Felaryan Calendar

This may have been brought up in the past, but what do you think should the average calendar be like in Negav and Nekomura? What I mean by that is what do they consider a month and a year? Do you think a year should be 12 months of roughly 30 or so days like in real life, or should it be a little different? Like same number of months, but greater or lesser number of days? Should a year include more or less than 12 months? More importantly, what names should those months have.

Note that I'm only sticking with Negav and Nekomura for now because it's best that we stick with one thing at a time.

Your sarcasm is duly noted, Dark. Now piss off if you've got nothing of value to add.

I...wow. Shady its important to try and form a basic calendar, and I know Dark's reply was sarcastic, but that sounded hostile.

As for advice? Initially the months of the year were named in latin I think for "month one, month two, month three" then they got switched around as famous people got named months after them. "September" was initially "month seven" but Julius and Augustus Caesar both got months named after them. December I believe was also supposed to be month ten. If I remember correctly, initially the calendar had ten months and two names were added, and a couple others were changed.

We could employ a similar idea, come up with a basic calendar then brainstorm ways it could have changed.

For example King Kerume could have a month named after him.

That's a good idea.  I can imagine most of the months would be named after some ancient Sagolian words since present-day Negav seems to absolutely love Sagolian history.  I suppose the challenge now would be to come up with said words. I can imagine one month being named either "Keruma" or just "Kerum", and it being either the first month of the year or replacing the month he got crowned king.

*Cracks knuckles* alright time to make Dark hate me forever.

Our weeks, months and years are determined by meteorological events: weeks have 7 days because there were 7 celestial bodies (Sun, Moon, and 5 other planets up to Saturn), the moon's phases decided the months, and the passage of seasons decided the years. However, Felarya lacks seasons as far as we know, and its sky changes periodically, giving it no consistent meteorology on which to base a calendar. If Felarya changes it's sky at known intervals and cycles through possible skies in a predictable way, this could form the basis of a calendar, with the time it takes for Felarya to switch skies being a "month" and the time it takes for Felarya to cycle through all of its skies and loop back around being a "year". However, I'm going to assume that this is not the case. Still, any advanced society benefits greatly from the ability to group and organize large numbers of days, so something analogous to a year (and likely month) should be found in Felaryan societies. Without any consistent event to base such an organization on though, the units used are likely to be arbitrarily chosen, which could lead to a scenario unseen on Earth where two cities don't agree on how long a "year" is!

The easiest way to sidestep this problem is to say that there is an established "Felaryan standard" unit system that almost all Felaryan states agree upon, similar to our own metric system; this system would include a standardized calendar. But what could justify a Felaryan standard in-story? A standard unit system that carries across states does not just happen by coincidence. There would have to be one world power that dominated Felaryan trade and politics to the point where all other societies would find it prudent to switch over and use the stronger state's units. This power does not have to exist in the present day: states are not likely to change their units without outside pressure, so if a state adopts this "standard" and then the state that created it dissolves, the inertia is already there, especially if the surviving states are still trading with other states who also use the standard. It dawned on me that the Elven Empire that preceded Ur-Sagol could fill this niche. Ur-Sagol itself was originally an Elven province, the Dridders were a vassal state to the Elves for a long period of time, and when you consider that the Elven Empire stretched as far as the Oloonde Lakeland you're talking about an empire that controlled almost all of the territory between the Fairy Kingdom and the Topazial Sea. So the elves provide a plausible mechanism via which a Felaryan standard unit system could have arisen.

If the Elven calendar is not based on any broader phenomenon and is simply a way to organize days, then it stand to reason that the Elven calendar would have months of identical length that fit evenly into a year, with everything being easily divisible. Twelves are really good at being easily divisible, as the numbers we can subitize and thus work with easily (2, 3, and 4) all fit evenly into it. My suggestion is that the Elven year has 12 months, with each month being 24 days. If the use a dozenal system for counting, intervals of 3, 4, and 6 days would be very easy to organize, removing the necessity for dividing a month into even smaller "weeks". The names of the "months" would probably originate from the Elven language, this being a calendar invented by the Elves.

If we're running with the idea that the Elven units became the standard for most native Felaryan states, deviations from the Elven system would mainly come from outside powers foreign to Felarya, the two biggest ones familiar to us being the Delurans and the Vishmitals. This puts Negav in a curious position, since the Vishmitals have such a presence there but Negav is still historically a native Felaryan state. Negav probably uses mainly Vishmital units for things like distance, mass, or temperature, and maybe even for dividing up the day into analogues to hours and minutes. The Vishmitals were a major player in the city's reconstruction, and Negav is eager to distance itself from the rest of Felarya in any way it can. The calendar though? Definitely still Elven. The Vishmitals, being so connected to their old empire, would use a calendar designed so that a year on the calendar would line up with a year on the Vishmital homeworld. The main benefit for this kind of calendar would be that it would be consistent across multiple planets which may have different local year lengths, which is great for a multi-planet empire but useless for your average Negavian, and the Vishmital calendar would be a hot mess to navigate, while the Elven calendar (built simply to organize days rather than adhere to any larger phenomenon) is much simpler, not to mention all of the history books would be using Elven years, which as mentioned above are probably not even the same length as Vishmital years! The conversions would be nightmarish! So while Negav uses Vishmital units in most other facets of life, the calendar is still Elven. Nekomura would be the same way since it is a vassal state of Negav.

Wow. That... actually pretty much covers all the bases. You sneak this in its own little article in the wiki and it would fit perfectly. Plus, your dozenal system is much more flexible than I could have possibly come up with, since you could tack on an extra week of 6 days to make each month 30 days so it's closer to our own, and it would hardly shake things up. I guess if that's the system we're going for, all that's really missing is coming up with names for the months.

Okay, who are you guys, and what have you done with the real forum members? XD

I wasn't expecting this, in the past threads on this topic collasped under their own overwrought weights by debates about the ever changing felarya sky and trying up to come up with tedious and overly convoluted and process as to how Felaryans measure time (unit to unit) that even if it was finalized, would have only resulted in an calander too alien for the audience to relate to (and thus defeat it's purpose as a guide)
Hence my sarcastic comment, since I thought it was going to be another round of that nonsense again, I thought you guys were just going to faff about for another couple months before letting the thread die after failing to commit to anything.

I guess I can show a more keen and cooperative attitude if the idea is to take a more simpler idea (basicly take earth's calander as a rough guide and then apply it to information we already know about felarya, so it's easy to understand but not a dull imitation.)

Would you think this calander have seasons though? or are we sticking to the idea that Felarya doesn't have them?

DarkOne wrote:

Okay, who are you guys, and what have you done with the real forum members? XD

I wasn't expecting this, in the past threads on this topic collasped under their own overwrought weights by debates about the ever changing felarya sky and trying up to come up with tedious and overly convoluted and process as to how Felaryans measure time (unit to unit) that even if it was finalized, would have only resulted in an calander too alien for the audience to relate to (and thus defeat it's purpose as a guide)
Hence my sarcastic comment, since I thought it was going to be another round of that nonsence again, I thought you guys were just going to faff about for another couple months before letting the thread die after failing to commit to anything.

I guess I can show a more keen and cooperative attitude if the idea is to take a more simpler idea (basicly take earth's calander as a rough guide and then apply it to information we already know about felarya, so it's easy to understand but not a dull imitation.)

Would you think this calander have seasons though? or are we sticking to the idea that Felarya doesn't have them?

True that's what it has come up into the last three times I remember the argument happening. The problem happens because everyone wants it to happen their own little way and not anybody else's. As to why that is, is not important.

Anyway, anything easily divisible could work, theoretically, like 15s, 10s, hell, even 9s. 12s are fine though, but having 12 months is really close to our own. Who knows why it'd work that way? Probably doesn't matter.

As for seasons it still remains, the calendar would not be relying on the astrological changes and seasonal patterns of felarya in order to base its schedule around. The elves could have formulated a complex algorithm that figured out Felarya's sky changes either 24 or 30 days each month, which is why they went off of a 12-based system in the first place, as it would make things a lot easier. Since they didn't have any real way to calculate how many sky cycles would be a year (as the sky wouldn't loop), and since it each month would be different and random for each cycle (the exception being the length of each cycle) could just have them say "Alright we'll keep it 12 months to make it easier, the algorithm states that..."

Remember the Mayan calendar was calculated, too, and then it reset. The elves probably have the same thing, coming up with that algorithm to let them plan out the next eventual shift (or 'loop' or whatever) thousands of years later. Of course this is all just theory still, but it works.

For month names, we could have them all initially elven places or names, kings, locations, etc. Oolonde could be one, of course. We'd probably want to come up with a common suffix or prefix for these months to relate them to.

Here's some candidates:

Empress Eteni- for unifying the elves and having legendary wisdom and charisma stands noted.
Restalen        - A city raized by dridders, started the outcry for response to predators. Later becomes Elven Capitol
Temolian       - Goddess of the elves
(maybe something to mark the dridders and elves overthrowing the old dridder kingdom and becoming a vassal state, as I understand it was prosperous for them?)
Modanthe       - Servant of Eteni, pivotol in many circumstances including the dridder civil war.
Emperor Tibon-Son of Eteni, leads to prosperous and expansionist times.
(names of locations, Oolonde, Akaptor, Milkadis, Jadong, etc)

As one of the people who created a thread in an attempt to tackle this idea before, I have two things to say...

DarkOne wrote:

I thought it was going to be another round of that nonsence again, I thought you guys were just going to faff about for another couple months before letting the thread die after failing to commit to anything.

Ouch.

Archmage Bael wrote:

. The problem happens because everyone wants it to happen their own little way and not anybody else's. As to why that is, is not important.

And ouch. XD

Anyway, if I'm going to attempt to contribute to this conversation in any way, I think I'm going to need to play Devil's advocate here, or at the very least try to get some deeper understanding of Xion's proposed system. From what it sounds like, it's a calendar system that doesn't rely on day length or any other celestial patterns as Felarya's aren't consistent, and instead uses an arbitrary assortment of easily divisible numbers to count days? I mean, that sounds good in text, but I'm having trouble imagining it play out physically in-universe. Is it literally just meant to count days without actually trying to quantify time (ie. A month is always X amount of time, a year is always Y amount of time)? If so, then I feel like I get it. If not, then I need a better explanation of that aspect. In addition, I'm not sure I understand the point of the numbers being easily divisible.

Okay, I'm gonna attempt to break it down.

First, we're going under the assumption that a complete day and night cycle in Felarya lasts about 24 hours like it does on Earth just to keep things easy to understand.

Second, we're going with the assumption that Felarya borrows its skies in a set pattern, which it never breaks, and that it changes which sky it borrows after a period of a month, which on Felarya lasts either 24 or 30 days, whichever we end up deciding.  In other words, let's say during their January, the sky is marked by a sun that's relatively far from usual during the day, and a normal moon with a small red moon next to it at night.  Then a month passes and it's their February.  Their February has a sun that's a little closer than January's sun, and small three blue moons at night.  Ten more months later, each with their own skies, it goes back to using January's sky.  That is what is considered a year on Felarya.  Is that easier to follow?

Third, the idea of weeks being broken up in six days is really for convenience so we don't have to come up with which months have 30 days, which ones have 31, and which is the poor sap that gets stuck with only 28.

On that note, the position of the sun and the different moons probably give Felarya some semblance of seasons, just not as extreme as Earth's winter and summer. One season is probably only a little colder than usual while another is only a bit hotter.

The assumptions I was going for when writing the above were that A: Felaryan sky changes are more or less random, with no way to predict how long a sky will last or which sky is coming up next and B: even through sky changes, the length of a Felaryan day (normally) remains constant (it doesn't necessarily have to be the same length as our days on Earth, but the length doesn't change from day to day). Either one of those assumptions could be wrong, though.

I had not though of plant growth being a way to mark time. That's an interesting idea, and the nice thing is that since plant growth is somewhat variable that still leaves some flexibility when making a calendar that we don't have here on earth. Like, if the plant you harvest technically takes 291 days to reach it's best harvest, you don't lose anything significant by doing the harvest 3 days early so you can use a more convenient 288 day year.

Shady Knight wrote:

Second, we're going with the assumption that Felarya borrows its skies in a set pattern, which it never breaks, and that it changes which sky it borrows after a period of a month, which on Felarya lasts either 24 or 30 days, whichever we end up deciding.  In other words, let's say during their January, the sky is marked by a sun that's relatively far from usual during the day, and a normal moon with a small red moon next to it at night.  Then a month passes and it's their February.  Their February has a sun that's a little closer than January's sun, and small three blue moons at night.  Ten more months later, each with their own skies, it goes back to using January's sky.  That is what is considered a year on Felarya.  Is that easier to follow?

What about the Silvery Night? I was under the impression that it only lasted a single night, and it's also a rare and unpredictable occurrence, both of which throw a spanner in the idea that sky changes are consistent enough to base a calendar off of.

Nyaha wrote:

Is it literally just meant to count days without actually trying to quantify time (ie. A month is always X amount of time, a year is always Y amount of time)? If so, then I feel like I get it. If not, then I need a better explanation of that aspect. In addition, I'm not sure I understand the point of the numbers being easily divisible.

It basically just counts days, though I'm assuming that days stay the same length regardless of the current sky, unless plot happens (Hi French Snack). The purpose of it being easily divisible is so that it can be divided easily. Like, Months can be organized into 3/4/6 day chunks, 3/4 month periods fit easily into a year. Making years and months easy to divide make them more useful for breaking into smaller pieces of time, which makes organization easier.

I was devising a calender on predeciting nights of the silvery moon, and call it moon falling and moon rising, though it assumes felarya well only steal sky from set worlds on a rotation period

http://www.felarya.com/wiki/index.php?title=Physics#The_Felaryan_sky

Looking at that page, it doesn't say anything specific about the length of the day/night cycle. And yet, I still remember someone telling me that, to the contrary of what your system assumes, they do not always equal out to roughly the same amount of time. But since I can't remember who that was or what authority that information was based on, we might have to get Karbo to join in on this discussion, if for no other reason than to confirm that.

Thank you for the more detailed explanations, though. I agree with Ilceren, though, in that I think the calendar should be rooted in something more tangible, like crop harvesting. Not only do we not have to concern ourselves with the sky at all if we go with that kind of system, but it allows for an interesting dynamic of days not being limited to a day/night cycle, if it's inconsistent enough. Though, having inconsistent day/night cycles would also take away from the simplicity you were aiming for...but right now, it could be either or, so no need to get locked into one way of thinking just yet.

While I'm on the subject, is there any kind of plant we know of that Elves like(d) to cultivate? If not, can we invent one to serve a few purposes, including having a calendar system invented for it? Or would such a thing require multiple crops in order to be viable?

A day/night cycle comes from the rotation of a planet itself and not any direct properties of it's sun, so the length of Felarya's day would depend on how fast Felarya "spins", which wouldn't necessarily depend on what the current sky is.

All the same, count me in for the "crop-based year" idea too. In fact, I could see a way that crop harvesting could account for a "month" as well. If Felarya has no seasons, then there's no reason to restrict planting and harvesting to certain times of the year, and spreading it out over the course of a year would, if it were a food crop, allow for a more consistent year-round food supply. So what if the average farm of this crop is split up into 12 parts? Each "month", you harvest and replant one of the 12 plots, so that you get a new influx of food every month instead of only one big harvest every year. A year is how much time passes between planting a field and harvesting it, and a month is how much time passes between the harvest of one field and the harvest of the next.

XionGaTaosenai wrote:

A day/night cycle comes from the rotation of a planet itself and not any direct properties of it's sun, so the length of Felarya's day would depend on how fast Felarya "spins", which wouldn't necessarily depend on what the current sky is.

Read up on that page I linked. There's a lot more about how Felarya works on a physical level, and one of the points is that Felarya itself doesn't exist in space like planets do, but rather in its own dimensional pocket. Therefore it doesn't "spin", and the day/night cycle is entirely dependent on what sky it is currently borrowing. At least, that's my understanding of it, It's always possible I misread something.

XionGaTaosenai wrote:

All the same, count me in for the "crop-based year" idea too. In fact, I could see a way that crop harvesting could account for a "month" as well. If Felarya has no seasons, then there's no reason to restrict planting and harvesting to certain times of the year, and spreading it out over the course of a year would, if it were a food crop, allow for a more consistent year-round food supply. So what if the average farm of this crop is split up into 12 parts? Each "month", you harvest and replant one of the 12 plots, so that you get a new influx of food every month instead of only one big harvest every year. A year is how much time passes between planting a field and harvesting it, and a month is how much time passes between the harvest of one field and the harvest of the next.

Oooh! Great thinking! I can't add any more to that - I really think that makes a lot of sense for all the reasons you explained.

Could always make a plant or something that has changes based on a "season"

Possible some weird mage created system that monitors fluctuations in the magic of felarya....or go all out multivariate theory and it monitors the flexes in the neighboring universes, measure there effect on felarya its self,thus creating a cubical calendar where the seasons are measured by universal drift on a 6 dimensional axis

Nyaha wrote:

http://www.felarya.com/wiki/index.php?title=Physics#The_Felaryan_sky

Looking at that page, it doesn't say anything specific about the length of the day/night cycle. And yet, I still remember someone telling me that, to the contrary of what your system assumes, they do not always equal out to roughly the same amount of time. But since I can't remember who that was or what authority that information was based on, we might have to get Karbo to join in on this discussion, if for no other reason than to confirm that.

Anime-Junkie I think.

Nyaha wrote:

one of the points is that Felarya itself doesn't exist in space like planets do, but rather in its own dimensional pocket. Therefore it doesn't "spin"

Hence why I put "spin" in quotes: it's not really that Felarya itself spins, but the connection behaves in such a way that it simulates a spin, in that the connection alternates facing towards and away from the star in intervals. Regardless, skies don't create day cycles by themselves, so whatever gives Felarya a day and a night has to be something that Felarya is doing internally.

Let's sum up what we came up so far so we don't get lost.

For the sake of simplicity, a complete day and night cycle in Felarya is roughly the same as it is on Earth, with some variations depending on which sky it's currently connected to.  The first calendars have their roots in the old Elven Empire, who coincided each month with the growth of trees and/or crops.  To make it easy to organize and group together, they divided their planting fields into twelve plots, with each month coinciding with which plot gets harvested and replanted, and a full cycle where the first field is harvested anew is what they refer to as a year.  Incidentally, a month is divided into four or five weeks of six days each, whichever we decide going with.  Is that right?

Personally, I'm more of the camp of the months coinciding with crop harvest because then it gives a theme after which each month can be named: the name of the primary crop that's being harvested. Tree growth, I'd buy it if we were talking about your typical hidden elf village, but this is an empire we're talking about, so to me, it makes more sense that they'd have dedicated most, if not the entire creation of their calendar after something as important as food harvests.

I personally don't like the base twelve month/year relationship. If we use harvest rotations as a year, then you're going to have a bunch of different lengths of years based on which crop you use as a measuring stick, and if we go for 24 or 30 day months, then we've got crop cycles at either 288 or 360 days, which seems rather long, compared to Earthen crops which grow in less than half that time. Unless there was a single crop considered significantly more important than the rest, there wouldn't really be any reason to use one crop's cycle over another, and each crop would give you a different "month." I'd expect the times to vary even more on Felarya; since there aren't seasons, there's no reason plants need to have all their flowers bloom at once (and, in fact, that's impractical, since then they'd have to be on the same cycle as nearby plants, but there's nothing exterior to enforce that cycle). Crops on Felarya would likely produce continually instead of once, at least for plants that are capable of doing so (fruit and grains, mostly; roots would be in cycles just due to growing times). This doesn't just apply to crops; a complete lack of seasons means that basically all long-term natural cycles are out the window, and a lot of them need to be year-round, or close to, to effectively work. I'd say it would make more sense to simply use the day, as the only reliable natural cycle, as the only unit, and have a "year" be an even multiple of days, similar to how the metric system works. While I'm partial to base 2, I think the most sensible base to use for a calendar system would be 10, for a really basic reason: humanoids have ten fingers. There's a reason base ten systems are as common as they are in history.

The crop could have spans that are "plant this, plant that, plant these, harvest that, harvest these, prep that, harvest that, prep this, , prep these

Gamma wrote:

I think the most sensible base to use for a calendar system would be 10, for a really basic reason: humanoids have ten fingers. There's a reason base ten systems are as common as they are in history.

Base 12 is so much better than base 10 fight me irl

Also, to clarify, I never intended the farm to be 12 plots of different crops, for the same reason Gamma mentioned: different crops would have different growth cycles. The intent was that one "staple crop" (probably whatever their primary grain is) would be the basis for the calendar, or maybe 2-3 crops that happen to take around the same time to grow. Dividing it into 12 plots is to make sure that there is a more regular influx of grain rather than getting it in one big lump each year which then spoils before it can all be eaten. The fact that a year passes between planting and harvest has nothing to do with bloom cycles and more to do with that being just how long the plant takes to mature.