Felaryan Calendar

Archmage_Bael wrote:

I feel like the only mature person here is XionGaTaosenai and Karbo.

Wow thanks for putting me under the bus dude just for having an opposing opinion...

Bael also saids wrote:

-We should put together a list of what we agree on, and the remaining components to vote on, see which we like best so we can finalize the idea. Hopefully Karbo can put in his two cents as well, as that would definitely help finish a calendar. ^^

Not a bad idea actually, i'm fine with this =)

If I may, I'd like to have a crack at justifying my tree idea a little. If this isn't good enough to convince anyone, then I'll drop it and move on over to the food crops camp.

First, as for why they'd need that kind of steady supply of materials, well, think about how huge the Elven Empire was. IIRC, it spanned from somewhere just north of the Fairy Kingdom, all the way across the northen half of the mapped continent, and ending at the eastern coastline. Now, let's assume the trees that make the best bow wood weren't able to grow simply wherever they're planted. Perhaps they were only able to grow properly in specific kinds of areas. Thus, it would be up to the farms in those few specific areas to supply the ENTIRE empire with bows of the finest quality. And before anyone asks "why wouldn't they just use lower-quality wood?", let's remember what kind of people elves were/are - very proud. I doubt, unless it came right down to brass tacks, that they'd settle for anything less than the best. And that's assuming the elves would be the only ones using these bows. It's entirely possible that some of them could end up stocked in shops for people of other races to buy, too.

Another point I'd like to make is that lastability of their bows isn't limited to simply the quality of the craftsmanship. Those bows wouldn't have only been used for archery contests, but also for hunting, and for defense from predators of both the feral and sapient variety. Any time the life of an archer is lost - and we've established that loss of life is incredibly frequent in Felarya - it's pretty likely that archer's bow will be lost, too.

And while we're at it, why assume that bows and arrows would be the only things being crafted with this wood? Supposing the points I've made don't justify having that kind of steady influx of material, and there would be a surpus of it, why wouldn't they make a ton of other stuff with it? Bowls, plates, cutlery, toys, fishing rods, training swords, bo staves, magic staves, stilts, ladders, etc etc. I mean, if the wood is that high quality, what would be the harm in harvesting as much of it as possible?

Okay, that's all I have. Is anyone at least on the fence about it?

Bluehorizon wrote:

Archmage_Bael wrote:

I feel like the only mature person here is XionGaTaosenai and Karbo.

Wow thanks for putting me under the bus dude just for having an opposing opinion...

Sorry I'm just irritated at all the sarcasm and the name calling. You having an opposing view has no relevance toward making a disruptive post.

DarkOne wrote:

I am not a Moderator?

Ah you're right. Not sure why I put that. Anyway, your title is not important.

Nyaha wrote:

If I may, I'd like to have a crack at justifying my tree idea a little.

Its nice that you can justify it and make it a valid reason, but in the end (at least to me at this point) its still a valid reason next to any other valid reason. I don't want to get caught up in a debate about who's idea is more justifiably important, as I feel like that would side track us way too much. We just need an opinion or consensus on what is a good enough plant to use for the basis of the calendar.

So here goes I'm going to attempt to put together a list:

1) We have the idea of a calendar using plant/crop cycles to mark months (personally I think seasons would be more accurate, as plants dont grow that quickly, generally speaking).

2) 12 based system, 12 'months' with 4 cycles of 6 days each

3) Mirror day

4) The calendar has developed slowly over time.

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I feel like I'm missing something.

Basically we're stuck on the plant right? I suggest a tree which produces fruit. As I stated earlier, you can have it in growth seasons, each season having four stages, or "months" with each month organized into four groups of 6 days.

Personally I'm not sure how a tree who's wood is harvested for bows would be any indication of a month or season.

Archmage_Bael wrote:

Sorry I'm just irritated at all the sarcasm and the name calling. You having an opposing view has no relevance toward making a disruptive post.

Well if you actually read it, it was kind of on point with the post itself I just looked at a different aspect and fought for it, Am I not allowed to do that, is that not really relevant when it has to do with the topic itself and in the end has been somewhat corrected by talking with someone, man you really need to be more observant with peoples post and look at them carefully, like I am to yours.

Archmage_bael list:

In that sense, we'll either have to find a fruit in the wiki that is common place around the continent or make one up that seems farily reasonable, but giving the vanishing lands thing and the different eco systems of each region (not scientific, it's just pointed out fictionally). It could be very adaptable with the ley lines of the magic floating around in felarya which means you'll get the same plant but it comes in many forms depending on where it's at.

Nyaha's proposal:

I'm on the fence of it, on one had it actually sounds pretty good logically, and pretty unique, but on the other hand most the people want (for what ever reason) for a harvest calendar because it's more accessible and relatable, if you could combine it with that or something similar then i would be all for it.

Personally, I think that fruits and nuts should be the main food source. It probably sounds cliché, but a harvest of fruits and nuts fits an elven empire better than nondescript crops of wheat and legumes.

Shady Knight wrote:

Personally, I think that fruits and nuts should be the main food source.  It probably sounds cliché, but a harvest of fruits and nuts fits an elven empire better than nondescript crops of wheat and legumes.

That's my stance as well. No need to be fancy, for the basic calendar this is (speak like yoda, I do), and it CAN give us a semblance of seasons.

Unless people are skimming over my post segment about growth cycles.

People keep misunderstanding what I mean by a monthly harvest. The plants don't take a month to grow, they take an entire year. But without seasons, you don't have to plant all of the plants at the same time; you can plant the seed at any time and get a mature plant roughly one year later. So you just harvest and replant 1/12th of the plants each month to even out your harvest instead of only getting new food in one lump at the start of the year.

Trees in Felarya probably wouldn't have definite rings due to the lack of seasons, so I don't see that as a reliable dating method.

I recommend someone come up with a plant for this to make our life easier.

XionGaTaosenai wrote:

People keep misunderstanding what I mean by a monthly harvest. The plants don't take a month to grow, they take an entire year. But without seasons, you don't have to plant all of the plants at the same time; you can plant the seed at any time and get a mature plant roughly one year later. So you just harvest and replant 1/12th of the plants each month to even out your harvest instead of only getting new food in one lump at the start of the year.

Or we just go with this. Honestly, I don't think making a specific plant just for that is necessary.

Why exactly would months be "inapplicable" and what does the moon have to do with this? Did you or did you not read the posts up to this point? Each month, back in the old elven empire, represented a harvest in a particular field, so each month would have a name. The names might have just been ancient Elven for "First Harvest", "Second Harvest", "Third Harvest" and so on. If their system for grouping days survived to this day, then it only makes sense that each month would still have a name, even if said names have changed throughout the ages and across civilizations.

Also, some civilizations would probably have their own calendar, but like Blue suggested, the calendar we're focusing now is a common trade calendar used between multiple civilizations for convenience.

Eh I think Shady's just a bit anxious to get the calendar finally worked out. Guess all that's left is to write up a first draft and see what needs changing, hm?

So what exactly will be the month names? If they are simply elven for "first harvest" "second harvest" and such, that simply raises these problems,

1: The felarya translation spell will translate old elven, so the calander months names will litterally be refered to verbally as "First harvest" "second harvest" and so on, I don't know about you....but for something that has taken eight years or so to sort out...that would kinda look like it took someone all of five seconds to come up with such a unimaginative calander.

2: Even if we were to say the Elven words don't get translated, that leaves us with the problem that we haven't made an 'Ancient Elvan langauge' to refer to, unless we just make up 12 Elven words for the calender here and now.

The first problem isn't actually a problem.  The translation spell translates only SPOKEN words, it doesn't translate written words.  Therefore, it's entirely possible that humans found out about those old names through written records when they most likely compiled the history of the empire.  Furthermore, looking at the wiki, quite a few ancient words are used as proper names and aren't translated.  For example, "Tolmeshal" from Tolmeshal Forest is adapted from old Sagolian.  Two areas in the Oolonde Lakeland region are named after ancient elven words.

As for the second problem, like I said in a previous post, the names probably changed along with the language over the course of centuries.  So it doesn't necessarily have to be ancient elven adapted into a modern language.  Unless the trade calendar we're talking about still use the ancient words, which they most likely would since it would makes things less confusing for them.

And as for what the names of the months should be?  Personally, I think we should leave that up to Karbo, since he likes coming up names and we're less likely to disagree with his decisions in that regard.

(I must be honest. I cannot see the logic in using 12 different plants or however it was. repeated cycles is fine, but how would we know where to stop? why not 3 or 4, or 6? how would they know what would constitute enough time to be considered a year? It makes no sense to me - its why I said that there should be 4 month long full harvest cycles, a harvest cycle would be one whole "season" and one is too short, so it'd be 'three' since it is divisible with 12.)

Elven Calendar

Historians from Negav have struggled to find much evidence of a Calendar that has existed before the Elven Empire, if one existed at all. Reports are a mess, but largely scholars agree that the Elven Empire set the precedent for many things from their current time - one of which is how they measure time itself. Due to the complex nature of the world, the Elves have noticed how the stars shift and change, and based on their studies found the only way they could think of that is a constant enough with which to measure time was the growth cycles of plants, and thus decided to use plant harvests as their method for measurement.

As it stands now, the second month of Felarya was where the Elves started their calendar, and went on for twelve months, each a particular part of a full harvesting cycle, which used a single plant that was a staple in their Empire. Since then the calendar has been modified and changed around. Some of the original Elven names are still in the Calendar, but most have been changed or edited to make room for various events or figures to have a month named after them.

The calendar is a twelve based system, long enough to be considered a standard 'year', with each being divided up into twelve segments to make the rough equivalent of a 'month'. Each of these were divided up further into smaller time frames of 'four' with six days per quarter-month. Time that was smaller was largely based off the light of day, how close it was to night. It wasn't until many years later when another system was devised to divide time up into measurements equivalent to minutes and hours.

The months of the calendar are thus:

1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
7)

9)
10)
11)
12)

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Alright wrote a base that we can work with and edit. First draft of course, let me know what you think and anything that should be included.

As I said up top. I think just 'deciding' on twelve is still a little too arbitrary save for the 12 based calculation symbol. Having 3 cycles of 4 months to be acting growth cycles would be better in my opinion, but if nobody wants that (has anyone even been listening to this proposal? each time I've said it I don't think people responded to it at all) then I'll keep my trap shut about it.

Why not name the days of the Calendar the way we did the typical model? After Norse gods, or in this case the guardians and gods of Felarya? I mean it's only logical to assume some races will have their own names for calendars right? For example to Inu's the scent is more important than the sound. Likely describing an Inu calendar would be quite difficult in written speech. To Nekos likely it's less a method of telling time than predicting when the stars will align in favor of a good hunt or vice versa which days are cursed. Such as the day The Great Diaster occured being a sorta of "Friday the 13th" or "9-11". To fairies I imagine a Calendar is just a bit of paper on which you mix up the days for amusement since they are so carefree and olbivious. Harpies? Probably named for the favorable winds. Now aside from the multitude of races what about the cultures? Likely Othmite Calendar is has the days named after Saints of the Sun or what have you. Wheras your Minacalan Priesthood is more insterested in lucky numbers and thus doesn't look favorably on others seeing them as 'unlucky'. XD To Minacalan disciple in fact the whole calendar could be a minefield of 'good lotto ticket days' and 'karma minefields'

Ah just my two Skevols.

The problem with that is that it makes coming with a more or less universal trade calendar impossible.  Could you imagine if we had to list the name of every single day of the week for every single civilization?  That would take forever, not to mention, harder to follow.  Sure, the names change depending on the language here on Earth, but do you, an English-speaking person, absolutely must know how the days are called in Asian countries?  I think not. So why not make it easier for people and just focus on one for the time being. The rest can be mentioned as trivia, but for now, we best focus on the more universal one first.

Also, why would harpies ever have a calendar?  They're just birds, there's little if any evidence that they ever had an actual civilization like everyone else you listed, just loosely organized flocks.  The purpose of a calendar is to organize days and months.  Why would you want to organize days an months?  Because you have a workforce who needs to keep track of progress through time and be able to reliably set their own schedules.  Now what would a bunch of birds who just fly wherever they want to go and do whatever they want to do, mostly hunt, need a calendar for?

If we come up with a civilization we can figure out its relevance with the calendar later. That's not really very important right now. Though I am getting tired of this back and forth. I've typed up a sample and nobody seemed to see that or even comment on it. I'm going to have the calendar work the way I feel like it in my post. If Karbo doesn't like it then he'll chose one of the other types he does like instead. Its not a big deal. It can theoretically work any way.

The problem with commenting on something that is totally fine is that "it's good" isn't much of a meaningful statement for a forum post. You've got my thumbs up for your write-up on the Elven calendar above, at least.

Well at least people acknowledge that it exists now. When people continued debating what plants are best it just threw me off as if nobody even noticed. Haha.

On a side note, I changed a phrase 'set the precedent for many things in their current time' to 'set the precedent for many things FROM their current time' in order to make the Elven Empire's effects feel a lot more long lasting.

I should also include a portion revolving around how the calendar has changed. Some known month names from long ago, (we could just come up with a rudimentary counting system for 1-10 in elven, then come up with names to replace it for current months).