The Lion Calendar

The Lion Calendar or Lion Count is a lunar calendar used since ancient times on Aren. Based on the phases of the moon, it uses a 384-day year with each month having 32 days. Being 19 days longer than a standard Alliance Year, this makes the calendar somewhat problematic as it has no alignment to the seasons. It is believed that the ancient calendar served a strictly religious/ceremonial function, while a more robust solar calendar governed the planting and harvesting of crops.

The moon above Aren goes through 8 phases each of which lasts 4 days.

The first day of the solar and lunar years align once every 384 solar years. B.G.A. 3800, the accepted start of recorded history, represents one such alignment. The last lunar/solar alignment of the Mage Wars occurred in 344 B.G.A. and the first alignment after the formal adoption of the Alliance Calendar occurred in A.Y. 140

Lunar Calendar

Day Phase Esoteric Phase Sepal 1 New Capitatus Ahn 2 New Capitatus Bhk 3 New Capitatus Eel 4 New Capitatus Koh 5 Waxing Crescent Althea Minor Eie 6 Waxing Crescent Althea Minor Dek 7 Waxing Crescent Althea Minor Ghn 8 Waxing Crescent Althea Minor Fuk 9 First Quarter Althea Major Huh 10 First Quarter Althea Major Kha 11 First Quarter Althea Major Ooo 12 First Quarter Althea Major Ick 13 Waxing Gibbous Florere Rey 14 Waxing Gibbous Florere Ssh 15 Waxing Gibbous Florere Mrk 16 Waxing Gibbous Florere Tuh

Day Phase Esoteric Phase Sepal 17 Full Helianthus Jih 18 Full Helianthus Luk 19 Full Helianthus Nan 20 Full Helianthus Chl 21 Waning Gibbons Chelidon Major Puh 22 Waning Gibbons Chelidon Major Qkn 23 Waning Gibbons Chelidon Major Uvh 24 Waning Gibbons Chelidon Major Vrk 25 Last Quarter Chelidon Minor Esh 26 Last Quarter Chelidon Minor Mbu 27 Last Quarter Chelidon Minor Thy 28 Last Quarter Chelidon Minor Whr 29 Waning Crescent Aritudo Wun 30 Waning Crescent Aritudo Xee 31 Waning Crescent Aritudo Yur 32 Waning Crescent Aritudo Zyh

Other Aspects

In addition to numbering the days and dividing them by the phases of the moon, the Lion Calendar divided up the hours of the day accordingly:

• Matins — late at night or at midnight
• Lauds — at 3 a.m. or at dawn
• Prime — around 6 a.m.
• Tierce — around 9 a.m.
• Sext — at midday
• None — around 3 p.m.
• Vespers — around 6 p.m. or after dinner
• Compline — around 9 p.m. or before bed

Texts from the Mage Wars that provide dates according to the lunar calendar frequently also list the hours an event happened.

While the widespread invention of clocks negated the original function of these divisions, the practice survives both in ritual magic and various esoteric practices.

Usage

The Lion Calendar was heavily used by various civilizations throughout the Mage Wars. Many traditions indicate it dated back to Antiquity, however the Ancients are not known to have had significant enough a presence on Aren to account for such widespread use. In any case it was suplanted by the Atayan Calendar at the start of the Golden Age.

During the Alliance era, the Lion Count remained in usage in various niche roles. Since so many dates in the Mage Wars were fixed according to the lunar calendar, it remained of great interest to historians. Lelroughodaism and various esoteric practices continued to use it, though no official state kept it as the calendar after A.Y. 150. The Lion Calendar remained vital to Magic as various rituals were based around it.

During the Long Night, the Lion Calendar came back into common usage. It had some advantages over the standard Alliance Calendar, most notably in situations where fleeing rebels had lost count of exactly what day it was. Calculating the day of the month by the phases of the moon was easier, especially with the ability to fix dates by the summer and winter solstices.

As the Long Night wore on, a tradition began of fixing dates according to the lunar calendar as a small act of defiance. Samuel Fate introduced his own timekeeping systems and outlawed the Alliance Calendar, but anyone familiar with lunar dates could record time that way, knowing the dates could be reconciled at a later time. However, this led to a very interesting problem, as scribes working through the era often had no clue exactly what the year was. This leads to events for which the exact hour, day, week, and month are known; but not the year.

The Lion Count

An oft-overlooked aspect of the Lion Calendar is the Lion Count. The Lion Count fixes dates according to a 384 year cycle beginning from an arbitrary year zero. For reasons lost to history, this scale is known as "the time it takes for a bird to become a bird again". Dates fixed with the Lion Count list the lunar day, lunar month, lunar year, and the number of complete cycles that have taken place before it.

So a complete Lion Count date might be "Tierce, Puh, Sextus, 118, 3". This corresponds to the hour of 9 AM, on the 21st day of the 6th month, in the 118th year of the current cycle, after 1270 years have elapsed. Some considerable math is required to translate this into an Alliance date(as well as knowing the arbitrary year zero) but it can be done.

Traditionally, Lion Count cycles began whenever the lunar and solar years lined up. The Atayans kept a record of which of their years(which later became Alliance Years) corresponded to known cycles of lunar years:

Year B.G.A.
344
728
1112
1496
1880
2264
2648
3032
3416
3800

This allows for any known date given in the Lion Count to be reasonably calculated.

Calculating Lunar/Solar dates

With thanks to Debsta on the Math Help Forum:

42nd day of the 150th solar year would be (150 - 1) x 365 + 42 days in = 54, 427 days in.

54427 / 384 = 141 full lunar years + 283 days, ie 283 days into the 142nd lunar year.

So, 42nd day of the 150th solar year would be the 283rd day of the 142nd lunar year.