Available Free Last reviewed: 24 Oct 2026
The timeline orders scenes by world time; sandbox branches try out variants of a chapter.
The timeline orders your scenes by world time instead of narrative order. It helps with flashbacks, parallel threads and time jumps. Three views are available: “List”, “World-time axis” with colored markers per POV character, and “Narrative order”, which shows how much world time passes between the chapters.
You set the world time of a scene in a dialog, optionally as a time span and with a travel exception, such as instant travel. A travel assistant suggests a point in time from the travel time since a character’s previous scene. Many check types of the Illuminatio Engine work with this information.
You also create sandbox branches here: a branch copies the current canon state of a chapter into a separate area. There you try out a variant without changing the canon, and later you merge it or discard it.
Open “Continuity” and choose “Timeline”.
What you see afterwards: The timeline shows the scenes with a world time set. Without them, it shows “No scene has a world time set yet.”
Switch between “List”, “World-time axis” and “Narrative order”.
What you see afterwards: The scenes appear in the chosen view.
For a scene, choose “Edit world time”, set the “World time point” and save.
What you see afterwards: The scene sits at its new place on the timeline.
Under “Sandbox branches (“what if”)”, choose “New branch”, enter name, book, chapter and “From world time”, and choose “Create”.
What you see afterwards: The branch appears with the status “Experimental”.
For the branch, choose “Edit” and later “Merge into canon” or “Discard”.
What you see afterwards: On merging, the branch replaces the chapter content after confirmation; on discarding, the content is kept.
Creating and merging a branch requires write access to the chapter concerned; if a co-author is restricted to certain books, this applies only to those. Owners and co-authors can discard branches project-wide. Everyone with access to the project sees the list of branches.
The branch stores a copy of the chapter with the point in time from which it diverges. Merging overwrites the chapter content; afterwards the engine checks the project again in the background. A discarded branch stays readable but can no longer be edited.
Scenes without a world time are missing from the timeline. If the canon has changed since the branch was created, Illumentis names the chapters concerned and only overwrites after “Overwrite anyway”. Other open branches of the same chapter count as “Obsolete” after the merge. A branch clones one chapter, not several.
Nothing. The branch editor points out that changes do not flow into the canon automatically. Only “Merge into canon” overwrites the chapter.
Another branch of the same chapter was merged into the canon and has overtaken it. The old branch can then no longer be merged.
The scene was reached by instant travel. The Illuminatio Engine then does not check the otherwise usual plausibility of distance and travel speed for this scene.
Either the character has no earlier scene, or the two locations share no map and are not connected through a chain of maps. The assistant reports both with a note.
