The godly calendar
Welcome to Divine Tyranny! In a world where all-powerful gods live among mortals and play with their life for their own entertainment, Archivist Cécile is doing her best to go unnoticed. Unfortunately, the warring water and forging gods are now interested in the archives... Come read about Cécile and the world in which she lives!
Introduction to the story | Cécile | The Archivists | Novel upcoming
Introduction to the story | Cécile | The Archivists | Novel upcoming
Table of Contents
You'd think making a calendar isn't too complicated, especially when the month is just up there every night to help us. But of course, the gods and their petty quarrels have to complicate everything...
the flooding month is naturally the month of our Lord the Water God Lydien.
the solstice of the dry season is fiercely fought over by the forging god and a comparatively newer god in the country, the sun god Q. Whoever loses generally gets the month right after this.
the war god often gets the month during which a blood moon appears - and will fight with whichever god this month usually belongs to.
the trade god gets the month when the winds are favourable for trade along the major river of the country.
Because of this system of variable months, specific events are not linked to the calendar date. Instead, they are set according to astronomical events, divination, and the gods' opinions when they deign to give it directly. These events include the dates of religious festivals, the start of harvest, weddings, political events such as coronation or the reopening of the noble assembly after the break for the hot months.
The dry season. It starts around the first equinox and the new year, but its official demarcation is the flooding of the rivers. It is characterised by high temperatures (up to 45°C but more commonly 29°C) and almost no rainfall, although the irrigation canals and swamps at their end are full for the first half of the season. It is the time of harvest.
The wet season. It starts with the first big storm of the year, and it is characterised by low temperature (as low as 5°C, but more commonly 10°C) but higher rainfall. It is the time for soil preparation and sowing.
The calendar
The months
Using the moon as a basis to count months naturally make the more sense. The months are important to date events but not to establish a year. Indeed, each year starts whenever the harvest start, which is mostly around the first equinox. This means that every year does not have the same count of lunar months in them. The month in which the new year takes place is counted as being part of both the previous and new years. Each lunar month is associated with a god, and every year the gods compete with each other to get a month named after themselves. These quarrels tend to be in good spirits, presumably because after a few millennia even the gods are able to relativise the loss of one measle month. However, there are exceptions, especially when two gods or their Churches already share tense relationships. In those cases, the naming of the month will be used as an extension of the fight, with one god attempting to steal the other god's month to slight them.How month names are chosen
In normal circumstances, all major gods always get a month. The decision is only made in the middle of the month by the king in conjunction with the noble assembly. First, a big ceremony is held during each new moon, just before sun rise, to celebrate the arrival of another moon and ask for all the gods' blessing. Then later, under the new moon, the vote is carried out and a new ceremony is held to solemnly announce the name of the month. All events having taken placed and which will still take place during that months are then considered to be under the patronage of that god. Months are typically named after their major characteristic:The seasons
There two seasons:The days
The days are divided into 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of night, with the length of the hours changing with the seasons.
Opinion from the archives
We all know that the king and noble assembly say a lot of rubbish, and unsurprisingly the naming of the months is one such occasion. Rather than name the months after their most important characteristic, they often choose to do so in an attempt to garner the favour of the gods, often naming them despite all logic. This leads the rest of the population to choose their own more fitting names - so as to both make more sense and to avoid angering the god who is clearly in control of the month - with regional variations leading to a lot of unnecessary confusion...
In order to make sense of any date upcoming or past, they are always given with both the name of the god and the number of the month in the year, i.e. 7th day of the Q month, 6th month of the year 3271. Year 1 is, of course, the date of foundation of our glorious capital. Unfortunately, while it would make more sense to only use the number of the month, that would be way too offensive for the gods...
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