Changin’ indeed. I hope everyone’s given the Grand Master’s recent report and fiction a once over, because they’re both doozies. Because of their doozy-ness, though, a lot of changes have been coming to the wiki. The new setting has upended the timeline leading to chaos. Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling! Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes! The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria! But, the fun kind of all those things, so let’s get into it.

What year is it?

So, as you might have seen from our esteemed Darth Pravus, much like our real-life selves, our DJB characters are living in a brand new year as well. That year is, however, in the past: 34 ABY. The timeline update that was published with Pravus’s recent report has already made it’s way to the wiki in the Dark Jedi Brotherhood Timeline article so you can explore the interactive, clickable link version.

With our shift backwards along the timeline, a few things are changing on the wiki as well. The Current Year template will now calculate to the new year. This impacts most wiki users on their character pages where people have made use of the Birthyear and Age template. This template used some math with the current DJB year to calculate character ages, and the change to the current year had an impact on that. A while back, some might have noticed the deployment of the Birthyear and Age (legends) template. Thanks to (the late?) Solari and his trusty bot, this template was deployed to all character articles on the wiki. This was done so that nobody’s character age is going to be updated automatically, as the legends age template will continue doing the old math.

All of this is a fancy way of saying that when you go and update your article for the new canon, make sure to update to the new Birthyear and Age template that will make its calculations based on the new reality of 34 ABY. At some point within the next 30-60 days, all those articles using the legends ages will be tagged to reflect their legends (and therefore canonically questionable) status.

Dawn of a new era

The new setting has also affected our era system on the wiki. (This is the thing that people have used with the Eras template on their character pages.) Our old era system was based on the now defunct Legends publishing eras, and so it too needed to be replaced with our timeline update. The new eras are based on galactic and Brotherhood events:

• Pre-Republic era: The Pre-Republic era (—25,000 BBY) was the period before the formation of the Galactic Republic. It included the formation and evolution of all the species of the galaxy, the dawn of their civilizations and their first developments in space travel, and ended in approximately 25,000 BBY when the Republic was founded.
• Republic era: The Republic era takes place between 25,000 BBY (The foundation of the Republic) and 19 BBY (The fall of the Republic and declaration of the Empire).
• Imperial era: The Imperial Era takes place between 19 BBY (The declaration of the Empire) and 5 ABY (The final defeat of the Empire at the Battle of Jakku and their following surrender).
• Rise of the Brotherhood era: The Rise of the Brotherhood era takes place between 5 ABY (the fall of the Empire) and 13 ABY (The Exodus). This era also saw the founding of the Dark Jedi Brotherhood in 5 ABY.
• Exodus era: The Exodus era takes place from 13 ABY (The Exodus) until 33 ABY (The purge of the undesirables and expansion of the Brotherhood).
• New Order era: The New Order era began in 33 ABY (The purge of the undesirables and expansion of the Brotherhood). The Dark Jedi Brotherhood currently exists within this era.

These new eras are also reflected in updates to the era template for use on articles throughout the wiki. I’d suggest everyone update to the new eras (as the old ones no longer exist or have era icons) when making article updates. On a related note, all of the decade-long time periods on the wiki have also been updated as well (Thanks to the daring work of Kalon Tsucyra Entar.)

Where do we go from here?

The biggest priority for the staff and I moving forward will be sorting out articles into the new timeline and helping scrub the DJB history of now defunct canon elements. This doesn’t mean that the events will be changing or going away, but the context of them might change a bit. Things that talk about the Yuuzhan Vong will instead mention “aliens” for example. The general flavor of things will stay the same, but the larger context they fit into that is the Star Wars universe may be redefined. I’ll be working closely with Sarin, Mav, and Evant to implement these changes in a way that’s consistent with what they’re planning.

Additionally, sometime in the next 60 days we’ll be looking to start labeling old content and personal articles that still contain legends information with flaming letters noting that they’re out of date and don’t reflect the DJB currently. Existing character backgrounds that contain Legends locations and the like, however, will still be allowed. Said background will no longer be held at the level of Star Wars canon, however, and will be more like the other user created events that fill each of our character backgrounds. Our goal isn’t to force people to update who their characters are any more than is required (none of the galactic events of the last 30 years actually happened any longer, so that’s the big change) but instead to help people adapt their existing characters to the new setting.

It promises to be an eventful time for the staff (which was why I made sure to hire some reinforcements at the new year, pity them). We’ll still be handling the day to day stuff such as wiki article approvals that the entire staff can handle or patroling edits, but the new work will be layered on top of the old. Expect another update on or about the first of the month to address the work that’s being done (as well as to announce the WOTM and Featured Article!) Until they, happy wiki’ing!