Contemporary

Postlapsarian Thessian timekeeping is measured in six major units (which we shall soon go into more detail about) which are not really equivalent to the six we use (seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years) but match up well enough that we can speak of them in that fashion without too much trouble.

A real-time version of the contemporary Thessian calendar can be found here.


A Thessian year is thus 1.9 Earth years long, or 693.8 Earth days, but only 144 Thessian days long. Unlike on Earth, Thessian timekeeping is based around a series of small islands in tight orbit of the Eye called the Horologium. Because the fluctuations of the anomaly are more predictable the closer a suspended body is to it, with a bit of calibration they can actually serve as the hands on a great clock, which is controlled by a central power station which floats directly above the eye.

The Thessian calendar is measured in Thessian years just like the Terran calendar is measured in years; to indicate where the calendar starts from, however, the "tgc" suffix (Thessian Great Cycle) is added, much like "AD" or "BC" is added to Terran dates to indicate the zero-point and direction. Like other units, "TGC" is capitalized when discussing a quantity, and lower-case when discussing a date.

This has reliably transmitted on the frequency of 86.073 MHz throughout the shattered place for many millennia, being upgraded twice to accommodate for improved knowledge of Doppler effects. Archaeology on abandoned repeater stations suggests that these upgrades both happened during the middle Iron dynasty, as these events changed the signal's protocol and the old repeater stations expect a different format than currently is being transmitted.

Historical

Prior to the Shattering, methods of timekeeping were diverse among the various nations of Thessia Major and Thessia Minor. A day/night cycle served as the basis of most time systems, although in the majority of countries, the time of day itself was fixed relative to a capitol or religious site, rather than local observance of sun rise (as had been more primitively done), or time-zoning as practised on ancient Earth.

Kalendis (IKY/LKY)

The Kalendis system, established by the Lyrisclensiae as an astronomical tool, is based primarily on the oscillations of various stellar phenomena. It was the closest Thessia Major had to a standard method of timekeeping, being used extensively in the infrastructure that the Lyrisclensiae built throughout the Thessian system, and independently by the Hatelese Commonwealth. In its last and best-known state, it was been retrofitted with smaller scales of time measurement that accounted for experienced time scales, although some purists continued to use a microyear-like measurement instead of the predominant minute analogue. The traditional LKY calendar is equivalent to the Thessian IKY calendar but starts 68160 ky earlier; it is still used by the Hatelese and Lyrisclensiae outside of Thet.

Both km and kμy are commonly divided into 144 subunits called seconds and decananoyears, respectively.

Glotshakhto

The Ksreskézaian system, like our own Gregorian calendar, was much less refined than the Lyrisclensian and Thessian systems, in large part because it was tied to the demands of a natural body. The lengths of each month (which are founded in Ksreskézaian legend) and their Lilitic names are given below:



Because the week is 6 days long and the year is 9 × 9 × 3 days long, years are counted as 'even' or 'odd' depending on whether they start on the first day of the week or the fourth. When a leap day was required in the Ksreskézaian era, it generally occurred on the seventh day of the week as an extra day of rest to prevent businesses and officials from having to account for it. The Ksreskézai normally took the sixth weekday off; the Lilitai generally take the second and fifth days off; sometimes also the first. The Lilitai consider it bad luck to not work on the sixth day of the week, even if ill.

Wanisinese Glotshakhto

The settlers of Wanisin adapted the Glotshakhto calendar to their world's longer year, consisting of 320 days in contrast to Ksreskézo's 243. Remarkably, the average day lengths on each planet are within a few microseconds of each other, which has prompted speculation that Wanisin and Ksreskézo either originated in the same nebula or that one was engineered to match the other at some time in their prehistories. The intercalary week was eliminated, and each month set at 40 days. On very rare occasions (known to have happened twice in Wanisin's history) a leap-day is added as the 321st day, simply called ni kza (núí salkza, 'extra day'.)