The Imperial Calendar and Tracking Time

So my campaign is set in an analog of the Holy Roman Empire, roughly around 1400.  This made German the "Common Tongue" and allows a mix of small to medium sized principalities competing with each other for prestige, influence, and land.

As a result, I wanted a recognizable calendar but not the same calendar used in the real world.  Doing some online research, I looked at the Roman calendar, particularly that of the Republic, which puts Ianuarius [January] and Februarius [February] at the end of the calendar year.  This version of the calendar inserts an Intercalary Month into the middle of Februarius so that there are three weeks of Februarius, the intercalary month of Mercedonius (27 days), and then the last week of Februarius every other year.  There is also an extra day thrown in at the end of Feruarius every fourth year.

[Incidentally, this made years average out to 368.75 days over a 4 year span.  There was a 24 year cycle where one of the longer years was left out to bring things back into better alignment, but still the calendar crept forward compared to the seasons.  On top of which, the pontifex of Rome determined when the intercalary months actually happened and, as they were politicians, would add or withhold the intercalary months to their own benefit.  This is why Julius Caesar [yes, THAT Julius Caesar] reformed the calendar, creating the Julian calendar, during his short stint as ruler of Rome.  The Julian calendar did not rely on human intervention to stay in synch with the seasons and actual dates could be fixed to the start of each season.  It was more complicated than this - I recommend reading the Wikipedia article on the Julian Calendar if you are interested.]

I've decided to use some of the Julian reforms, so the months will have the same number of days that the modern calendar does, but I'm keeping the old names and order of months, starting the year at the Spring Equinox on 1 Martius.  This is to replicate that some races live longer  and can more easily pass information along without losing as much along the way.  Plus, the gods actually speak to their clerics, so keeping a religious calendar in a certain order has more gravitas than in the real world.

Therefore, the months are as follows:

Martius	(31 days)
Aprilis	(30 days)
Maius	(31 days)
Iunius	(30 days)
Quintilis	(31 days)
Sextilis	(31 days)
September	(30 days)
October	(31 days)
November	(30 days)
December	(31 days)
Ianuarius	(31 days)
Februarius	(28/29 days)

And to keep things all together, the days of the week are:

Sunday
Moonday
Hernesday
Magusday
Cromsday
Freysday
Yggsday

[These I developed for the Barrowmaze campaign I've run one season of so far.  The players became familiar with the day names there so I ported them over for this campaign.]

Now I told you all of that so I could talk about this: tracking time in a campaign is important.  Porkins is high enough in level to know more spells than he has now, but learning them takes time, on the order of a week per spell level per spell.  He also wants to research a couple of spells which take just as long.  He also does not want to miss out on experience or treasure.  So to meet these demands, he either has to convince the party to not go out adventuring for a couple weeks [or more] or suck it up and miss out on some adventures.  Luckily for him, another option is about to happen.

The other reason to keep track of time is weather.  It isn't summer all year long [unless it is in your campaign], and so the seasons should happen.  I suddenly realized that it is December in-game and winter should be very noticeable.  So I've started emphasizing how cold it is outside, especially at night.  The players know that sometime soon the winter storms will happen and pretty much all travel will stop for a couple months.  I should have done this nearly a month ago in-game, but I wasn't paying attention so it is happening now.

With two months of forced down-time, Porkins should be able to update his spell selection and do research on a couple subjects he has put on his To Do list.  Biggz is looking at taking over the Watchtower as a residence and place of business for the group.  This will require codifying their maps of the various levels, planning on where they want to block off sections underground so their areas are secure.  That will require the hiring of an engineer and several weeks of planning and discussion with the engineer.  Plus they need to negotiate a grant or title from the current owner, a down-on-his-luck noble who owns a lot of the land around Smolberg, but also has a lot of debt that he inherited with it.

That's it for now - more later.  The session notes for the campaign will resume tomorrow (6/15/21) but I'm jumping to the beginning of the current story line at Session 19.  I'll fill in the gap between sessions 2 and 19 as time permits, but it will be infrequent as I want to move forward.

 Later!