Who can do this?
Owners and co-authors with rights to characters enter and remove the entries. Whoever may see the character also sees the entries; the access check runs per entry and section.
Character timeline
On a character’s detail page you record what they know, can do and experience, in world time.
What is it for?
A character changes over the course of the story: they learn something, pick up a spell, get injured or are frozen for years. To keep contradictions from slipping in, you can record such points in time on the character. They apply in world time, that is, in the timekeeping of your invented world, not by the real calendar.
The Illuminatio Engine reads these structured entries and checks them based on rules. It does not read your running text for this. Only once you enter something can the engine find a contradiction involving it. Where you enter nothing, it reports nothing.
Each section has a small form with its own “Add” button. Only that saves the entry. The travel log is the exception: Illumentis derives it from the scenes itself and only displays it.
How it works
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Open a character and choose a section such as “Knowledge”, “Abilities”, “Status effects” or “Time dilation”.
What you see afterwards: The matching small form appears.
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Fill in the form. For the point in time, you choose a scene or enter the world time by hand.
What you see afterwards: For a scene, Illumentis takes over its point in time.
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Choose the section’s “Add” button, for example “Add knowledge”.
What you see afterwards: The entry appears in the list and is saved.
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If needed, remove an entry with “Remove”.
What you see afterwards: The entry disappears from the list.
Your data
The entries belong to the character in the project. They are backed up and exported with the project. They are not tied to your account.
Limits
The engine only checks what you enter as a structured entry and does not read the running text. A character with no ability at all linked to a rule is deliberately not flagged. The travel log cannot be edited. Without an entry of your own, the engine cannot report anything.
Frequently asked questions
What does the engine report about knowledge?
A knowledge paradox, if an entry’s “Since when do they know this?” lies before the world time of the source scene. A character cannot know something since a point in time that lies before the scene in which they learn it.
What does the engine report about abilities?
A rule violation, if a scene uses a rule that the character present had not yet acquired at that point or that was suspended at that time. If the scene falls exactly on the start of the suspension, the engine reports nothing.
What are status effects and time dilation for?
A status effect such as “injured” collides with a scene that has a physical requirement for the POV character, as long as it is active. A time dilation, such as cryo-stasis, subtracts the skipped time proportionally from the calculated age.