The age of the God War between Adaptus and the other members of the Guiding Hand.
That wasn't something that was on the table during the initial -iation run though, where Nova was introduced.
The 13 in IDW were just kind of powerful dudes who got mythologized later.
Neither was this, but this is part of a bigger problem. Sure, the Thirteen in IDW1 were just normal dudes who got mythologized but...you need a number of things for a factual person or event to be mythologized. You need distance. And you get distance by the passage of time and the death of people who were there. Both allow for a game of generational telephone to play out without people who were there to correct the record.
The Old Testament story of Abraham leading the Hebrews out of Mesopotamia to the Levant, for example, is likely a mythologized retelling of pastoral migrations north after the establishment of the first Mesopotamian city states. You're talking about an event that likely sits around 5,000 years ago and was codified in its accepted "mythologized" form ~3,000/2,500 years ago. That's thousands of years of "drift" to the original recounting of events. And if some old ass dude from the original events survived thousands of years he'd (assuming he had his faculties) be able to go "ok so that didn't happen, that did but not like that," etc...
IDW1 really wants to play with this "real events become mythologized" idea with the Thirteen but it all sort of falls apart. Nova Prime fought side by side with Prima, the "leader" of the Thirteen. He was Nova Major, an officer in Prima's army. Following the flight of the Thirteen he meets Alpha Trion who allows him to take the "Prime" title. Because IDW1 ended up establishing that Nova Prime's reign was in living memory not just for super old characters, but for a bunch of normal dudes (Rewind has speeches he gave that he recorded himself) that means that the "era" that immeditaly proceeded the Thirteen was a lived time for multiple characters who are still around in the setting's present. Hell, Arcee was a huge part of the Thirteen's ascendency. And Alpha Trion's still kicking around.
So it becomes increasingly hard to say that the Thirteen would have been mythologized. Not enough relative time has passed and the existence of multiple characters who remember their reign are still alive.
