Tracking Time in Avarha
The Calendar
Tracking the passage of time in Avarha wasn't done consistently across cultures until an accurate calendar of the cycles of Realm Conjunctions was developed. Using mathematical equations involving the time between Conjunctions and the length of the Conjunctions themselves, early Skywatchers at the Skywatcher Institute developed a calendar that is now used across most of Avarha, called the Skywatcher Calendar.
The calendar created time periods known as "years," which are made of 360 sun-cycles, or "days." Each day begins when the sun appears over the horizon and ends when the next day begins. This number was determined based on Realm Conjunctions. For ease of writing or displaying this calendar, the year is broken down into blocks of 7 days, known as "weeks." There are just over 51 weeks in each year.
A typical date using the Skywatcher Calendar is written as: WEEKDAY, NUMBER DAY of YEAR
For example: Kitday, 134th day of 5495
Development
The calendar itself was created to better track the passage of time and the recording of important events. As written predictions of the Conjunction cycles allowed for more and safer travel throughout Avarha, different ways of marking the passage of time were shared among different groups. There was little consistency between different versions of calendars, and many growing societies did not formally have a way to track time as little was written down. Yet, as writing became more common, the need for written calendar systems to record important dates did, too.
Initially, the most widespread time tracking concept was to notate what number day it was of, or between, Realm Conjunctions. This created timekeeping methods that were extremely wordy in the early periods before the other realms had been given names. For example, one date might be "the 15th day between the departing of blue light and the return of green light," denoting a day between two different Conjunctions.
Seeking a way to simplify this, early researchers who would soon formally form the Skywatcher Institute worked for several years on a new calendar that was based off the Conjunctions and could help track them, but did not require reference to them in the writing of dates. Additionally, this helped formalize the names of the other realms to also simplify their tracking.
The calendar is now widely used across Avarha, though in some areas other forms of time tracking are used locally in addition to the Skywatcher calendar.
Author's note: In terms of our world on Earth, days are still 24 hours, but those 24 hours consist of 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness throughout the year.
Additionally, while Avarha has a sun, there are no moon or stars at night, only total darkness. During Realm Conjunctions the night sky is lit by auroras and, at times, stars from the other realms are visible during these events.
Avarha is a planet and a world all its own - or not its own at all, as it only exists because parts of other realms were pulled away to create Avarha during Conjunctions.
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