Re: Sprucing up the Western Calendar

From: bryan_thx <bethexton_at_-gjncRsFJ_Vke_NzTEDefHfcofDH8waK0JSrxtur9-7TyEc6BoqvvL-ZuNOb4p4-bm>
Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2012 21:21:23 -0000


Taking Jeff's comments into account (that westerners probably got the five season calendar from the Theyalans), then I can imagine a sequence something like:

Westerners had a mix of very week calendars (based on the agricultural cycle, for example), and a heritage of 'glasses' of time. The problem with the latter being that a glass doesn't correspond to a modern day (or divisor/multiple of it), and the different groups that claim to have tracked time this way don't agree on the current count of glasses.

The god learners find the entirely useful and functional calendar that is in use wherever lightbringer influence is known. It probably varies some from place to place, with local gods/spirits having some of the day or week names, but the spirit of it is the same.

The god learners take this useful calendar, but make it more generic (take out the names of pagan gods and spirits, use only general runes). This is the basic calendar as we players are familiar with it.

This version re-spreads through Theyalan lands, as it makes communication that much easier. Many peoples still use local names for days, weeks, or seasons, but all are at least familiar with the generic version of the names.

This 'new' calendar also gets spread by the god learners in western lands. However it is spread more by merchants and sages than the god learners themselves, and goes by some name that does not overly identify it with the god learners, so it doesn't disappear after their downfall.

After the god learners disapear, in the west the calendar starts getting 'localized' in many places. People layer on their own associations and names, as well as splicing in names derived from their indigenous calendars. But nobody messes with the actual cycle of weeks and seasons, because it actually works.

Meanwhile, older schools and churches who still track 'glasses' of time may have holy occasions which float around the theyalan calendar, so you have days that move around the way that Easter does on the Christian calendar. And becuase those groups disagree on the count of glasses (and maybe even on exactly how long they are), they disagree on when those holy occasions are, and call each other ignorant heretics for it, of course.

Younger movements make even more effort to 'own' the calendar, assigning their own meanings to all parts of it, to help reinforce the universality of their message (so the Loksalmi do more with it than do the Rokari, etc)


Which does lead me to one question: During the ban, did each isolated region experience the same passage of time? Coming out, do they all agree on the day, year, etc?

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