The Tharkis Calendar

This is the calendar used in the enormous city of Tharkis, deep in the Great Dark. It is not as old or as accurate as the Hadradan calendar, and approaches the task of recording the passge of time in a completely different manner. The Great Dark is no longer part of Iourn. Although it retains some similarities to Io's favoured world, it is a different plane of existence. There are no moons in the sky over Tharkis. The climate of the city varies very little during the course of a year, making any division along the lines of the seasons utterly meaningless. Yes: there is day and there is night, but the length of both does not vary over the year. If a calendar cannot be pegged to the physical world, then it is most likely to be pegged to the political one. The Tharkis Calendar (like many of the dozens of other calendars used in the Great Dark) is tied to the ruler of the city. Its idiosyncracies are down to the Witch Queen.

Oddly, the days in Tharkis do directly map onto corresponding days on Iourn - the Hadradan and Tharkis calendars are aligned. In fact the Tharkis calendar seems to have been deliberately manipulated so that this is the case. Quite why this should be, or what advantage Tharkis gains by such a connection, is unclear. In preparation for the sixth Iourn campaign, I am deliberately with-holding where Tharkis dates fall in the over-all timeline of the setting.

The Basics

The Tharkis Calendar (or Calendar of Grelka as it often called) is measured from the time that Grelka ascended to the Throne Primeval. The Game of Souls campaign opens on 90 Lētum 1999 GR (Grelka's Reign) - only a few days before the two-thousandth anniversary of Grelka's coming to power.

The Tharkis Calendar is based on a five year cycle. The cycle consists of four years of equal length (327 days) and one leap year (64 days). Each cycle exactly equals on Urovan year, or four Urovan seasons. Therefore, although 2000 GR will celebrate the two thousandth 'year' since Grelka's coronation, it has only actually been 1600 Urovan seasons since the event.

This has an obvious effect on character ages. Someone who is fifty years old in Tharkis, would only be forty seasons of age if he measured time as the Urovans do. The GM will make all necessary adjustments to character ages, and ageing categories.

The Months

Within each cycle, the four standard years and the leap year bear no resemblance to one another:

The standard year is divided into three months of one hundred days, interspersed with three week long festivals (each of nine days) for a total of 327 days:

• Festival of Ascension
• Month of Incunabula
• Festival of Supplication
• Month of Meridian
• Festival of Tribulation
• Month of Lētum

The leap year consists of only one month of 64 days:

• Month of Carnivale

The Weeks

A week in the Tharkis Calendar consists of nine days. The days of the week are named after Grelka's famous "Nine Virtues of the People" that she laid down in her inaugrul address to the populace. These are:

• Patience
• Obedience
• Reticence
• Diligence
• Abstinence
• Temperance
• Endurance
• Silence
• Irrelevance

The first day of the month is therefore called Patience (as opposed to Vítday, for example), the second day Obedience and so on in a repeating pattern. The names have no special significance in regard to what the populace are supposed to be doing on those days.

Weeks (and the above names of the days) only apply during actual months - Incunabula, Meridian, Lētum and Carnivale. The nine-day festivals of Ascension, Supplication and Tribulation and handled differently. The days here are simply numbered and have no name. One would refer to the "Fifth Day of Ascension", never "Abstinence, 5th of Ascension".

The astute will notice that the months are 100 days long in standard years, and 64 days long in the leap year. The nine day week does not neatly fit into either month. Standard months therefore consist of ten weeks of nine days (99 days), plus one extra festival day at the end of the month. The month in the leap year consists of seven weeks of nine days (63 days), plus one extra festival day. Like the nine-day festivals, these extra days do not have the regular names. The extra festival days are:

• Day of Leavening (100 Incunabula)
• Day of Leavening (100 Meridian)
• Day of Leavening (100 Lētum)
• Day of the Dead (64 Carnivale)

Utterly confused? Sometimes its better to show than tell. Try the following links:

• Example Standard Year
• Example Leap Year

Detailed Information

As already mentioned above, there are no true seasonal variations to the climate of Tharkis. It remains temperate and wet for the entire year. There are seldom sunny days and it hardly ever snows - but it could do either at any time of any year. These are the averages: it's what the inhabitants can expect, day in and day out.

During the night heavy mist and fog rolls in from the stagnant sea and chokes the streets of Tharkis. By dawn the city is thick with it, and the mist doesn't usually disappear for several hours. There are some days when it never lifts. The mist is often accompanied by drizzle. It is the wind, rather than the sun, that breaks up the mist, and gales are very common along the exposed coast line. Squawls and torrential storms of rain and hail often lash the city, although they normally occur in the late afternoon and into the night. Thunderstorms are uncommon, as are other extremes of weather such as ice, frost, snow and sunshine. Tharkis has not had a day without precipitation of one kind or another in a hundred years.

Telling the Time

The day in Tharkis is divided into 27 hours. This is one hour less than the standard 28 hour Hadradan day (also adopted by the Urovans). However, the days are actually the same length - it is the length of the hour that differs between the two cultures.

Each day is divided into three segments of nine hours each: the morning, the afternoon and the night. Late afternoon and early night are sometimes referred to as "evening". The passage of time is measured magically by a specialist order in the service of Grelka. They are responsible for hourly tolling of the great bell in Grelka's palace.

The table below coverts the Earth day to the Tharkis day for the benefit of the players. Note that Tharkites (like most other medieaval cultures) count from 1-9 (not 0-8).

See Also

• Hadradan Calendar
• Movements of the Moons
• History of the Hadaradan Calendar
• Example Standard Year of the Tharkis Calendar
• Example Leap Year of the Tharkis Calendar