Felaryan Calendar

Y'know i'm not so good with systems like this, but I honestly from a grand point of view am saying that if you guys are going to develope a system, It should probably go in the negav section since at least for trading, it'll have the biggest difference. Also though there's a lot of variables of what kind of people you'll meet to where this calender won't meet everyone's understanding. Instead of taking it so literally why not just keep it like a fairy tale and the system on the instance of what you are viewing and writing. Like i said this would fit more so in negav and the towns/communities around it but don't try to make it fit for everyone. The plants thing is the best way to start.

It depends what Karbo likes, really. I think he's a little busy right now though. Base twelve is more relatable, but base ten is easier to calculate. I think though if its going to be based off of harvest cycles, there should be a number that was generally agreed on as time went on in the elven empire.

So we're using a plant then? What sort of specifications should we agree on?

Archmage_Bael wrote:

So we're using a plant then? What sort of specifications should we agree on?

Well first off, since everyone is pretty set on 'the not based on seasons thing' (for some reason), then that more or less means that categorization and order of months has no relation to any environmental charactersations we could adhere corresponding plant characteristics to. (Personally I think it would have been much simpler and functionable just to do that, but whatever)

So basicly there is no system here, it's random. Just pick several plants from the wiki (or make some up) and throw them in any order you like. It shoulden't really matter really as long as it sounds good.

The only real question I can think of is what kind of plants, would they be food plants or do we want to be more whimisical and make them ingredient type plants? Really depends on the cultural purpose of the calander itself. (Do they put more emphasis on the pleasures of food in their culture enougth to make a calander based on it? or Do they value potions and magic more?)

I think we're getting sidetracked here. It doesn't matter what exactly were the crops the old elven empire used to grow and how long it took each and every single one of them to grow. Those last details don't add anything other than needless flavor text. So far, I still think Xion's suggestion of the elven empire categorizing months into harvest across different fields is the best interpretation we have. It's just specific enough and fulfills an important need without getting hung up on pointless details, like we seem to be doing now.

Shady Knight wrote:

Those last details don't add anything other than needless flavor text.

Personally I think the calender itself is "flavour text." I mean, what possible purpose will this calander have outside spicing up prose and dialogue?

Also, Flavour text isn't pointless, it's basicly a layman's word for 'Characteration'

But...again....whatever.

Shady Knight wrote:

So far, I still think Xion's suggestion of the elven empire categorizing months into harvest across different fields is the best interpretation we have

Okie dokie then! So the months are named after fields? Based on the map or completely made up from scratch?

See, this is where we start getting into subjective territory. Things you see as pointless details are things other people see as interesting tidbits of information that make the idea feel more fleshed out. If they really were as needless as you claim, nobody would have brought them up in the first place. And besides, I'm not sure how much farther the discussion about the base idea can go without Karbo's input at this point, so we might as well talk about other details while we wait. Now then...

http://www.felarya.com/wiki/index.php?title=Elves#Social_Behavior

Looking at this page, I can personally surmise two things that might lead us to an answer on exactly what crop they would base a calendar around: they share a close relationship with nature, and they love them some archery. Ilceren made an offhand comment about the fact that he used trees instead of food plants, that way they could use their 'crops' to obtain quality materials for bow and arrow-crafting, and after looking at the info we have on our elves, I actually think that's a really good idea, and I think it fits into the system we've come up with here.

Now one might ask, "there's trees all over the place, though. Why would elves go to the trouble of planting trees in a periodic manner and then form a calendar around the planting and harvesting schedule?" Well, that's where their affinity with nature comes into play. As the environmentalists they are so clearly described as, it would occur to them that if they simply go around cutting down trees for more bows and arrows, they'll do damage to the land. Therefore, they come up with the idea of rearing their own trees for the express purpose of weapon crafting, and over time refine this process to the point where they've cultivated a tree that takes a much shorter time to mature than previously used trees and gives high quality crafting wood, but it's rather on the small side, maybe only about 1.5 times the height of the average elf and about that much times the thickness. After some trial and error, they invent a scheduling system that involves cultivating 12 trees at the same time, but with their plantings spread out in a manner that gives them a fairly consistent supply of materials, planting a new tree after each harvest. All so they can keep in line with two of the most important facets of their culture.

Also the fact that they're growing trees would justify the point Gamma brought up about most plants' cycles not taking anywhere near that long.

I hope that makes as much sense to everyone reading as it does to me. ^^; I kind of came up with some of the details on the fly.

Dark, if you're really going to post nothing but half-hearted sarcasm all to get a quick laugh and satisfy your pitiful little ego, then do the smart and don't post at all, capice?

Anyway, I agree that at this point, we pretty much need Karbo's input on this thing. Also, Nyaha, that explanation of yours, I can shorten it in a far more logical manners: Some types of wood, like yew, are objectively better suited for bow making than others, so they just stuck to growing that for that one specific purpose. That's what we did and look how well it served us. It's really got nothing with having an affinity with nature making some or some other nonsense.

Would the elves really be making so many bows that having a steady monthly supply is important though? Bows and arrows don't rot as easily as food would (I would hope) so that's the kind of thing you can just stock up, and going 40 or so days without new materials isn't exactly damning. The way I see it, a crop that would get this 12 plot split treatment would be one that A: Is constantly needed for survival, B: Is used up at a steady rate, and C: can't be stockpiled for long periods of time without spoiling, necessitating the frequent influx.

The idea I had was 2 different plants, roughly analogous to a grain and a legume, that both take around the same time to mature and grow well when planted together in the shade. Each plot contains both plants in it, which are harvested and planted at the same time (under a canopy of trees with irritant chemicals similar to poison oak; fallen leaves from the trees above help fertilize the plants, and the thick canopy protects the farmers from predators, who would have to reach through the leaves and be left with a nasty rash). As a bonus, since it's a staple food crop and not anything truly Elf-specific, it's likely that Negav also harvests the same plants, giving even more motive for Negavians to use the same calendar.

Ok let's tackle this. It's an interesting subject and it needs to be solved once and for all indeed ^^  
Let's keep the discussion friendly though please.

First, personally I like the idea of different calendars having been used through history. I think it makes sense that how we measure time in Negav today was not exactly how Sagolians or elves from the empire used to do it. After all, a lot of time elapsed since then and these civilizations came to abrupt ends, meaning a lot of their culture was lost.

Many of you came with interesting proposals here. Using the sky looks to be the more natural and closest to our world but in Felarya that might not work so well...
it's another whole subject of its own, but there is no real marked seasons in Felarya. I can imagine Felarya using some colder skies at regular interval but that wouldn't be that marked and the weather would remain mostly relatively temperate.
Also having sky A ( January ) being re-used after 12 months in a cycle..  it doesn't work like that ^^;  Felarya is more random than that.

Personally I'm really attracted by the idea of crops .
Now if we use that we could go on two options : either using 12 different type of plants getting ready for harvest one after another. The main advantage I see in that is it's a poetic solution as it would allow the months to be named after the plants. It's rather charming ^^  But indeed it might lacks a bit in precision.

Or we could use a single plant, like Thywolf suggested, with a rapid growing cycle of an exact given amount of time, whose harvest would signal the new month regardless of anything else. A little convenient yes but not shockingly so I think.
If we go this route, the name of the months could be based on famous Sagolians people like Shady suggested, even animals or anything really. Personally I feel finding names is one of the most fun part so it shouldn't be a problem :p

What do you think ?

I agree we should keep things simple and going for 12 months a year in an earthen-like setup though, it's just so much easier to understand.

I also like Ilceren's idea of having a mirror day happening every years and being used as a landmark of sort. Especially since it's an important date that Negavians wouldn't like to miss.
We could do the same with the migration of the Bloodclaw apes in the jungle of perils actually ( http://www.felarya.com/wiki/index.php?title=Fauna10#Bloodclaw_Ape ). They could recur on a regular basis ( perhaps even be the landmark of an ancient and much longer calendar no longer used since, as for Negavians, getting to know the occurrence of the mirror day would be infinitely more important than the passage of the apes in a region most of people would never even think approaching )

Karbo wrote:

First, personally I like the idea of different calendars having been used through history. I think it makes sense that how we measure time in Negav today was not exactly how Sagolians or elves from the empire used to do it. After all, a lot of time elapsed since then and these civilizations came to abrupt ends, meaning a lot of their culture was lost.

They came to abrupt ends, but didn't exactly vanish without a trace. Ur-Sagol would have been using the Elven calendar back when it was Minkala and an Elven province, and I don't see much of a reason that would change save for possibly changing the names of the months to things that suited their fancy more. I think there's justifiable reason it could go either way.

A consideration if every culture with a calendar has a different calendar, though, is that with no grand pattern dictating the length of things like months and years, calendars would differ in far more ways than just which month the new year starts on! How many months are in a year and even the length of a year could change drastically from calendar to calendar. And we're not just talking about "through history" either: In Felarya today, right now, I can count at least ten "states" that would be using potentially wildly different calendars: Negav, the Fairy Kingdom, the Oloonde Lakeland Elves (basically a remnant of the Elven Empire), the Mantoids (they have a tournament every 10 years in their homeland. You can't have something happen every 10 years if you don't have years), the Dridders (If we accept Asuroth's The Growing Dridder story, Dridders have a tournament like the mantoids do, so same story. Their calendar probably comes from the one the Dridder Empire used back when that was still a thing), the Rosic Nekos, Kellerm, the Topazial island states (Including Chiota and Izatem City, and probably more if there's enough trade going on that pirates like Becky can make a living. Each island could have a different calendar, which is why I say at least ten), Ryzelm'oire, and Iracal island (Iracal probably has a different calendar even if everyone else shares one since they're so isolated, but is largely inconsequential for the same reason). Which of these calendars is the one used in the wiki's chronology page? Crisis is 60 years old according to which state's calendar? Realistically, it's probably Negav's, but Crisis herself would be more familiar with Fairy Kingdom years, being raised by fairies. So if you asked Crisis how old she was, she'd probably give a different answer. This is why I had suggested that the Elves were so much of a power that everyone uses the Elven Calendar (except for Iracal and, now that I think about it, probably Ryzelm'oire too), so that we wouldn't have to wrestle with these questions.

Shady Knight wrote:

Dark, if you're really going to post nothing but half-hearted sarcasm all to get a quick laugh and satisfy your pitiful little ego, then do the smart and don't post at all, capice?

You really don't understand me at all, do you?

It's nothing to do with ego, and if there's any laughing then it would be a coping mechanism.

It's apathy and frustration

I am honestly trying to get above it, but sometimes you guys don't make it easy.

Karbo wrote:

I also like Ilceren's idea of having a mirror day happening every years and being used as a landmark of sort. Especially since it's an important date that Negavians wouldn't like to miss.

Heh, I think that goes without saying.
the Felarya Chronology also can give us days to put on the calander, 'The fall of Sineria' 'The Founding of Negav' and 'The great destruction' are a few examples, though I guess that would make the calander vary depending on the culture woulden't it? Nekomura for example might not see certain Negav historical events as important and vice versa.

Make that eleven, Xion. The shamshis of Sunfall Thicket are pretty much described as isolationists and it's strongly implied they have little if any contact with the rest of the Fairy Kingdom, meaning they pretty much have their own history and probably their own unit of time, especially considering how they live in a haunted forest in perpetual natural night. But that's besides the point.

Anyway, once again, I have to agree with Xion. Having multiple different calendars sound like what should happen in theory, in practice it's only going to make things needlessly complicated. Yes, it doesn't make sense that everyone, even from regions so detached from one another, all use the same units of time, but it's one of those necessary evils we have to accept to keep everything functional. In any case, you all know I'm on team crops, so I won't repeat myself there.

Shady Knight wrote:

Anyway, once again, I have to agree with Xion. Having multiple different calendars sound like what should happen in theory, in practice it's only going to make things needlessly complicated. Yes, it doesn't make sense that everyone, even from regions so detached from one another, all use the same units of time, but it's one of those necessary evils we have to accept to keep everything functional. In any case, you all know I'm on team crops, so I won't repeat myself there.

Okay that isn't acceptable. That's just really lazy to info dumping to satisfy anyone so you don't go way in over your head. It's not even esoteric, and the evil definitely isn't neccessary when your basically calling the whole community dumb (Not you specifically shady but anybody who's agreeing with this). For stuff like this when it comes to dealing with cultural adversity in the same reason all you need to do is bring up what calenders are the most accessible and widely used, then put it as up on a list. Again this doesn't keep everything functional to the theme, just go the hard route and made a couple of known systems one at a time and craftily then incorporate.

I wouldn't say we're calling anyone dumb. We're not saying you can't keep track of it all, we're simply assuming that you don't want to. And we could be wrong.

Very well, blue boy, why don't you give it a try?  Come up with a calendar with its own number of months, number of day per months, names for each months, and origin.  Now, do that again ten more times, using different origins, number of months, days per month, and names for each month, and make it different enough so that each of them feel different enough from one another.  Then, make it all easy to understand in one single article so that people will remember it all in just five minutes of reading said article.

Think that's easy enough for you to undertake?

First off, kill the five minutes, I Very well expressed that this was going to be a work in progress. Second, I'm not even going to go for ten I'm would rather just go with a few different systems so that people can draw from that. They're lazy enough not wanting to, then they can just choose a system and be done with that. If they want to be experimental they can look at them all then use them simultaneously or better yet create one for their own little fiction in story writing. I'm going with the approach to make people think not ease everyone in. Also I don't even need to make all the days and stuff, I can just say that it exist as it's own system in a summary as i can with another like most good fictional series do that dare go into that stuff to better develop the story to enlighten the world building.

The issue isn't even wanting to not keep track of it all. My issue is your limiting the horizon on what people can think of to view different systems. Like I've been saying. Keep this as an optional overlook as well as the others to encourage innovation. Then build a couple overtime so that you get a couple of examples of diversity that you can draw from. I mean Ironically Gamma and Xio brought up and mentioned that vishmital would use their own calendar then you would have the whole region using the old elf calendar that would most likely fit around past negav accommodation of time, season and trade. From what I just said I get a better feeling of frontierism and cultural/societal indifference then just having one system made to encompass everything give a few example of others since that's honestly how the setting is. That's all I ask and i'll be thinking up some when I go down on my list of things to do.

Bluehorizon wrote:

First off, kill the five minutes, I Very well expressed that this was going to be a work in progress.

I don't think he was saying "make this in five minutes", but rather that the finished product should allow someone to spend five minutes reading it once or twice and get a pretty good grasp on it. We don't want to make a prospective writer have to spend five hours trying to wrap their head around the details of the calendar system and then have to constantly second guess "should this character be talking in Negav weeks or Fairy weeks or Dridder weeks?" every time they want a character to mention a week passing. If we don't take user-friendliness into account when building our ideas, then no one will use our ideas. That's not assuming everyone is stupid, that's just assuming that most writers don't play Dwarf Fortress.

That being said, I think Iracal Island and the Shamshis should have different calendars regardless of what we decide for Felarya at large, since they're incredibly isolated from the rest of Felarya. Ryzelm'oire probably falls into that category too (plus Chlaenas are weird anyway). And then you have the Deluran and Vishmital calendars. But each of these calendars have very small spheres of influence, so they're easy to ignore, unlike what would be the case if, say, the Fairy Kingdom and Negav had different calendars to account for.

XionGaTaosenai wrote:

I don't think he was saying "make this in five minutes", but rather that the finished product should allow someone to spend five minutes reading it once or twice and get a pretty good grasp on it. We don't want to make a prospective writer have to spend five hours trying to wrap their head around the details of the calendar system and then have to constantly second guess "should this character be talking in Negav weeks or Fairy weeks or Dridder weeks?" every time they want a character to mention a week passing. If we don't take user-friendliness into account when building our ideas, then no one will use our ideas. That's not assuming everyone is stupid, that's just assuming that most writers don't play Dwarf Fortress.

The only problem I have with what you are saying is just as much as you don't want people to be lost because of tl;dr I don't want people think there's just one option. As one that likes to do this and as a writer you can't assume i like everything just to fit together because it does. My suggestion is being user friendly because it gives them more options to look at to bring more than one dimension to a character. To not really counter but a little opposition to what you said. I'd rather a writer gets an idea for one of his or her characters to be like "Well I usually use this system but you guys telling me this other one is a little awkward." Then what you just said. People will use ideas if they have more options to play with and those are written out well. Every simple fictional universe I read with a Diversity check like felarya does at least mentioned that "Yes this is the main system that everyone goes by and is central to the plot but there's other calender systems that some people won't get, but they try to adjust." That's the way you should be looking at it, Which is why I said, only a few then they can make their own if they wish or what ever. Also don't assume when it comes to creativity, that's not something to rely on as decision maker as it's only an assumption.

Alright, so me, Blue, and Hat were going over a lot of this in the chat, and we found the best way to visualize the concept was similar to "trade languages", where states that trade with each other agree on a common language to make things easier for everyone. Felarya's translation spell removes the need for a trade "language" per se, but there would still be a use for trade "units", similar to our metric system and agreed upon for similar reasons. The Elven calendar would be used as a "trade calendar", allowing different groups to communicate more easily.

Blue's argument is that each state would hold on to their own internal calendar, and save the trade calendar for interacting with outside groups. My argument is that even if the above was true, it would be a moot point. In the untamed regions that make up the vast majority of Felarya, you won't know for sure what culture the person you're talking to came from, so if the subject of long-term planning (where a calendar would be needed) ever came up, you'd just use the recognized trade calendar for simplicity's sake. So if internal calendars do exist, we could just give them a quick hand-wave and otherwise ignore them, and we only need to flesh out the trade calendar. Given how long the Elven calendar has existed, I'd say it would be plausible that some if not most of the states that used it as a trade calendar would have dropped their internal calendars by now, just for the sake of having less to memorize. But if we accept the existence of a trade calendar, then the existence or absence of internal calendars is largely irrelevant.

Also I'd like to say that I'm enjoying this discussion, and I hope everyone else is too. We're here to compare ideas and work together towards coming up with the best solution amongst them, not to argue and get mad at each other.

The ancient Dridder Empire? They probably had their own calendar. The present-day, wild dridders who hunt just like any other run-of-the-mill predator? Not a chance.

Karbo wrote:

Many of you came with interesting proposals here. Using the sky looks to be the more natural and closest to our world but in Felarya that might not work so well...
it's another whole subject of its own, but there is no real marked seasons in Felarya. I can imagine Felarya using some colder skies at regular interval but that wouldn't be that marked and the weather would remain mostly relatively temperate.
Also having sky A ( January ) being re-used after 12 months in a cycle..  it doesn't work like that ^^;  Felarya is more random than that.

First off Xion said what I would have. Even though an empire collapses, its influence still stays, and when we're talking about an empire that somehow managed to last several thousand years an influence like that is going to last a lot longer. For example, remnants of the old Roman calendar is still present in ours.

Second, We have the possibility of Mirror day, and 12 months due to a single plant's rapid crop cycles. We could possibly slow it down:
3 Cycles of crop harvesting, and each cycle is broken down into 4 additional stages until which the crop itself is ready to harvest. This still gives you your "12 months" but in a slightly different fashion. I cant imagine a plant growing that quickly, even in felarya.

As for the plant itself, it should be a plant iconic to the Elven Empire. We can just invent one. Like how every country usually has a national flower or plant. Or a national animal. That sort of thing.

Third: Yes, I agree felarya is way too random to have seasons being predictable. Maybe it could be based on a complex algorithm, but I'm not interested in mathematics enough to come up with something.

-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. ^^
...

...Fourth. Dark, can you please stop? I have to agree with Shady on this, you've done nothing but add sarcastic comments. I understand your frustration with previous attempts at a calendar, but you're irritating Shady, myself, possibly others, and its starting to get hard to ignore you. You shouldn't disrupt a thread because of it.

Shady_Knight, I don't wish to play moderator, but calling names isn't okay either.

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

Archmage_Bael wrote:

...Fourth. Dark, can you please stop? I have to agree with Shady on this, you've done nothing but add sarcastic comments.

That's not true, I replied to the plant idea (asking whenever it was based on food or potion based)

I then responded to the idea of it not being based on plant names, but planting areas of land, asking whenever or not they would be existing places on the map or made up. Admittedly the question was slightly passive aggresive, but the question was sincere.

Then I suggested using the Felarya timeline for ideas for historical events, and then asked if the calander would be universal or would there be different ones according to culture.

These might have directly followed sarcastic comments, but comments these in themselves are not (wasn't even sarcastic at all in my reply to karbo)
You do realise that by saying "I have done nothing but add sarcastic comments" oh the while failing to acknowledge my constructive comments, you're actually sending me the message that you only pay attention to me when I am being sarcastic, Hardly a persuasive way to convince me to stop.  

I will stop though, or at least try to be more civel.

Archmage_Bael wrote:

I don't care if you're a moderator, you shouldn't disrupt a thread because of it.

I am not a Moderator?