Hey all, Ian here - welcome back to another World Lore Wednesday, this time looking at the Towan calendar! If you’re new to the blog, be sure to check out the rest of the series so you understand what’s going on!
Anyway, I’m running behind on my prep, so I’m going to keep this one short and sweet.
The Calendar
We track time in Unatowa using 17 months with 3 weeks each (for Seventeen is the Sacred Number) - created by Ur’Goth themself in the early days of the world. They named each month to reflect the general season in which it occurs. So you have “The Frost, The Night, The Hearth, and The Rain” covering winter. “The Dawn, The Blossom, The Wind, and The Lake” cover the spring months, while “The Fruit, The Heat, The Dust, and The Twilight” cover the summer months. Finally, we wrap things up with the Fall months of “The Harvest, The Leaves, The Branch, The Barn, and The Dusk”.
Each week, meanwhile, comes with seven days - each representing what someone might spend their time doing on that day: “The Stein, The Votive, The Plow, The Shears, The Hoof, The Scythe, and The Jar”.
Towans sometimes reference days through the day of the month and the month name (as in english) - e.g. “The 21st of the Dawn”. Primarily, though, they use the week, the day, and the month - “The Second Scythe of the Twilight”
We measure years from the beginning of Unatowa, with the Sigil of Dusk campaign setting taking place in the year of 1273, making Unatowa a relatively young world by most standards.
HNEW takes place on The Second Plow of the Lake, as of the end of Episode 3: Threat.
But Why?
This calendar setup accomplishes a few goals:
While we have a lot of days and months to remember, you can generally guess which season a month refers to by the name. You likewise can get a good sense of whether a day is the “weekend” by how “busy” it sounds - “stein” and “votive” standing in for Saturday and Sunday.
I have a hard time remembering numbers, but an easy time remembering nouns. If I only have to remember a number 1-3, and then 2 nouns, I’m much more likely to remember the date than if I have to remember the 25th of the 3rd month of 1352 in the Fifth Era or whatever nonsense.
Also, let’s just be honest: phrasing the dates as above just sounds cool =)
You can find the JSON to put into Donjon’s excellent Fantasy Calendar Tool over here. Just click the calendar tool link, click on “save/restore”, then copy/paste the text from the pastebin into the text box that appears!
Anyway, that’s all I have for you this week. See you next time when we start diving into the Towan pantheon!
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