I apologize for the brevity, but I'm posting from a phone and it's a pain in the patience.
I think the killer winter is great, and the timeline is quite fine as well. Just a question - are we going to briefly summarize these years in one post, or maybe pick a moment for each year and pause to make a few posts so that characters can "update" themselves? I would be for the latter case - it wouldn't slow us down too much, if we avoid too much interaction and make the posts more self-reflective than seeking subplots, but it would give the chance to show occasional character development in addition to overall changes. Maybe just a glimpse of a couple main characters per year.
I suppose on the other hand, if you want your character to start being 5 years older already, that's not exactly a perfect plan. But even so, it would probably be nice to fex hear Athanar's goodbye speech, or Stigend's/Garstan's thoughts at having completed the Mead Hall.
So what do you think?