The current timeline is based on timelines posted and discussed here. These timelines impact stories. Unless the age of Pelnepi has a big impact on people's stories; I'm not seeing a reason to change the whole of Negav timeline just to fit in one idea. If there is one, I'd like to know. As it stands, I don't see why Pelnepi needs to be centuries old, rather than one century old. Making it one century old doesn't seem to have too much of an impact on it. A century is still a long time. Memories fade.

lets just not make this whole thing too complex...

Pelnepi's age has long been established in canon. (It's been in the wiki since August 2009, where everyone could see it.) We shouldn't be retroactively changing canon unless it's essential for some reason.

The idea was always that Pelnepi should be a long-established presence in Negav's history - a policy that the city's rulers attempted long ago, and which essentially failed (since most tomthumbs had little interest in putting themselves under watch), but which remains nonetheless.

If all of a sudden we change that to bring it in line with more recent ideas about Negav that are being discussed, that would change much of the nature of Pelnepi. It's not supposed to be a "We were asked to move in there when we were younger" place. It's a "Our ancestors were asked to move in there long ago, but didn't, and we've remained outside it for generations ever since".

As I've said, I would support some sort of half-way solution recognising that Negav and its events are somewhat older than has been said, albeit perhaps not "several centuries". The main point is that, for most people, this should genuinely be history, rather than (relatively distant) personal memory. Of course memories fade to some extent, but in this case people would remember moving into Pelnepi when it was newly constructed. Which is something I'd never wanted or intended.

To be honest, I'm not entirely happy about an attempt to change established canon due to it having been ignored in the first place. The idea was always that a majority of tomthumbs should view Pelnepi as "that place that's always been there and that our ancestors (grandparents, great-grandparents...) avoided, so no way are we going to live there". (Whereas for those who do live there, its permanence provides an obvious sense of security.)

I think that you are underestimating how long a century really is. Yes, the time when Pelnepi was established may be in living memory, but it's not like it'll still be a new thing. Look at World War II and more recently the Soviet Union. They both ended in living memory, yet they're still something that happened a long time ago, especially to the younger generations. It hasn't even been a century. Memories fade, new generations come. To younger tombthumbs and other tinies, Pelnepi will be a long established place. It;;ll be something like "Great-Great-Great Grandmother was asked to move in but didn't, and we've remained outside it for generations ever since."

Anyway; the argument of "long established canon" could be used for any existing idea.
Just look at giant predator feeding habits. If we went by the "long established canon" argument; then anyone trying to write a story about human sized characters in the jungle would have a really hard time trying to figure out a reliable plot, because it would be canon that giant predators were everywhere and they ate humans all the time.

For a more recent example; look at the average height of giant predators. That's something that's been established for a long time and has been referenced in many places in many works, yet it was still changed.
I don't see why we should be retroactively changing canon when it's a relatively minor thing like this. The predator height change meant that a lot of bios and other things needed to be updated. Will this need for a massive be the case for Pelnepi? As far as I know, it's not. This is a minor edit in terms of changes that have needed to be made to other things.

Anime-Junkie wrote:

I'm not seeing a reason to change the whole of Negav timeline just to fit in one idea. If there is one, I'd like to know. As it stands, I don't see why Pelnepi needs to be centuries old, rather than one century old. Making it one century old doesn't seem to have too much of an impact on it. A century is still a long time. Memories fade.

Well this has nothing to do with Pelnepi actually. It's been a while that I thought that the name "Negav" should appear a bit sooner in the timeline. After all the settlement has been here for a while, standing against Sineria and such.

Karbo wrote:

Anime-Junkie wrote:

I'm not seeing a reason to change the whole of Negav timeline just to fit in one idea. If there is one, I'd like to know. As it stands, I don't see why Pelnepi needs to be centuries old, rather than one century old. Making it one century old doesn't seem to have too much of an impact on it. A century is still a long time. Memories fade.

Well this has nothing to do with Pelnepi actually. It's been a while that I thought that the name "Negav" should appear a bit sooner in the timeline. After all the settlement has been here for a while, standing against Sineria and such.

Well yes, and the current timeline does have it in existence during the time of Sineria - but as a neko settlement and not a large city yet.

People are just saying that the timeline should be manipulated so that events such as the Great Destruction and the creation of Pelnepi take place longer ago, to take into account the immortality factor. However, I think that a little more than a century already takes that into account.

Historical events are not made more or less meaningful by tacking on a few hundred years, or putting them out of the memory of a few generations. The immortality thing means that there will always be someone who remembers anyways. But the way that human and mass human memory works in regards to History, it would still seem distant. (Especially if the original population of Pelnepi was smaller than today and grew with new generations.) And even if the majority of tinies were born just a little bit after its founding, that still puts it out of living memory for them. Only the tinies who are over 100 years old would have it in living memory and even then it would be a very distant memory.

History can change and pass in a short period of time. The real factor for how we remember something is how well it was documented and what form the documentation took.