Timeline Overview

Timeline Templates are a way to organize and run adventures (and campaigns). They're frameworks: highlighting what is important and giving you the steps but that's it. They're meant to be lightweight because they're meant to change and adapt as the adventure goes on.
Timelines are built, updated, and maintained outside the session. They're an organizational tool.

When to Create Timelines

Timelines can be created as part of a campaign/adventure pitch but you'll also create (and destroy) them during the campaign, either due to some flash of inspiration or because of the players' actions.

If you want to see/follow along with an example, you can find one here.

Creating Timelines

Going into things, it's important to remember that you don't need to have everything fleshed out perfectly. As stated earlier, your Timelines will change and adapt so don't be afraid to get moving with an unfinished Timeline.
Below are the things you'll need to eventually flesh out. Note that you can flesh them out in any order: feel free to jump around, going back to things you defined previously and changing to better suite your growing vision.
Be specific where you can. The Key Figures, Locations, Stakes, and Doom should all be specific things in the game world that you can point to. Being specific can help inspire and answer questions.
Be concise. Because things will change, you don't want to get too bogged down. Try to keep to 1 or 2 sentences.

Doom

The Doom is the stakes: what is going to happen if the players don't stop the Timeline. It is what happens when all the Steps have been completed.
You can classify Dooms into the following categories. Pick one and then nail down the specifics of what it'll look like in the world:

Oppression

The strong rule the weak; the vocal mob overcomes the few; enslavement and usurpation

Decay

Sickness, disease, plague; moral, spiritual, and/or social decay; poverty

Ruination

Destruction of ancient things, the leveling of new; apocalypses, great and small

So, your Timeline might involve a goblin clan. Selecting Oppression might result in "The Black Tongue Gang wants to subjugate the stronger Dread Rotters" while selecting Ruination might result in "The Black Tongue Gang wants to level the nearby town of Schtra".
Note that you can have Timelines with a good Doom but, typically, that won't be the case.

Theme

The Theme is a broad description of the type of danger. This gives you a flavor but also some broad actions that you can take that will fit that theme and help generate ideas.
Pick one of the following Themes and then check out their Default Action & Actions. Note that there are also sub-Themes that help give additional flavor. These sub-Themes also determine the Default Action.

Organization

Deluded

Default Action: Do what they see is 'good'

Criminal

Default Action: Seize via deceit

Religious

Default Action: Smite the heretic

Governmental

Default Action: Reinforce the status quo

Conspiratorial

Default Action: Infest from within

Outsider

Divine

Default Action: Convert the heathen

Devil

Default Action: Corrupt a soul

Chaotic

Default Action: Reveal the underlying chaos

Lawful

Default Action: Subjugate deviation

Weird

Undeath Incarnate

Default Action: Seek out true immortality

Elemental

Default Action: Tear down divisions

Corrupt Sourcerer

Default Action: Seek greater power

Curse

Default Action: Move towards being broken

Dragon

Default Action: Hoard wealth

Dark Artifact

Default Action: Move towards a worthy wielder

Mob

Barbarians

Default Action: Drive their enemies before them

Pests

Default Action: Multiple & Consume

Undead

Default Action: Spread

Rebels

Default Action: Destroy icon of the enemy

Unearthly Place

Profane

Default Action: Corrupt the weak

Vortex

Default Action: Draw in the weak-willed

Gate

Default Action: Vomit evil

Haunted

Default Action: Drive the unhelpful away

Place of Power

Default Action: Lure the power-hungry

So, a goblin tribe could be a Mob of Pests but you might actually have the real theme be Profane, Unearthly Place - the grave of a cannibalistic priest - which is corrupting the goblins, empowering them so that they can go out and capture slaves and bring them to resting place and forcibly consuming them. The goblins aren't even aware of what's going on: they're simply the unknowning lackeys of the priest's spirit.

Actions, Default & Otherwise

Actions are what your threat is going to do to accomplish the Steps laid out in the next section. Some Steps may take multiple Actions - some may only take a single step.
But, most important, Actions are how you communicate to the players - in world - that something is afoot because they should have a tangible effect on the world.
If you're not sure what Action to take, take the Default Action.

Steps

Steps are what make up the Timeline. They're what the threat needs to do to fulfil the Doom. Steps follow a logical order, generally progressing form bad to worse. You can have as many as you'd like - the more you have, the more time the playesr will have to react. You can default to 3 - 5.
So, our Doom is "The Black Tongue Gang wants to level the nearby town of Schtra". What do they need to do to get there?
They'll first need to become more powerful then they'll need to cut the town off from reinforcements and supplies then they'll need to actually assault the town.
Remember to keep each step to a single sentence because these will change.

Key Locations

List out the locations that might be applicable to this Timeline. Don't worry; it won't be comprehensive and will probably change but this initally list will give you a good idea about where to focus your time and attention.

Key Figures

As with locations, list out the NPCs & Factions that might be applicable to this Timeline. Again, don't worry; it won't be comprehensive and will probably change but this initally list will give you a good idea about where to focus your time and attention.

Name & Description

If you haven't done so, give your Timeline a name and a small Description that will help remind you of what it's about. This is particularly helpful if you're running multiple Timelines, with some fading into the background only to be resurrected later on.

Open Questions

Ask yourself 1 - 3 questions about things related to the Timeline that you're interested in. These questions should related to changes in people (PCs and NPCs), places, factions, and/or events. A good question is one that, when answered, results in the world changing.
These are questions that should be answered through the progression of the Timeline: if you already have the answers, they're bad questions. They should be things you genuinely want to know but are, as of yet, unresolved.
So, for our goblin Timeline, we might ask:

What townsfolk will die during the course of the adventure?

What will the townsfolk do in response?

Resolving a Timeline

A Timeline is resolved if 1) its Doom comes to pass or 2) if the Doom no longer becomes achievable.
So, if the goblins destroy the village or if the players are able to crush the goblins in such a way that they no longer have a chance of finishing the next step, the Timeline is resolved.
Simply stopping a Step from being achievable might result in the Timeline resolving but, more likely than not, it will probably mean that the Steps will need to change and the Timeline can continue on.
So, if these are our steps:

The goblins become more powerful by subjugating the Dread Rotters

The goblins cut the town off from reinforcements and supplies by attacking caravans from the castle of Nenscho

The goblins need to actually assault the town.

Let's suppose that the players actually wipe out the Dread Rotters before they can be successfully subjugated. In this case, you have 3 options: the Timeline is resolved, the goblins seek out another tribe to subjugate, or the goblins fall back on their default action a Mob of Pests and kick their mating into high gear.
For the third option, they probably need more food so you can start them raiding caravans sooner, but focusing on food and then, once they've gotten their numbers up (in a few months), they escalate and start attacking to completely wipe out the caravans.

The Doom is Stopped

But you can always have the Timeline resolving with the Doom being stopped before it comes to pass. In this case, the Timeline is resolved and that's it: the NPCs, locations, and anything else can be later recycled for other Timelines but the characters have won! Lets them celebrate!

The Doom Comes to Pass

If the Doom comes to pass, you have two choices: escalate or close out.
Closing out a Timeline just means that the Timeline is done: the NPCs, locations, and anything else can be recycled but the threat, essentially, ends. The bandit king, after getting his revenge on the village that betrayed him, retires to a quiet life of contemplation. The war is over and both sides start to deal with the aftermath of the violence.
Escalating the Timeline means that the Timeline becomes more serious: it moves to the next Doom, which is going to have greater impact on the campaign world. The bandit, king, after getting his revenge, finds it doesn't satisfy him and so he aims to raze the local barony. The war is over but both sides start up a shadow war, each trying to find and perform a ritual to summon a titan to level the other side.

Scope

Most of the time, the base scope of Timelines should be the level at which the characters can influence - either directly or indirectly. So, if the characters are 1st level, the scope should be local; if they're 10th level, it should be regional, etc.
But that's not always the case: if you're using a Timeline to track the arch of a campaign, that scope is probably going to be massive, even from the get go. In those cases, the steps of the campaign Timeline are the Timelines of the next step down in scope.
This is a good way to reflect the rule of thumb that, the larger the scope, the slower Timelines tend to go.
So, you've built a Timeline for the campaign that involves a cult raising an ancient lich to godhood. This has the following steps:

1. Gain the blood of lost royalty
2. Steal the spear that killed the lich
3. Gather the pieces and the faithful
4. Sacrifice the faithful to rebirth the White Prince

So, the "Gain the Blood of Lost Royalty" might be its own Timeline that might look like:

1. Track down the Baron of Al's bastard's daughter
2. Kidnap her and bring her to the Yew Caves
3. Extract her blood to perserve it
4. Sell her to slavers
5. Travel to Nenyo to bring the blood to the main cult cell

At this point, you've brought it down to the level that this could kick off a campaign, with the characters getting caught up in the cult's search for the daughter. Perhaps the characters already know her, unwittingly, and suddenly, she disappears and they set off to look for her.
Remember that you don't need to prep more than one step ahead but, more specifically, you don't need to prep more than one step ahead at the scope the players are at. So, you only need to prep 1.1 Track down the Baron of Al's bastard daughter: you don't need to prep step 1.2 or step 2 at the campaign scope.

Multi-Timeline Adventures

Once you get your feet under you, you can actually run mutliple Timelines at the same time. These can be strongly interlocking (the Lich, the Rivals, and the local Baron are all chasing after the same artifact) or they can be loosely interlocking (all the Timelines involve, pass through, and/or effect a local inn). Or they could be completely independent.
Additionally, you can make a single Step a larger Timeline to create whole campaigns.

Faction Game vs Timeline Templates

So, you have two tools provided for you to help you make adventures and campaigns: Faction Game & Timeline Templates. When should you use one or the other?
Well, you can use both. The Faction Game provides a more organic and slowly-paced change. It has the huge benefit of suprising you with how things resolve. Timelines, on the other hand, tend to have each Step really make an impact so they're more in your face. Additionally, they have a defined end point and will only be stopped via player intervention, which gives them a chance to be Big Damn Heroes.
So, you can use both to create a living world that slow changes but also has periods of high adventure with big changes. As such, both will be provided throughout the Welgryf Sagas.