#I specified about the counterpart-timeline-swap thing bc I didn't want to sound like the geochemists in that one xkcd

[tmae3114]

*skids into the room and slams a folder down on the table*

SINCE I AM HAVING TIMELINE THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS AGAIN, I WANNA ELABORATE ON A THING FROM MY DIAGRAM OF THE MQ/DF/RESET SITUATION BECAUSE IT IS BOUNCING AROUND MY HEAD AND I WANNA INFODUMP ABOUT THIS SPECIFIC ELEMENT OF THIS ABSOLUTE MESS OF A TIMELINE SITUATION (AFFECTIONATE)

SO

I specified in my diagram that “before the Reset is inaccessible by standard means of time travel”. I wanna elaborate on that because I have EXAMPLES. I hope you’re ready to learn precisely how we know that for certain.

1. Clarification of Terms

Okay, so, to be entirely and fully clear here, when I say “before the Reset is inaccessible”, I am referring to intra-timeline time travel. Meaning, from within a Dragonfable timeline, it is impossible to access the Mechquest timeline which became that Dragonfable.

I say “a” because the Artix Entertainment multiverse is A Mess and we know that there are a ton of different versions of all of these timelines. Not only does The Inn At The Edge Of Time tell as much in-game in Dragonfable but AdventureQuestWorlds (relevant here bc we are discussing multiverse) is canonically a result of DF, AQ, and MQ timelines getting merged into one and we know that those timelines all still exist outwith AQW’s existence. For every version of the DF timeline that exists, there is a MQ that preceded it.

However, for sake of clarity, I’ll be using “the” to refer to the DF timeline for the rest of this post, because even if these factors almost certainly apply to all the timelines in terms of mechanics, I am specifically working with The Actual Timeline We Have Experienced (i.e. canon Dragonfable)

The effects of the Reset are, to use a term that @cyraen-ae reminded me exists, retrocausal. If you were to, say, travel back in time five thousand and one years from A Hero Is Born, you would not find yourself in MQ a year before the Reset happened, you would find yourself five thousand and one years in the past of DF. Thus, “before the Reset is inaccessible via intra-timeline time travel in a DF timeline”. (That is too many uses of time related terms right next to each other. I’m going to just say “intra-timeline travel” after this.)

Hopefully that’s clear because I am now moving on to THE EXAMPLES.

We have three specific quests which I will be pointing to today. They are Yulgar’s First Date, Frostval 2014 - A Tale of Two Timelines, and CyseRedux.

2. Intra-Timeline Travel Cannot Access Pre-Reset

We know this because we see it happen.

Hello, Yulgar’s First Date, thank you so much for serving as proof here, I love you for giving us a solid canon example of how this works.

So, during the events of Mechquest, the hero is fully grown. Whether they’re in their late teens, early twenties, or older than that, it doesn’t really matter. The signficant detail is that they are clearly and visibly Not A Child. The hero had a childhood in the MQ timeline and was Not A Child at the time of the Reset. They are Not A Child in the fixed point in time. The hero enters the DF timeline as Not A Child and, if we looked at this purely linearly, was never a child within DF.

But! As mentioned earlier, the Reset was retrocausal. The hero did have a childhood that, as far as they or anyone else can know, they experienced in the DF timeline.

In Yulgar’s First Date, Cysero gives the hero some Time Cake to allow them to travel twenty years back in time. This also equips the Kid armour. While it’s possible that this is a random side effect (it is Cysero, after all), Occam’s Razor would suggest that this is just the age the hero was twenty years ago.

And since we know that the Reset took five thousand years to complete and only ended at the start of Book One, we know that this specific point in time is one in which the Reset would have been on-going, if it were accessible.

So! Intra-timeline travel cannot access the Reset or reality as it existed before it.

3. Wait, But Then, What About The Times MQ Did Show Up Via Time Stuff?

I’M GLAD YOU ASKED. THE ANSWER IS SHENANIGANS.

To be specific, the two instances in which MQ related stuff shows up from Time Stuff are instances of non-standard time travel. One is explicitly inter-timeline (multiple timelines are involved) and the other is...... Cysero Did It (and is also inter-timeline. They are both inter-timeline. Though the inter-timelineness of the latter may not be relevant.)

So, A Tale of Two Timelines. The Artix of an AQW timeline (we do not know if he was canon AQW) got a wand off of a Time Travel Fairy and promptly started trying to bring different timelines together so all the heroes could hang out at Frostval. He also destabilised a bunch of timelines because he was merging them together. During these timeline merges, a bunch of MQ stuff showed up, including various characters having elements of their MQ appearances for periods of time.

However, as established, this was a case of timelines being merged together and, also as established, there is more than one MQ timeline.

Therefore, this was not the before-the-Reset of the Dragonfable timeline being brought forth but rather a separate MQ timeline being brought in.

And that brings us to CyseRedux, in which Sys-Zero shows up in person and shares a bunch of nods with Cysero. This would suggest that they are aware that they are the same person. However, this quest also features Blatant Breaking Of AE Multiversal Rules and Four Other Cyseros, so there’s A Lot Going On.

So. Here’s the thing. CyseRedux features DF Cysero, AQ Cysero, AQW Cysero, Sys-Zero, and Actual Real Life Staff Cysero In A Background Cameo.

It is explicit AE Multiverse Lore that there cannot be more than one instance of a person in a timeline at a time. If you jump to another timeline, your counterpart gets yanked to your timeline until you return. This comes up in A Tale of Two Timelines, for a DF source, but also comes up in the AQW Mirror World plotlines.

CyseRedux is a case of Cysero blatantly and flagrantly breaking this rule. Because Cysero gets to break any and all rules of reality as he wishes and it’s great.

Which means that we have two options here. The AQ and AQW Cyseros are from other, separate timelines. So it would be logical that the Sys-Zero who shows up is also from a separate MQ timeline. However, he could be from the DF timeline’s pre-Reset MQ, without it presenting a problem to the impossibility of intra-timeline travel across the Reset, because Cysero is already breaking the rules.

4. Conclusion

I just infodumped to you for over a thousand words about timeline mechanics in a bunch of indie flash-based video games and it is currently past four in the morning in my timezone. I have Special Interest Brain so badly.