Calendars, months, and the measurement of time in the Sundered Age. Three systems exist in parallel — and they do not agree with each other. They cannot. Each begins at a different moment, and each moment reflects a different understanding of when the world became worth counting.
The question of how the known world measures time is inseparable from the question of what it has forgotten. The Wrenfolk and orcs do not maintain formal calendar systems — not from deficiency, but as a different solution to the same problem: how do you measure time honestly, when so much of it has been lost?
Begins at the founding of the first permanent human settlement, approximately 2,800 years before the current era. The de facto standard for trade, law, and official records across Valdenmoor and Thurak.
Year 1 = First Settlement
Counts forward · 365 days · 12 months
Begins at the Collapse and counts backward. PC 1 is the year of the Collapse. Higher numbers indicate greater antiquity. Harmonised with the Common Reckoning approximately 1,500 years ago for trade purposes.
PC 1 = The Collapse
Counts backward · The elves admit it is incomplete
Begins at the earliest inherited memory. Extends back fourteen thousand years without a single error. Exists in no written form — held entirely in the bodies and memories of beings who were, for three thousand years, indistinguishable from stone.
FA = First Age · YC = Years of Continuance
The most accurate. The least accessible.
The month names are a palimpsest. The oldest are corrupted borrowings from languages that preceded them — some traceable to Proto-Veranthi, a few to structures consistent with Vel-Drath. The insertion of Aldenost in place of an older name, approximately 400 years ago, is the most visible example of the calendar being used as an instrument of institutional memory management.
| # | Month | Vel-Drath Root | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| I | Ashenmere | ash-vel-mer | Deep winter. Named for grey sediment left by floods. The empire reads no contracts in Ashenmere — a custom no one can explain. |
| II | Velmoor | vel-moor | Winter's end. In Vel-Drath, vel-moor means origin-clearing — the moment when the world first had room to think. Now it simply sounds like a place. |
| III | Greenkeep | — | Early spring. The keep-months are a human naming convention — defensive, territorial. The elves find them revealing. |
| IV | Brightmere | — | Late spring. The empire's tax assessments are issued on the 1st of Brightmere. |
| V | Highsun | — | Early summer. The longest market season. The Imperial Ledger year runs Highsun to Highsun. |
| VI | Aldenost | — | Midsummer. Named after the Aldenmere Empire itself — inserted roughly 400 years ago, replacing an older name no one recorded. |
| VII | Greenlast | — | Late summer. The last reliable growing month in northern Valdenmoor. |
| VIII | Thornmere | — | Early autumn. Named for the thorn-sedge that blooms in wetlands across Valdenmoor. |
| IX | Hollowfall | — | Mid-autumn. The word hollow is older than it appears — in early records it was halow, a borrowing from an unknown source. |
| X | Greystone | — | Late autumn. In the Karath foothills, the stone does literally change colour in this month — though no one has explained why. |
| XI | Deepcold | — | Early winter. The dwarven stonehalls seal their outer gates on the 1st of Deepcold. |
| XII | Coldrest | — | Midwinter. The Long Dark festival falls on the 15th. The shortest days. The longest silences. An intercalary day — Coldrest-Last — is inserted every four years. |
The seven-day week is universal across the Common Reckoning, with minor naming variants by region.
Administration and formal meetings. Named without irony.
Named for Ashenmere. The elves find it odd — most cultures name days after celestial bodies.
Middle of the working week. Market day in most cities.
From mered, meaning 'gathered' or 'counted.' Now simply the fourth day.
Named for Thornmere. Associated with careful work, contracts, and precision.
The final working day. In winter months, work ends early.
Universal. Even the empire stops on Restday — though the Archive is never fully closed.
The Common Reckoning acknowledges four fixed astronomical events that anchor the calendar year.
The Long Dark. Midwinter festival. Fires maintained through the night. An echo of something much older — no one knows what.
First Balance. A quiet observance. The elves call it something else.
The Long Light. Market fairs in most cities. The elvish new year.
Second Balance. The elvish survey season. Dwarven sealing preparations begin.
Many human observances carry traces of older practices whose origins are no longer understood — which is, by now, a familiar pattern.
| Observance | Date | Tradition | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Founding Day | 1st Velmoor | Common / Human | Celebrates the first permanent settlements. The empire calls it the beginning of civilisation. Elves and dwarves observe it politely. |
| The Long Dark | 15th Coldrest | Common / Human | Midwinter festival. Fires kept burning through the night. An echo of something much older. |
| Harvest Counting | 1st Thornmere | Common / Human | Tax assessments formalized. In the Wrenvale Isles, the same date is First-Rest — a quiet domestic holiday with no connection to taxation. |
| The Long Memory | Summer Solstice | Elvish | The elvish new year. Scholars read aloud from the oldest sections of the Archive to confirm continuity. The irony is lost on most of them. |
| The Quiet Survey | Autumn Equinox | Elvish | Elvish cartographers formally update their maps. The only surveys that consistently agree with the actual landscape. |
| Stone-Day | 1st Keth-Vel | Dwarven | Beginning of the dwarven deep-season. Outer gates sealed. Interior halls fully lit. A day of counting and record-setting. |
| The Vel-Sath | Outside months | Drevari | The Stillness. One day per year, the Drevari go completely motionless in memory of those hollowed by vel-iss. Nothing is dated from this day. It has no number. |
| Tide-Counting | 13 × 28 days | Wrenfolk | The Wrenfolk do not name their year after months or seasons. They count tides. Thirteen cycles of twenty-eight days, plus occasional correction days called quiet days — not counted, not named, simply rested through. |
Dashes indicate that the relevant system was not yet in use, or that no surviving record in that system references the event.
| Drevari (FA/YC) | Elvish (PC) | Common (CE/BCE) | Event |
|---|---|---|---|
| FA ~14,000 | — | — | Vorrath born. The First Age at its height. |
| FA ~3,000 | PC ~11,000+ | — | First vel-iss attempts by elvish scholars. |
| FA ~300 | PC 1 | ~3,000 BCE | The Collapse. The world's relationship to its own past is severed. |
| — | PC 2,200 | ~800 BCE | Elvish survey records of the Karath Range. The last accurate maps. |
| YC 300 | PC 2,500+ | ~300 CE | Aldenmere Empire acquires the first half of the Vel-Kel. |
| YC 510 | — | ~510 CE | Thessaly Vorn born at Vel Tharun. |
| YC 695 | — | ~695 CE | Sable Dunmore born in the Wrenvale Isles. |
| YC 726 | — | ~726 CE | Sable finds the stone tablet. Book I begins. |
| YC 730 | — | ~730 CE | What comes next is what the series has been building toward. |
The most accurate calendar — the Drevari vel-thal reckoning, which extends back fourteen thousand years without a single error — exists in no written form. The younger races, who have built their entire understanding of time on records and ledgers, have spent three thousand years carefully measuring a period that the Drevari simply remember. — Companion Volume · Calendar Supplement
No. Let the younger races keep their calendars. What matters is not how they count the years. What matters is what they say happened in them. — Vorrath, when asked whether the world would adopt the vel-thal reckoning