Official Names of Months and Days

[R.L.]

Fellow players and gamemasters,

Is there any official information (e.g. sourcebooks, Rifter magazine issues) on the calendar systems and the naming of months and days used by the various nations of the Palladium world?


Thank you for your time,

R.L.

[URLeader Hobbes]

I'm not aware of any official or unofficial denotations, but given that the Church of Light and Dark is the largest religion on the planet the people of the Palladium world most likely use something akin to the Egyptian Calendar.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_calendar

It has 12 months consisting of 30 days and an additional 5 days at the end of the year which give a total of 365.

(Good story about Thoth and why the extra 5 days exist as well!)

While various emperors and kings may have a local calendar, merchants would want to have a common reference point for time. After all people are gonna be ticked if you tell someone it's only gonna take a month to sail from point A to point B and they are on one system and the capitan is on another. (IE 30 days vs 90 days)

In addition being the most stable religion and factor in the Palladium world the Church has had more then ample opportunity to make this the standard.

Hope that helps!

[Cinos]

I've seen no official listing of the names and dates, in Old Gods, there's reference that the world has largely adopted a unified system, the Timiro Royal Calendar, for their dating system. I'd figure old holdfasts of elven and dwarven city-states in isolation, or those unwilling to send envoys to a human nation (Cyclops, Nimro, Kirid Barbarians), would use their own systems.

[Glistam]

I don't know where this info came from or if it's official, but the Palladium campaign A God Rebuilt run by zyanitevp has this page on Obsidian Portal which lists the Months by their Palladium Fantasy names: https://a-god-rebuilt.obsidianportal.com/wiki_pages/palladium-calendar

[kiralon]

http://www.users.on.net/~charybdis/roya ... lendar.pdf
Wish I could remember who did this as the link I have saved for it doesn't work anymore (Mark Hall might know though)
also Prysus has done some good work on this as well
http://www.prysus.com/calendar_wolfen_tribal.htm
http://www.prysus.com/calendar_elven.htm
http://www.prysus.com/calendar_royal_timiro.htm

[R.L.]

Thank you all for this information and for the good links you have provided on such a short notice!

Until this point I have been using an abstract form of the Gregorian calendar as a basis for the calendar used in the Timiro Kingdom and have intentionally avoided naming the months instead going only by their numbers. As a detail-oriented and part-time perfectionist GM I feel that a clear calendar system would add detail of the world and through that increase immersion to the stories being shared.

Having said that I very much like the quite logical idea of URLeader Hobbes of using the Egyptian calendar to mark the passing of time especially in regions where the Church of Light (and Dark) is active. Additionally, having different concepts of time (e.g. a merchant crew on the shores of the Floenry Isles interacting with their counterparts from the ports of Bizantium) could create some interesting roleplaying opportunities.

And as Cinos said, the remote Elven and Dwarven societies might very well use their own ancient systems. Perhaps their city-based kin do the same as a way of keeping the embers of their once-great cultures alive.

Finally, with the links provided by Glistam and kiralon I find myself with fresh ideas to enrich my current Palladium campaign with.

All this proves that I should have joined this Forum a long time ago instead of yesterday

R.L.

[zyanitevp]

I also have created a different calendar, merging the official material in the zodiac mage with a heavier Light and Dark aspect.
Palladium Calendar

[Prysus]

http://www.users.on.net/~charybdis/royal_timiro_calendar.pdf
Wish I could remember who did this as the link I have saved for it doesn't work anymore (Mark Hall might know though)
also Prysus has done some good work on this as well
http://www.prysus.com/calendar_wolfen_tribal.htm
http://www.prysus.com/calendar_elven.htm
http://www.prysus.com/calendar_royal_timiro.htm

Greetings and Salutations. Haha! Didn't know anyone still had those. I don't even have a public link to them on my site any more because I wanted to rework them. I still like most of the concepts (at heart), but I think I tried to make it too different and jumped to some odd takes on things. Now that I'm more experienced, I'd like to streamline those ideas and have them fit better into canon (but got distracted over the years and never quite got around to it).

Anyways, someone already mentioned the Dragons & Gods reference. And just to give the other official notes (which I mention briefly in my Timiro version), there are some months mentioned in Northern Hinterlands, and they match up to the current calendar months.

Page 8: September and October are mentioned.
Page 9: January is mentioned (twice).
Page 10: April and June are mentioned.

The story also mentions a 6 month period (if you follow the story, it starts at the end of October and ends in April, which is 6 months same for us). Just for some official material. Hope that helps. Farewell and safe journeys to all.

[Library Ogre]

I don't think there's going to be a single calendar for the entire world... while the Church of Light and Dark might prefer the Egyptian calendar, I doubt that the Northern Religion is going to want to cede that level of cultural influence, especially in the Northern Wilderness, and those who follow the Druidic religion are likely to have their own calendar entirely. What would Dragonwright use, given the influence from Koramath, with his Celestial Mathematics skills?

And that's just religious. If a place doesn't have an official religion, they might be reluctant to choose one particular religious calendar in the favor of others.