A Cephiran Calendar & Character Birthdays

[Milieva]

I said in chat that I would make a post about this. 

For my fic Sanctuary and other fics in that same universe I have come up with a Cephiran calendar. It’s very simple and basic, but means that I have a very good reason for the New Year festival to have been at a time the girls couldn’t attend until the year before.

Basically, I have given Cephiro a 365 day year. Though, you might technically say it is a 364 day year with a bonus day.

Weeks are still seven nights. The days translate very simply to Firstday, Secondday, Thirdday, Fourthday, Fifthday, Sixthday, and Seventhday. I haven’t decided if the reckoning is from sunrise or sunset or an arbitrary time in the middle somewhere (like midnight).

There are 13 months of 4 weeks (28 days) each.  I have yet to work out what the months are called right now. I’m guessing things having to do with the agricultural industries, perhaps. Or they could just be numbers.  We’ll see what I decide before Clef starts dropping month names in about six or seven chapters time.



The festival day part of a three day festival thing. Every thing in the country sort of stops. There are parties and celebrations all over. The biggest being the one held at the castle.

Festival:

Day 1: The last day of the last month.  It is the  celebration for the end of the year, and everything that happened. There is always a big party of some sort. And at the castle, you have that year’s chronicle scroll unrolled around the great hall turned ball room with lots of dancing and celebration before it is rolled back up. There is lots of talk about the bits that people read while the chronicle was unrolled, if it was interesting.

Day 2: Is the Festival day. The festival day itself is for general revelry. It tends to be an excuse for many to cut loose and have a good time.  It is the wildest night of any of the celebrations. Lots of alcohol, lots of dancing, lots of enjoying the night and company it brings.

Day 3: The first day of the first month of the new year. It is a time for looking ahead toward the connections to be made and things to be done in the new year. This is the time when people start making plans about what they want their new year to be.  The new chronicle scroll is started and the year begins anew. It is also a time to gain a blessing or a prayer on your house and family. I haven’t worked out exactly how temples and shrines work in this cephiro, so bear with me while I work that out?



Added bonus fun of the festival day not being counted into the year or week specifically, means that the days of the week keep shifting between Earth and Cephiro.  Like for one Cephiran year Firstday may correspond with Sunday, then after the New year begins, Firstday is now on the same day as Monday on Earth. Meaning the activities everyone is doing in Cephiro shifts. 

Like if Council meetings are the first and second Sixthday of the month, then they were on Friday between March - 1st half of Nov 1996  according to my reckoning, and after the Festival (which was the first time the actual festival day fell on a Sunday while the girls were visiting) Sixthday is now Saturday, so council meetings happen then, changing Sunday visits because the week shifted, but not everyone’s work patterns did.

[Milieva]

In addition to the calendar, I also worked out when I want to mark the characters birthdays.  I went by which page they first appeared on, or for some of the multiple characters, what was the first page they spoke on. I just kept charting in a circle, which would be why some of the second half characters turn up in the early months, too.

This is still out of the 13 months system. If you want to have an idea of Earth birthdates, according to my current reckoning for this fic, Festival was on 17 November in 1996. Which means 1st of the 1st month was on 18 November. 

In the first month:

• Emeraude on the 1st
• Zagato on the 27th

In the second month:

• Clef on the 8th
• Aska & Sang Yung on the 16th
• Chang Ang on the 17th
  Tarta & Tatra on the 23rd
• Alcyone was on the 28th

In the third month, Caldina was born on the 22nd. I'm not sure what that is on Chizeta.

I have no one in the fourth month.

In the fifth month:

• LaFarga on the 8th
• Presea on the 10th

Again, no one in the sixth month.

In the seventh month, there is only Ferio on the 28th

Then there is no one we know who was born in months eight to eleven.

In month twelve:

• Ascot on the 3rd
• All the Autozam boys on the 24th or (Eagle on 25th, Geo on 26th, and Zazu on 27th)

Then Lantis is the only one in the thirteenth month on the 12th.

[Somariel]

I think I'm going to be adopting the calendar and most of the birthdays wholesale. (I say most of them because I've already established for my own headcanon when Eagle, Geo, and Zazu's birthdays are relative to each other and I don't want to change it.)

Also, you seem to have either included an extra bullet point or left out a character for the fifth month.

[Milieva]

Yeah, no idea what the extra bullet point is, unless someone wants to tell me who I'm missing. Oh well. Coding is hard.

This is complete nonsense. Go ahead and play with it if you like. I was just trying to do some more world building for Sanctuary, because I was trying to work out when things were happening. Also, I just wanted an excuse for a wild three-day long party, because it amused me. (it also meant the girls would catch it multiple years running, if it were three days)

If anyone has any other input or thoughts on things like other possible festivals, please feel free to share them.