People in the world are much more general about time than people on modern-day earth. A very few of the very richest scholars have time keeping devices, similar to hour glasses, though they do not measure our “hours.” But, most people do not have such devices and many do not even know of their existence. It would seem strange to the average person that anyone wanted to be very precise about time. The world simply does not move at that sort of pace.
It takes 364 days for the world to orbit the sun. Thus, there are 91 days in each season: spring, summer, autumn, and winter. Each season is named for the patron god of that season: Corellon for spring, Pelor for summer, Sehanine for autumn, and The Raven Queen for winter. Each season begins on the day after either the solstice or the equinox. Thus, summer begins on the day after the longest day of the year, winter begins on the day after the shortest day of the year, and spring and autumn each begin on the day after the two days that have exactly the same amount of day and night.
People refer to the seasons as “times.” Thus, something that occurs in summer is said to occur in “Pelor’s time.” Because of the length of The Raven Queen’s name, people often shorten it and refer to winter as “the Queen’s time,” or, sometimes, “the Raven’s time,” but this last reference is considered crude and can also mean a time of death, so it isn’t often used.
There are ninety days in each “time.” The ninety days are divided into groups of ten, called “tendays.” So, in each “time,” there are nine “tendays.” The “tendays” are grouped into threes, referred to merely as “early, mid or middle, or late.” So, if something happened in the first thirty days of Pelor’s time, it would be said to have occurred in “early Pelor’s time.” If you want or need to be more specific, it becomes more elaborate and complicated. To specify that something occurred in the first ten days of summer, one would have to say it happened “in the first tenday of early Pelor’s time.” To specify the exact day, one could either specify the day of a tenday (“the fifth day of the first tenday of early Pelor’s time) or the day of the time (the 74th day of Pelor’s time).
Each solstice and equinox is a festival day, devoted to one of the other gods. Thus, the spring equinox is the Festival of Avandra, the summer solstice is the Festival of Moradin, the autumnal equinox is the Festival of Melora, and the winter solstice is the Festival of Ioun. Bahamut, Erathis, and Kord have neither seasons nor festivals.
The Raven Queen’s Time
(Winter)
Festival of Avandra Festival of Ioun
(Spring equinox) (Winter solstice)
Corellan’s Time Sehanine’s Time
(Spring) (Autumn)
Festival of Moradin Festival of Melora
(Summer solstice) (Autumnal equinox)
Pelor’s Time
(Summer)
Daytime is divided into seven parts: dawn (the time right before and after sunrise, when it is just barely light enough to see), morning (the first half of the time between sunrise and noon), forenoon (the second half of the time between sunrise and noon), noon (when the sun is at its highest), afternoon (the first half of the time between noon and sunset), evening (the second half of the time between noon and sunset), and dusk (the time right before and after sunset, when it is just barely light enough to see).
Nightime is divided into eight parts, starting just after dusk and ending just before dawn. The times are set by the movement of the stars, not by the sun. There are eight major constellations, each named for one of the malign deities. Each constellation appears on the horizon each night as the world turns on its axis in approximately equal intervals. The times of the night are determined by which constellation is rising at that time. So, the first constellation to rise at night is Asmodeus. Thus, the time from dusk until the second constellation appears is called “the time of Asmodeus.” In this usage, “time” has a meaning much closer to our hour, while in “the time of Corellan,” for example, the word “time” means an entire season. Thus, the eight “times” of the night are Asmodeus, Bane, Gruumsh, Lolth, Tiamat, Torog, Vecna, and Zehir, each representing approximately one-eighth of the time between dusk and dawn. (Yes, they are listed alphabetically, a small concession to the need of the players to have some order that is at least possible to remember.)
There is no constellation named after Tharizdun, because the fact of his existence is not widely known. Thus, there is no “time of Tharizdun” during the nighttime.
Years are numbered by reign of the king, so to know how far back something happened, one must know the kings and how long each reigned. For instance, Udolannan Wolfswift is the king of Lightholt. In Lightholt, something that happened in the spring of the first year of his reign would be said to have occurred “in Corellon’s time during the first year of King Wolfswift.”
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