Most of the known world employs one of two calendars. The Creation Calendar, favored by the aelvar and many scholars, counts from the estimated creation of the world by the Goddess of Light (better known as the First Sin Calendar to pale-aelvar). The present year is 139,753 CC, though any claim of precision concerning its earliest millennia should be treated with suspicion.
The much younger Ætaine Calendar begins with the political transformation that followed Ætaine’s great siege and subsequent rise. It is now 1040 ÆC and has become the common reckoning throughout most human lands, particularly in the east. Conversion is mercifully simple: add 138,713 to an Ætaine year to obtain its Creation Calendar equivalent, year wise.
Both reckon the same three-hundred-sixty-day year, but divide it according to different moons. The Ætaine Calendar follows the inner moon’s roughly ten-day cycle, placing three such turns within each of its twelve thirty-day months. The Creation Calendar instead follows the larger outer moon, whose phase completes every thirty-two and eight-elevenths days, producing eleven longer months, with more focus placed on the season. Thus, the years agree while the months almost never do. Always the source of endless irritation when translating letters, treaties, and birthdays.
Drak’nir, naturally, refuses both conventions in official use. Its calendar begins with the empire’s founding, two-hundred and ninety-seven years after Ætaine’s, and frequently combines that count with the reigning sovereign’s years upon the throne. It follows neither moon with any consistent elegance, producing dates that are politically flattering, historically inconvenient, and unnecessarily difficult for everyone beyond its borders. This could, in fact, be the intention.
— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, Magi “the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman
