The Merchant's Calendar 1.

0 (2-10-2000)
by Dave Ries-Clark, a.k.a. Angantyr
raptor2@brookings.net ICQ# 3434815 or 21564421
The Dragon's Sanctum
http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/9653/Sanctum.html
The Moon Phases font [(C)1995 Curtis Clark] is used and
distributed by permission. I owe Curtis (jcclark@csupomona.edu)
a big thanks for making the Moon Phases font, which made my life
much easier. If you are interested in checking out some of
the other fonts he has made check out his website at
http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark/fonts/
-======-
CONTENTS
-======-
I. INSTALLATION/UNINSTALLATION
A. Installation
B. Uninstallation
II. FEATURES
III. GENERAL CALENDAR INFORMATION
A. Latitude and Longitude
B. Highest Sun and Low Sun
1. Highest Sun
2. Low Sun
C. Ral and Guthay
1. Orbital Periods
2. Eclipses
D. Endlean/Seofean Cycle
1. Endlean Cycle
2. Seofean Cycle
E. Free Year Reckoning
IV. MISCELLANEOUS
V. TERMS OF USE
VI. DISCLAIMER
I. INSTALLATION/UNINSTALLATION
I. A. Installation
==================
* Extract the 3 files to a new folder of your choice.
* Install the Moon Phases font (Drag Moon.ttf to your Fonts folder).
* Make a shortcut to MC.exe and put it wherever you want.
* You can now run the program.
I. B. Uninstallation
====================
* Delete the folder you created for the program. This will delete
MC.exe and this readme file.
* If you don't want the Moon Phases font, go to your Fonts directory
and find Moon Phases (MOON.TTF), highlight it, and hit the delete
key. That's all there is to it.
II. FEATURES
As with the beta version of this program, let me first thank you for
downloading the Merchant's Calendar. May it help you as a Dark Sun
DM or player. For those of you who used the beta version (which was
a DOS program) and patiently waited more than 3 years for the
release of the Windows version, your wait is over. There are
several improvements with the release version 1.0. They are as
follows:
* Time is now tracked by the turn (10 min), rather than by the hour.
I feel that this will prove to be much more useful, since non-combat
time in AD&D is tracked in turns, not hours. In future versions,
when you can save information to a specific time, the turn will lend
itself well to campaign logging.
* The moons' positions and phases are now almost infinitely better
represented. This is largely due to the simple fact that the
program is now Windows based, which allows me much more flexibility
how they are drawn. The first thing you probably noticed about the
Merchant's calendar is the cool new sky effect. I hope you like
it...I had a lot of fun with that part of the program and was very
pleased with the way it all turned out. I tried to match the sky
color to Brom's vision--and came fairly close. I think my sky is
just a wee bit too orange, but it should be fairly close to the sky
shown on the cover art for the 1st Ed. boxed set/Verdant Passage.
It will, of course, look best if your display is set to 32-bit
color, but still pretty good if you use 16 bit color. I make no
promises if you use 256 colors or less--in fact I think it will look
pretty crappy. Also, I recommend having the "Smooth edges of screen
fonts" checked. (This is a standard feature of Win98 and Win2000,
but you need Microsoft Plus! for Win95 installed if you have Win95.)
The reason for this is that the moons are drawn by font, so they
look better with font-smoothing.
As a side note, if you click or tab over to one of the Time
adjustment buttons (Try the add a turn button, for example) and then
hit <ENTER> you will advance the time. Try holding down the enter
key and watch time fly by. Watch the sun and moons rise and set by
using the turns or hours adjustment, or watch the moons go through
their phases with the day adjustment. I did notice that on slower
machines and/or video cards (like my P166/Diamond 3D Stealth 2000 at
home) you might have to use a slower key "repeat rate" in the
Keyboard control panel to give the program time to update the
display. The PII 400 that I wrote the program on was able to handle
the fastest repeat rate, however.
* Free Year now goes into the negatives. In the beta version, the
Free Year field disappeared if you went back further than K.A.
190.26 (F.Y. 1) - Priest's Defiance - Dominary 1st - 12:00 AM. In
this release, I allowed it to go into the negatives because it is
nice to see just how long before F.Y. 1 certain events happened. I
believe that the Timeline of Athas that is (or was) available for
download has negative Free Year reckoning listed beside the K.A.
reckoning.
* Days of the month are now laid out just like a standard calendar.
I think this is a very natural representation and allows the user to
see things like weeks at a glance. Also, the season (High Sun, Sun
Descending, or Sun Ascending) and star sign for the selected month
is indicated. (Now you can find out what your character's sign is!)
* A cool little picture of the Messenger pops up during Years of the
Messenger. (Actually, this is really Halley's comet, but I think a
visual representation of the Messenger adds a nice touch. :) Note
that no Dark Sun source that I know of specifies the time period
during the Year of the Messenger throughout which the Messenger is
visible, but I would say that it is hard to find in the early months
of the year, then gradually becomes visible to the naked eye towards
the middle of the year, then slowly diminishes towards the end of
the year. Yes, I know that the Messenger did not show up in the
year of Enemy's Slumber (F.Y. 7). I do not know if it will appear
in Guthay's Agitation (F.Y. 52) and those in charge of the fate of
Athas have made no indications either way. Therefore, let the
Messenger indicator merely denote the years in which the Messenger
*should* appear.
* Events like conjunctions, eclipses, Low Sun, etc. now have a
24-hour "window" during which the program shows the event. This
simply means that you don't have to be exactly on the turn that an
event happens. For example, between 12:10 PM on K.A. 190.77,
Guthay's Agitation, Zenalia 5th and 11:50 AM on K.A. 191.1, Ral's
Fury, Dominary 1st the program will notify you that Highest Sun and
a Conjunctive lunar eclipse will happen on Dominary 1st at 12:00 AM.
(Note that I feel this is only a slight improvement on the beta
version. I would like future versions to tell you when the last sky
event took place and when the next one will occur, based on your
current time.)
* You can copy the long date string ("K.A. 190.26 (F.Y. 1) -
Priest's Defiance - Dominary 1st - 12:00 AM", for example) straight
from the program to the clipboard by double-clicking on the status
bar. That way you can paste it into any campaign documents you
happen to be working on.
* Finally, this program sports an actual bitmap for the title,
rather than the boring text line that the beta version had. Hail to
Brom for his wealth of Athasian imagery.
The program should do essentially everything that the beta version
did, with one exception--the beta version went to K.A. 1000, this
program goes to K.A. 500. I really didn't see the need to go to
1000; after all just going from K.A. 190 to K.A. 500 is over 23,000
years!
This program was written in Borland Delphi 4
That about does it for information specific to this release. I now
I will provide a little insight into the Athasian calendar. (Much
of this information is taken from the readme file for the beta
version, but there are a few updates and changes.)
III. GENERAL CALENDAR INFORMATION
III. A. Latitude and Longitude
==============================
This program does not currently allow for customization of latitude
and longitude of the observer's location. This isn't a big issue,
since most of Athas isn't even mapped. Longitude poses the biggest
problem, since what is visible in the sky depends on where you are
on Athas. Latitude would have a lesser effect in that latitude will
determine the length of the day and how low Low Sun got and how high
Highest Sun got. But, since Athas is tilted on its axis less than
the earth is, it really isn't going to vary that much.
Unfortunately we can't even assume that the Tyr region is in the
northern hemisphere based on the seasons, since Highest Sun would be
Low Sun in the southern hemisphere (and vice versa). Consequently,
seasons are no real indication. This gives us a little freedom in
determining these things.
I would like to suggest that Ur Draxa be the marker for 0 degrees
longitude, although the entire Tyr region is probably in the same
time zone. With that in mind, if you were west of the Tyr region
(like, way out in the boonies of the Crimson Savannah) you would see
the Ral/Guthay conjunction earlier in the evening, as opposed to at
midnight if you were in Ur Draxa. Future versions of this program
may eventually allow latitude and longitude settings.
III. B. Highest Sun and Low Sun
===============================
III. B. 1. Highest Sun
----------------------
Highest Sun (as the actual event) occurs at
midnight on Dominary 1--the exact start of the new year. It is
termed "Highest Sun" to avoid confusion with the season "High Sun."
The Highest Sun holiday is considered to be the whole of Dominary
1st. Really, though, the dark sun is so imperceptibly lower at 12
noon on Dominary 1st than it was earlier at 12 midnight (on the
other side of Athas) that it just doesn't matter.
III. B. 2. Low Sun
------------------
Low Sun occurs at noon on Morrow 3 (as opposed to
midnight of Morrow 1 as implied in the Dark Sun boxed set and "The
Ivory Triangle" boxed set). My reasoning for this is that Noon of
Morrow 3 is the exact middle of the Athasian year. Since the boxed
set indicates that the year begins with Highest Sun, it stands to
reason that the exact middle of the year is Low Sun. However, as
above, the difference in 12 hours time is basically imperceptible,
so nighttime ceremonies for Low Sun are justifiable.
III. C. Ral and Guthay
======================
III. C. 1. Ral and Guthay's Orbital Periods
-------------------------------------------
Ral and Guthay's orbital periods are not mentioned in any Dark Sun
product that I know of, but given that they only meet in the heavens
as full moons once every 11 years, I determined that the most likely
periods were either 55 days for Ral and 75 days for Guthay or 33
days for Ral and 125 days for Guthay. However, I quickly found that
the former periods repeated too soon, with Ral and Guthay meeting as
full moons every 3 2/3 years. That left Ral at 33 and Guthay at
125, moving like clockwork to only meet full once every 11 years.
(They also meet as new moons midway through the Endlean Cycle.)
Pseudo-fact: Ral rises 43.64 min later each day. Guthay rises
11.52 min later each day. This assumes that the moons orbit in the
same direction as Athas spins, which is most likely.
III. C. 2. Eclipses
-------------------
Note: Something to be aware of is the fact that just because a moon
"covers" the dark sun on the display, it does not necessarily mean
that it is an eclipse. The moons and sun are greatly exaggerated in
size relative to the 180 degree field of view that is displayed.
(The view window is 200x100 pixels, so if we assume the dark sun is
around 1 degree in angular diameter, the dark sun would really only
be a about 1 pixel in diameter. By comparison, our own sun is about
a half a degree.)
Eclipses are very briefly addressed (one sentence) in the 1st and
2nd ed. boxed sets. From the 1st ed.: "The endlean cycle is complete
when Athas' two moons, Ral and Guthay, meet in the heavens--a major
eclipse that occurs once every 11 years." Unfortunately, it does not
say whether the moons are full or new. (For that matter, I wonder if
the author really meant "conjunction.") However, since the King's
Age begins and ends with the moons meeting in the heavens, I think it
is safe to assume that they mean full moons, since Ral and Guthay
meeting as new moons would put the start of the King's Age at noon on
Dominary 1st--kind of an odd time to start the King's Age.
Hmmm...The "eclipse that occurs once every 11 years" part might mean
I need to re-do that part of the program. Ah well...it will have to
wait for another version.
There are other reasons for having the full moons in conjunction
start the King's Age. For example, with the above scheme, the
festival weeks Dessalia, Assalia, and Zenalia all would end on the
5th night with Guthay reaching full illumination--sort of ending the
5 day party with a bang! (BTW, notice that the names of the
festival weeks correspond to the season...Dessalia/Sun Descending,
Assalia/Sun Ascending, and Zenalia/High Sun [or Zenith].)
III. D. The Endlean/Seofean Cycle
=================================
III. D. 1. The Endlean Cycle
----------------------------
The Endlean Cycle is based on the movement of the Moons, so the moons
are always in the same positions as they were 11 years earlier. The
start of the Endlean Cycle begins and ends with the conjunction of
the two full moons Ral and Guthay. I have placed this conjunction at
12:00 AM on the first day of the Endlean Cycle--the exact moment when
Ral passes Guthay in the sky.
III. D. 2. The Seofean Cycle
----------------------------
The Seofean Cycle is based on a more abstract movement cycle.
Originally, with the beta version, I was thinking that this cycle
was determined by a "wobble" of Athas' axis. The earth has such a
wobble, but is many thousands of years in cycle. However, since
then, I have rejected that idea. 7 years is just not long enough
for an axis wobble. I have a new theory though...actually two new
theories, either of which could be used.
The first is the "Other Planet" theory. This would be a large,
possible gas giant with an orbital period around the dark sun of 7
years. (Jupiter has an orbital period of around 12 years, so this
is not unreasonable.) This planet would pass through the same
constellations in a 7-year cycle (as viewed from Athas). The only
problem with this theory is that there are already 12 constellations
that are associated with the months. For the planet theory to
really be solid, the names in the Seofean cycle would have to
correspond to 7 constellations.
The second is my more recent theory, and as such does not have
nearly as much thought into it. Our own sun has a "saros cycle"
which repeats every 11 years. It is based off of solar activity and
measured by monitoring the number and frequency of sunspots. It
could very well be that the dark sun has a similar cycle (of 7
years) that is detectable by Athasians. (Incidentally, there is
some very interesting data regarding events on earth and the saros
cycle. Do a search on the net for "saros cycle" sometime and see
what I mean.)
It stands to reason that the early inhabitants of Athas would first
notice the cycle of the moons before looking to the positions of
planets or the solar activity of the dark sun. Therefore, I believe
the Endlean Cycle was established first. (This is also reflected in
the fact that the Endlean portion is said first when stating a years
name on present day Athas.) As the years passed, no doubt sages
noted the basis for the Seofean cycle (whatever that may be) and
soon documented a second, swifter cycle--though not so dynamic as
the moons--and so the Seofean Cycle was born.
III. E. Free Year Reckoning
===========================
With the death of Kalak, Tyrians adopted the Free Calendar of Tyr to
mark the dawn of a new era. Free Year 1 equals K.A. 190.26,
Priest's Defiance. No major celestial event ties into this, and
there are no cycles to repeat. Therefore, the Free Year (or F.Y.
henceforth) shall continue indefinitely, independent of King's Ages
and the like. The remaining sorcerer-kings no doubt have harsh
penalties for anyone of their citizens using the Tyrian calendar, as
the concept of freedom is not one that the sorcerer-kings wish to
endorse among their subjects! Nevertheless, many people in other
city-states secretly use the F.Y. designation as a symbol of hope
for the years ahead. With luck, that hope will be squashed by
Dregoth in the fine tradition of Dark Sun. >:)
IV. MISCELLANEOUS
This calendar program is based largely on The Merchant's Calendar as
found in "The Ivory Triangle" boxed set. As such, it observes
festival weeks--5-day months on the verge of Guthay reaching 100%
illumination. Most other information was gleaned from the 1st & 2nd
ed. boxed sets.
V. TERMS OF USE
Use of this software is granted free of charge, so long as you don't
make money off of it! This program is not to be distributed without
this readme.txt file, the Moon Phases font, or any other files that
are in the original ZIP file available from the Dragon's Sanctum.
Webmasters may offer this program for download on their sites on the
condition that a link to The Dragon's Sanctum is also available.
While I made every effort to account for any possible input and
output, I cannot guarantee that this program will not erase your
hard drive, blow up your monitor, or fail to remove the orange stuff
from your fingers that you get after eating Cheetos. (Be not
afraid...it didn't do any of those things to me. :)
VI. DISCLAIMER
This calendar is based on works owned by WotC and many
terms used herein are an established part of the Dark Sun setting.
Dark Sun and associated material are Copyright protected and the
property of WotC and no claim of ownership or representation is made
by myself.