Calendar Proposal

[MetaTerminal]

It has come to my attention recently that the timeline in the Alleyverse is a little fuzzy. For too long have we squinted into the past, wondering how long ago this or that came into occurrence. For too long have we failed to coordinate with our friends for a meeting time, and are thus unable to consume Hemalurgic or non-Hemalurgic baked items together.

No longer. For I have a proposal for a calendar: a simple calendar that charts the course of the Alleyverse, from the start of the RP to today.

The system is thus: a 360-day year, with 12 months in a year. No leap days. Each month is named after a guild, and each month has 30 days.

1. Newcagus (Newcago Court)
2. Alla (Dark Alley)
3. Cantony (Canton of Combat)
4. Liebrus (Liebrary)
5. Phantus (the Ghostbloods) Gildus (the Ghostbloods - I went with the alternate name, the Gilded Rose, since it made a better name)
6. Stinatus (Sticknaughts)
7. Tubarus (TUBA)
8. Kepery (the Keepers)
9. Sentinalia (the Sentinels)
10. Diagrama (the Diagramists)
11. Witrosa (Church of the White Rose)
12. Scholus (Scholar’s Guild)

The first solid date that cannot be altered is the reveal of TUBA’s identity - thus, this is the first day of the new calendar. The first of Newcagus, 1 ATR (after TUBA reveal) is the day TUBA was officially revealed.

Eras are either as long as their real-time duration, or longer (when taking into account timeskips). Theoretically, we could also have an era that everyone agrees ahead of time is shorter than the real-time duration.

---

Other Dates:

• Rules of Warfare created: 26th of Scholus, 1 BTR (26/12/-1)
• Calm Before The Storm begins: 13th of Newcagus, 1 ATR (13/1/1)
• SDW starts: 5th of Cantony, 1 ATR (5/3/1)
• SDW ends: 12th of Cantony, 1 ATR (12/3/1)
• 16YP ends: 12th of Cantony, 17 ATR (12/3/17)
• Ghostblood Acquisition: 1st of Liebrus, 17 ATR (1/4/17)
• Great Game begins: 1st of Sentinalia, 17 ATR (1/9/17)
• Voidus Released: 17th of Cantony, 18 ATR (17/3/18)
• One-Year Interval Ends: 17th of Cantony, 19 ATR (17/3/19)
• Church of Whiterose Attacked: 7th of Phantus, 19 ATR (7/4/19)
• A Shadowed Dawn Begins: 17th of Phantus, 19 ATR (19/3/19)
• Era 3 Ends: 18th of Phantus, 19 ATR (30/10/19)
• E3-E4 Timeskip Ends: 18th of Witrosa, 19 ATR (18/11/19)
• Into the Dark Begins: 23rd of Witrosa, 19 ATR (23/11/19)

---

I also propose that the end of each era (12th of Cantony, 17th of Cantony, 18th of Phantus, and the 26th of Scholus) be public holidays. It gives the world a sense of history and we could get some cool parties and threads out of them.

Hopefully, when people start event threads, they can note which day the thread begins, which will help to make timelines more sense.

Below are the dates of the main threads and RT  - I will update it every day.

INTO THE DARK DATE: 24th of Witrosa, 19 ATR.

City Scenes: 12th of Scholus, 19 ATR.

What do people think of this proposal?

Edited October 3, 2019 by MetaTerminal
Updating current date

[+ZincAboutIt]

I like this idea, but often times things are happening at different times. I could begin an RP that only lasts 2 hours in-universe, but goes on for 3 days irl. How would we finesse that into a comprehensive and agreed-upon timeline? By your own time reckoning, people have been in the ACE meeting for 7 days, when in reality it’s been at most a few hours.

[MetaTerminal]

6 minutes ago, ZincAboutIt said:

I like this idea, but often times things are happening at different times. I could begin an RP that only lasts 2 hours in-universe, but goes on for 3 days irl. How would we finesse that into a comprehensive and agreed-upon timeline? By your own time reckoning, people have been in the ACE meeting for 7 days, when in reality it’s been at most a few hours.

Posts can happen before the latest date - that thread is still occurring on the 5th of Gildus. But the latest date is the 13th, judging from real-time passage. And if someone makes a thread set 1 month in the future, the latest date becomes 13th of Stinatus, though it’s still 5th of Gildus in the ACE thread.

(We could also separate it into ‘latest thread’ and ‘real-time’, if that helps. Or individual threads, but that starts getting hard for me.)

Obviously, contradictions can and will still occur - but they already happened. They’re just more obvious now. And we can fiddle with things on the fly so dates make sense. But, generally, this is how people tend to treat time in the Alleyverse, so I based the calendar around that.

As for comprehensive and agreed-upon: I puport to be neither! We can maybe achieve the second.

Actually, I like that division idea. Let’s say that whenever a thread or encounter is made/occurs, unless the time is explicitly stated, the time is Real-Time/Latest Date - and we track the main plots separately.

[+ZincAboutIt]

I will admit, this is still really confusing to me, but if it's what people agree on, I will of course figure it out  

[AonEne]

I honestly don’t understand what you mean by Real-Time/Latest Date. I’m stupid, sorry.  And from my view, people use IC times a lot more often than OOC times. I think your calendar is great, the month names are awesome. But it might make more sense to just use it when referring to IC events, and have the timeline travel organically? 

[MacThorstenson]

I like the concept, but I have a few issues with it.

These are by no means an end all to the timeline, but just a few things that I would like to see put in for the final version.

First is that life began tracking time way before most of the guilds were made, so imo making the names based off of guild names doesn't make much sense unless for some reason they decided to change the dating system right before the seven day war. I feel like coming up with a little bit of history/reason for naming the months adds more depth to the history of the Alleyverse, showing that it didn't start with the guilds. Also, if ene wants to do a AV prequel thread, then having more time independant month names works better.

Second, because this planet/universe was created, I feel like the days/months/years would be neater then the 365 and 12. This world iirc wasn't made to model any specific planet, and they would design the revolutions and rotations to have common factors to make months consistent.

The third issue is a bit bigger, that basing anything in the RP off of OOC times I feel, wouldn't work. Like if there is a big thing of inactivity in a scene, suddenly the whole thing is out of whack. 

I feel like an alternate system that could be used is stating the start date of a thread/encounter, then if you want to imply that time has passed you state that in your post or in a quote box.

That said, I do like the idea of having the length of an era based off of the real life timing, I just don't think that dating all the encounters and threads with irl time would work.

Just having people self date the times of events, and saying that you can't start anything ahead of real life time, to avoid having people start things far in the future. Or, we have them start it, at any date they want, then if the IRL time of an era has the era ending before their event, then they retcon it.

I love the idea, and the first two parts are more suggestions then anything. But Something about basing the timing of events on IRL time doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me

[AonEne]

14 minutes ago, MacThorstenson said:

First is that life began tracking time way before most of the guilds were made, so imo making the names based off of guild names doesn't make much sense unless for some reason they decided to change the dating system right before the seven day war. I feel like coming up with a little bit of history/reason for naming the months adds more depth to the history of the Alleyverse, showing that it didn't start with the guilds. Also, if ene wants to do a AV prequel thread, then having more time independant month names works better. 

Oh curse you Mac why do you have to have good points. But the guild names. Hmm...what would people name them after, do you guys think? 

Edited September 24, 2019 by AonEne

[MetaTerminal]

20 minutes ago, AonEne said:

I honestly don’t understand what you mean by Real-Time/Latest Date. I’m stupid, sorry.  And from my view, people use IC times a lot more often than OOC times. I think your calendar is great, the month names are awesome. But it might make more sense to just use it when referring to IC events, and have the timeline travel organically? 

Right, okay. We’ll switch to that. People will still need to advance the timeline on their own - month-long timejumps between thread sections, things like that. Otherwise we’ll be on the 5th of Gildus forever 

I just tracked Real Time, since people tended to say, ‘this thread started 1 week ago, so this thread starts 1 week after that’. And if a location thread has been up for three months, then the location is generally assumed to be up for about that long. But I’ll ditch the idea since it’s no good.

5 minutes ago, MacThorstenson said:

First is that life began tracking time way before most of the guilds were made, so imo making the names based off of guild names doesn't make much sense unless for some reason they decided to change the dating system right before the seven day war. I feel like coming up with a little bit of history/reason for naming the months adds more depth to the history of the Alleyverse, showing that it didn't start with the guilds. Also, if ene wants to do a AV prequel thread, then having more time independant month names works better.

My mental justification is this - there was a different, unspecified calendar that was used before Era 4, and this was suggested as a replacement, a la Julian/Gregorian or the French Revolution. When it is replaced, past dates are revised to match it. Which is why the months include guilds from Eras 2 and 3.

8 minutes ago, MacThorstenson said:

Second, because this planet/universe was created, I feel like the days/months/years would be neater then the 365 and 12. This world iirc wasn't made to model any specific planet, and they would design the revolutions and rotations to have common factors to make months consistent.

If you have suggestions for a non-Earth calendar that both fits previous timeskips and dates and is sensible and usable, then I would love to use that. But given the use of ‘6 months’ representing half a year in past discussions, we can assume that the past was measured in an Earthlike calendar. Also, I feel like being fairly similar to what we are used to will prevent confusion - also, the little imperfections make the calendar more flavourful.

Also, Voidus may have based the planet on Earth. Possibly.

11 minutes ago, MacThorstenson said:

The third issue is a bit bigger, that basing anything in the RP off of OOC times I feel, wouldn't work. Like if there is a big thing of inactivity in a scene, suddenly the whole thing is out of whack. 

I feel like an alternate system that could be used is stating the start date of a thread/encounter, then if you want to imply that time has passed you state that in your post or in a quote box.

I didn’t really explain it well, but this was my original thinking: when a thread is created/revived, it starts at the RTD (real-time date) - unless another start date is specified. Once the thread is started, Time does not advance unless explicitly stated - it doesn’t move along with RTD. This ensures the internal consistency of a thread while keeping the era ticking along and preventing it from stagnating chronologically.

In practice, I feel the date would always be defined. But maybe we should track the RTD, even if it has no bearing on anything, so we can see if we’re lagging behind or ahead.

20 minutes ago, MacThorstenson said:

Just having people self date the times of events, and saying that you can't start anything ahead of real life time, to avoid having people start things far in the future. Or, we have them start it, at any date they want, then if the IRL time of an era has the era ending before their event, then they retcon it.

I like this - especially the second one, that would be my preference. Maybe the era always ends after the latest thread. But that’s getting into case-by-case basis judgement.

2 minutes ago, AonEne said:

Hmm...what would people name them after, do you guys think? 

Do you think people would keep the old DA calendar after it has been forcefully overthrown? (See French Revolution).

[MacThorstenson]

29 minutes ago, AonEne said:

Oh curse you Mac why do you have to have good points. But the guild names. Hmm...what would people name them after, do you guys think? 

Hmmm...

Well one proposal is to encourage my gigantic ego and name them after Mac

Unimac, dimacus, trimacus, tetramacus, etc...

But something tells me that that wouldn't happen. I think it would depend on what people came up with for the history, what kind of societies existed before the RP, did the guilds from when the DA was made exist etc.

The age of the planet depends on a few factors, namely when in the history of the DA it was made, and where we are in relation to the rest of the cosmere atm.

22 minutes ago, MetaTerminal said:

If you have suggestions for a non-Earth calendar that both fits previous timeskips and dates and is sensible and usable, then I would love to use that. But given the use of ‘6 months’ representing half a year in past discussions, we can assume that the past was measured in an Earthlike calendar. Also, I feel like being fairly similar to what we are used to will prevent confusion - also, the little imperfections make the calendar more flavourful.

Honestly I would just suggest that we turn it into a 30 day per month and 12 month calendar. Remove the last 5 days of the year. and have each lunar cycle last 30 days starting on the first day of the month.

If the DA wanted a way to indicate the time for the AV experiments, we would probably have named every month after the latin number. (I would say latin as it indicates that we just chose the root languages numbers to name our months. In whatever language these people speak it would be the first 12 numbers of their root language).

But I don't know if that's what the rest of the population would have used. They would have come up with their own things, based on their history.

22 minutes ago, MetaTerminal said:

Do you think people would keep the old DA calendar after it has been forcefully overthrown? (See French Revolution).

A lot of the DA's history and such hasn't been outlined, but I can confidently say that we do not have a consistent calendar. The amount of temporal warping that occurs in the alleys makes that impossible.

We would have local calendars for specific projects, but not one overarching one.

Also, I don't think that the french revolution is comparable because the DA was never officially in charge of the planet. We always had and have the power to seize control, but the way we are currently acting is how we have acted for the history of the planet. 

Edited September 24, 2019 by MacThorstenson

[MetaTerminal]

2 minutes ago, MacThorstenson said:

Also, I don't think that the french revolution is comparable because the DA was never officially in charge of the planet. We always had and have the power to seize control, but the way we are currently acting is how we have acted for the history of the planet. 

2 minutes ago, MacThorstenson said:

A lot of the DA's history and such hasn't been outlined, but I can confidently say that we do not have a consistent calendar. The amount of temporal warping that occurs in the alleys makes that impossible.

3 minutes ago, MacThorstenson said:

But I don't know if that's what the rest of the population would have used. They would have come up with their own things, based on their history.

Right, okay. But the point still stands - while there were probably a bunch of local calendars based around their own small cultures, there hasn’t been an official one, so there’s been mass confusion. (Fittingly enough.) Someone comes up with a consistent calendar, and the Republic decrees it as the official city calendar in the start of Era 4. Explains both the recent guild months and the new adoption.

6 minutes ago, MacThorstenson said:

Honestly I would just suggest that we turn it into a 30 day per month and 12 month calendar. Remove the last 5 days of the year. and have each lunar cycle last 30 days starting on the first day of the month.

Grr for artistic license and flavour, but it makes more sense this way. I’ll adjust the dates accordingly. (Unless we just want to delete the days without changing the original set dates.)

[MacThorstenson]

1 minute ago, MetaTerminal said:

Right, okay. But the point still stands - while there were probably a bunch of local calendars based around their own small cultures, there hasn’t been an official one, so there’s been mass confusion. (Fittingly enough.) Someone comes up with a consistent calendar, and the Republic decrees it as the official city calendar in the start of Era 4. Explains both the recent guild months and the new adoption.

But considering that everything happens in the Alleycity, both before and after the seven day war, and that the republic is only over the alleycity, then why would they change? Wouldn't the alleycity have a calendar that it used before the sdw?

[MetaTerminal]

Just now, MacThorstenson said:

But considering that everything happens in the Alleycity, both before and after the seven day war, and that the republic is only over the alleycity, then why would they change? Wouldn't the alleycity have a calendar that it used before the sdw?

You underestimate culture’s ability to make zero sense. There wouldn’t be an official calendar, because who would decree it? There would just be a whole bunch of people converting between personal (perhaps original planetary) calendars in their heads all the time. Individual groups of people using their own calendars, with vague ideas of how to convert between other calendars, like languages or temperature measurements. Children would be raised on their parent’s calendars. (And clearly we didn’t have a calendar, unless we want to retcon ) Much like the Fahrenheit/Celsius(/Kelvin/Rankine) dichotomy. It’s not until the Republic decrees that this is the official calendar (like standard units) that anything starts to make sense.

Of course, ‘X days’ still means the same thing across all calendars. And ‘1 month’ in one calendar might be understood as ‘1.8 quarbles’ in another, as a well-known conversion. (Like inches to feet.) So everything still makes sense eventually, though it takes a longer time for anything to be understood - much how like it took us longer to understand how the timeline fit together before this.

Does that answer your question? I’m confused a little at what you’re asking.

I won’t change the set dates, I’ve decided, because I’m lazy.

[Voidus]

4 minutes ago, MetaTerminal said:

There would just be a whole bunch of people converting between personal (perhaps original planetary) calendars in their heads all the time. Individual groups of people using their own calendars, with vague ideas of how to convert between other calendars, like languages or temperature measurements. Children would be raised on their parent’s calendars. (And clearly we didn’t have a calendar, unless we want to retcon ) Much like the Fahrenheit/Celsius(/Kelvin/Rankine) dichotomy. It’s not until the Republic decrees that this is the official calendar (like standard units) that anything starts to make sense.

This has been my assumption of how most people have kept track of time in the AV, various cultures each using their own calendar, maybe a couple of weird fusions of different systems. Very chaotic.

[MacThorstenson]

6 minutes ago, MetaTerminal said:

There wouldn’t be an official calendar, because who would decree it? There would just be a whole bunch of people converting between personal (perhaps original planetary) calendars in their heads all the time. Individual groups of people using their own calendars, with vague ideas of how to convert between other calendars, like languages or temperature measurements. Children would be raised on their parent’s calendars. (And clearly we didn’t have a calendar, unless we want to retcon ) Much like the Fahrenheit/Celsius(/Kelvin/Rankine) dichotomy. It’s not until the Republic decrees that this is the official calendar (like standard units) that anything starts to make sense.

I guess my question was more along the lines of why would the same city have different calendars, especially one so advanced as the AV?

While I don't disagree that it would be like that in the beginning, once you reach a certain point in a cities development there needs to be some form universal time keeping, otherwise how would people coordinate business?

I guess my point rests on three things:

The first is that the Alleyverse planet is roughly 1000 years old.

The DA was approximately 2000 years old at the fall of the final empire. Assuming the planet was created about 1000 years later, (as a rough estimate) the AV would be around 1000 years old.

Second, that most if not all worldhopper groups would include people capable of astronomy. Or they would become capable of astronomy within the 1000 years of living on the planet. Meaning that they could see that the planet had 30 days to a month and 360 days to a year.

Then thirdly, that the Alleycity couldn't become as advanced as it is today without significant communication between peoples in the area around the alleycity.

Regardless of how many people/cultural groups were in the Alleycity at the beginning, once the ones around the Alleycity began to form into a city, they would need some form of way to mark time so that they would be on the same page.

The easiest way to do this would be on a day and month basis, as both would easily fit into the year and the farming times would be consistent along this measure of telling time as well.

 

Regardless of who decreed it, for a city to become advanced as the alleycity (somehow without a centralized government) there must have been some form of time telling communication. I mean, we have plumbing and mobiles and cars, these things don't pop up if business/production doesn't have a centralized system of telling time.

While I don't disagree that it would have been chaos at the beginning, I feel like the existence of an advanced society with citywide infrastructure necessitates the existence of a centralized timing system far earlier in the timeline then we are currently at.

Of course, all of this could be thrown out the window considering that the alleycity managed to become extremely advanced without having any form of centralized government, which is an unprecedented task in our world.

[MetaTerminal]

13 minutes ago, MacThorstenson said:

While I don't disagree that it would have been chaos at the beginning, I feel like the existence of an advanced society with citywide infrastructure necessitates the existence of a centralized timing system far earlier in the timeline then we are currently at.

Of course, all of this could be thrown out the window considering that the alleycity managed to become extremely advanced without having any form of centralized government, which is an unprecedented task in our world.

I’d say the final paragraph, creative license, and the weirdness of culture can sort of justify it. If people aren’t happy with that, we can just say that there was a unified calendar, but we decided to change it. Maybe there were some overdue problems we needed to address - maybe it was another planet’s calendar poorly retrofitted, which caused problems in the long run. Either way, I’m happy to have a new calendar if it allows the new month names. 

[MacThorstenson]

12 hours ago, MetaTerminal said:

I’d say the final paragraph, creative license, and the weirdness of culture can sort of justify it. If people aren’t happy with that, we can just say that there was a unified calendar, but we decided to change it. Maybe there were some overdue problems we needed to address - maybe it was another planet’s calendar poorly retrofitted, which caused problems in the long run. Either way, I’m happy to have a new calendar if it allows the new month names. 

The handwavium is killing me. 

But if its the will of the people, then I will also be fine with it.

[MetaTerminal]

3 hours ago, MacThorstenson said:

The handwavium is killing me. 

But if its the will of the people, then I will also be fine with it.

Occupational hazard  But Rule of Cool - and, besides, it’s more than plausible enough for me. (Far more plausible than half the stuff around here, if you ask me!)

Sounds like a plan. Shall I put a poll up on this thread?

[AonEne]

Wait, so what is the final plan? 

[MacThorstenson]

Could we at the very least change the start date?

If the republic started it, then they probably wouldn’t use the day tuba was discovered as the start date, they would either use the day the republic was initiated as a start date, or maybe the end of the SDW.

 

Edited September 24, 2019 by MacThorstenson

[MetaTerminal]

5 minutes ago, MacThorstenson said:

Could we at the very least change the start date?

If the republic started it, then they probably wouldn’t use the day tuba was discovered as the start date, they would either use the day the republic was initiated as a start date, or maybe the end of the SDW.

 

I designed it to be as easy to use in regards to the existing eras, and to minimise negative years, which could cause confusion. (Also, I like the aesthetic of big year numbers. It shows how long the Alleyverse has been running.) And I could see the Republic concurring that it would be too confusing to have to use positive and negative years all the time - but now we’re speculating about what people want, so I might as well put up a poll.

Setting up the poll - I’ll include both start dates as options.

[+Ark1002]

@MetaTerminal, I like this a loooooooot.

But I do have a formal complaint with the month dedicated to the Ghostbloods.

It doesn't make any sense, and the Gilded Rose wasn't an alternate name. It was a completely different thing, and was more Bureau related. It just couldn't be the month name, sorry.

I suggest something with ghost in the name, but not ghostbloods.

Edited September 25, 2019 by Ark1002

[MetaTerminal]

20 minutes ago, Ark1002 said:

@MetaTerminal, I like this a loooooooot.

But I do have a formal complaint with the month dedicated to the Ghostbloods.

It doesn't make any sense, and the Gilded Rose wasn't an alternate name. It was a completely different thing, and was more Bureau related. It just couldn't be the month name, sorry.

I suggest something with ghost in the name, but not ghostbloods.

Right, okay. I don’t really like Ghostus or Bloodus, so how about Phantus or Sanguis? Not exactly their name, but fairly similar.

[AonEne]

1 hour ago, MetaTerminal said:

Right, okay. I don’t really like Ghostus or Bloodus, so how about Phantus or Sanguis? Not exactly their name, but fairly similar.

I like Phantus. 

[+Ark1002]

15 hours ago, MetaTerminal said:

Right, okay. I don’t really like Ghostus or Bloodus, so how about Phantus or Sanguis? Not exactly their name, but fairly similar.

I like it, but personally I think it needs to actually be the name.

I wouldn't be against Ghostus or Phantus. Bloodus and Sanguis not so much.

[+ZincAboutIt]

Phantus is far and away the best alternate option here, I think, though you could get a little more cryptic and go with something like "Diamatus" (referencing the diamonds of the tattoo/insignia) or maybe "Triarchus" to reflect the GB leadership structure.

Also, if we're suggesting month names, I rather like "Noctus" for the DA month, though it's totally fine as-is.