Patreon Insights: Calendars in Ardent Tears

Hello Everyone! Whilst I'm very busy with the final edits to Book 1 and planning the rewrite of Book 2, I did have an idea for this Insight and I promised to not delay it too much. As for why I'm covering the various calendars of the world? Well apart from me thinking it's a neat bit of worldbuilding, there are also some peculiarities that result in there being some key difference compared to the more widely used Earth calendars.

Before I break down those differences in full, I'll cover what is the same. First off, like Earth, days on Illyria are broken up into hours, minutes, and seconds. Some cultures in the world have different ways of measuring time and partitioning the day, but for the most part, they will be the exception. Additionally, precision may vary between cultures and individuals, especially when it comes to minutes and seconds.

I also want to say that another key similarity lies in many cultures in Illyria recognising the solstices as being significant in some form or another, but I fear that might be my eurocentric/celtic pagan brain speaking. Still, it is something worth noting and I acknowledge that anytime I talk about various similarities and differences between Earth and Illyria, I might miss a lot of things that are fairly common, but outside my current sphere of knowledge.

Alas, I will not bore you all with my rambling and we will instead move on to some astronomic comparisons. A true astronomic year on Illyria is equivalent to 330.1 Earth days or 335.5 Illyrian days. The discrepancy in year lengths is due to Illyria rotating slightly faster than Earth. Furthermore, the year is shorter than an Earth year due to Illyria being closer to the sun and thus possessing a shorter orbit. Fortunately, due to the sun also being proportionally less massive, Illyria is still relatively Earthlike. 

Continuing with orbits, Rowan'el, the closest of Illyria's two moons, takes 30.5 Illyrian days to complete a single full orbit whereas Særan'el takes 45.75 Illyrian days. This results in there being eleven full orbits of Rowan'el per astronomical year.

Now, you will notice that a lot of these numbers are surprisingly neat. If you look at the same values for Earth, you'll see a lot more numbers after the decimal place. I've got both a watsonian and a doylist explanation for this. The doylist explanation is simply that it makes things a lot easier to manage. Part of me would love to go all out, but most people won't care and it doesn't add much to the story to go overboard. On the other hand, we have the watsonian explanation of "the gods did it". Basically, the Goddess, the Heart of the Sun, and Illyria actively stabilised their astronomical relationships by way of Resonance.

After orbits, we will shift to a more cultural viewpoint as we discuss calendars in a more practical sense. For the sake of brevity, I will only be covering the more widespread calendar systems, starting with the one used in Særis, Ferran, Llen Færa, and most of the Talrasian continent. 

This system, along with many others, is a lunisolar calendar that primarily tracks Rowan'el and recognises five seasons. I realise there being five seasons might seem strange to a lot of you, but there is a logic to it. Basically, my decision was informed by three factors. One, 5 is a sacred prime of the Heart of the Sun and seasons are primarily dictated by the relationship between the planet's axial tilt and the light of the sun. Two, I had eleven lunations to work with. Three, I didn't want to make a discount Gregorian calendar.

As for how I was actually able to break the year into 5 seasons? I started by looking at how we typically decide how long a month should. With Rowan'el being the lunar reference point for determining month length, I could go with 30 or 31 days. I chose 30 as it would leave me under the astronomical year instead of over at 11 months and it had more factors than 31. I then divided the month up into weeks, for which I alternated between seven and eight days per week and four total weeks. The last day of the long weeks went on to become the Day of Rest that we see referenced in the story.

Following this set up, I was left with eleven month and five free days. As I had to do something with these extra days, my attention was drawn to intercalary days or, perhaps more accurately, epagomenal days. Epagomenal days are days that days that exist with a solar calendar but are placed outside regular months. Instead of just having the five epagomenal days, however, I cannibalised the eleventh month and created five epagomenal seven day weeks. These epagomenal weeks are the weeks of seasonal transition and they are the dividing line between the five seasons.

Of course, with their being five seasons in a year, you may wonder what the seasons are called. For the sake of simplicity, I will primarily be referring to the in story as Spring, Summer, Autumn, Low Winter, and High Winter. Granted, they do have other names in world that differ significantly across cultures. 

In Llen Færa, Særis, and Ferran, the seasons are more accurately called the Seasons of Hearth, Blossoms, Growth, Harvest, and Slumber for High Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Low Winter respectively. Furthermore the calendar year in these nations starts on the Winter Solstice which occurs in the middle of the transition between Low and High Winter. This results in their being half an epagomenal week at the end of the one year and the other half at the start of the next. Additionally, when a leap year occurs every other year, the day is added to this epagomenal period.

Some nations that use this calendar system instead start their year in Spring and they opt for a naming scheme that is inspired by the stages of life with Spring being Youth and High Winter being Death.

The Ru'eni Empire has a similar system to the rest of Talras, but they instead opt for each of their ten months being 32 days instead of 30 with each week being eight days long. By extension, they're transitionary periods are only three days long instead of seven. Apart from that, however, they also differ significantly from other cultures as they start the new year on the Summer Solstice instead of the Winter Solstice or in Spring. This is due to their culture being built on the philosophy of "even if we fall, nothing we stop us from rising" as it symbolises that in the end, they will be on top.

Going back to my process for getting five seasons to work with the calendar, the Kairosi forego seasons for the most part and instead opt to for the full eleven months and the five epagomenal days. They also mark the start of their year with the anniversary of the day they started becoming Kairosi. 

The last calendar system we'll look at is the one used by the Al'Duur. Unlike the other races, the Al'duur completely ignore the two moons in their calendar, instead using the changing Solar Gifts to track time. Each year in their calendar is divided into five "seasons" which they call Dualities. Each Duality is 67 days long and can be further divided base on which of the two Gifts from that Duality is "in effect". As there are ten total pairings for Solar Gifts, the Al'duur calendar operates on two year cycle. This contrasts with the other calendars from the Lunar races which typically operate on a six year cycle that can be further divided into a pair of three year sub-cycles.

And with that, I think I'll bring this Insight to a close. I hope you all enjoyed it.