Maintained at http://www.panix.com/~alexx/dragtime.html The Dragaera Timeline A Tentative Timeline of Dragaeran History [last updated 03/02/04] This site took a great deal of effort to create. If you enjoy it, please help support it. Thank you. About halfway through writing the first draft of this, I came across Mark Mandel's excellent Cracks and Shards web page. It illuminated several previously-mysterious points for me, and did a wonderful job of making explicit (in the "Look Who's Talking" section) many of the principles that I was already subconsciously using in putting together this document. Go read it now, and come back when you're done. List of Abbreviations: Years: BI = Before Interregnum I = Interregnum PI = After Interregnum NR = Norathar's Reign Vlad books: J = Jhereg Y = Yendi Tk = Teckla Ts = Taltos P = Phoenix A = Athyra O = Orca D = Dragon Is = Issola ADOP = "A Dream of Passion" Khaavren books: PG = The Phoenix Guards FH = Five Hundred Years After PD = The Paths of the Dead (Book One of The Viscount of Adrilankha) LCB = The Lord of Castle Black (Book Two of The Viscount of Adrilankha) The Fenarian book: BP = Brokedown Palace The Cycle: 1 Reborn Phoenix 2 Dragon 3 Lyorn 4 Tiassa 5 Hawk 6 Dzur 7 Issola 8 Tsalmoth 9 Vallista 10 Jhereg 11 Iorich 12 Chreotha 13 Yendi 14 Orca 15 Teckla 16 Jhegaala 17 Athyra 1' Decadent Phoenix General Notes on the Dragaeran Calendar There are 30 hours in a day (PG 142, et al). References are made to hours 'of the morning' and 'after noon', so they have AM and PM as we do, just with 15 hours in each half, not 12. Note that four meals a day is standard (PG 405, 433), so they eat roughly as often as Terrans do. [There are a few references in early books to 24-hour days, but these are almost certainly "translations" on Brust's part.] Hours have 60 minutes (FH 256). Hours and minutes are apparently close to their Terran counterparts, and were presumably established by the original Terran colonists (see below). Philip Hart (philiph@SLAC.Stanford.EDU) points out that an exact 30/24 ratio is unlikely, but also mentioned a workaround used by the fictional lunar colonists in John M. Ford's Growing Up Weightless; namely, having one "hour" of the day be a non-standard length, to make up the difference. This "lunar" model does presume that the time system was "restored" after the creation of the Orb, since it certainly wouldn't have been used during the immedate Post-Jenoine period. Alternatively, the "lunar" model may have been used by the original colonists, but then, after the Jenoine were driven out, the Dragaerans simplified matters to an even 30/60/60 division of their actual day length, which would give us seconds, minutes, and hours that were similar to Terran ones, but not identical. There are 17 months in the year, of 17 days each (PG 59). Both days and months are named after the Houses. There may be 'calendar hacks' such as the Terran Leap Year, but none have so far been mentioned, and their impact is likely to be small in any case. This works out to a year of about 8,670 hours, as compared with a Terran year of about 8,736 hours, so the length of the year is almost identical to a Terran year, which fits with various references to Easterner's ages and life expectancies. The year starts in spring (P 128), with a large celebration. Other holidays include Kieron's Eve (time unknown, O 222). Some Teckla celebrate a day called Pudding Morn (A 95). A week is five days long (Y 39). Days include Endweek (numerous refs), Farmday and Homeday (Tk 7), Marketday (O 82), Firstday and Skyday (O 143). That's six; maybe one of them is an alternate or regional name, or Marketday is not a day of the week but whatever day market is held. The two references to Marketday in LCB (151, 175) make the suggestion that Marketday is a movable one somewhat less supportable. It's a safe bet that Firstday begins the week and Endweek ends it, but we have no guidance for the order of the rest. Vlad sometimes works on Endweek, but not always (D 95), meaning that it may or may not be equivalent to our notion of "a weekend". A Fortnight (Eastern term) is 14 days (Tk 95), implying that Easterners keep a 7 day week. In Fenario, they celebrate a holiday called Ascension Day (BP 143). Birthdays are celebrated, though with differences between various cultures. Easterners (or at least Fenarians) celebrate much as we do; Dragaerans "honor and thank those who brought him into the world" (Ts 30). A House can hold the Orb between 289 (17^2) and 4,913 (17^3) years (Tl 96-97) (Vlad says "three thousand something"; he isn't very good at math). Since exactly one Great Cycle has passed (P 161) in the last ~224,000 years (J 72), the average Cycle is about 13,200 years, and a given House's reign averages about 775 years. These figures have been used in estimating antique historical dates, although these have been rounded to the nearest thousand to acknowledge the fact that these are estimates based on very little real data. References to antique historical events in this document will be made using the format Cycle/Reign; e.g. "4/5" would indicate the 4th Hawk reign. When reference is made to an emperor such as "Juraj IX", without explicit mention of a Cycle, I have usually tentatively assigned the Cycle to be the same as the Emperor's number, but have left a question mark in, as there is certainly no requirement of 1-to-1 correspondence between the numbers of the name and the Cycle. It seems likely that, in at least some cases, there is more than one consecutive ruler from the same House. 4,913 years is longer than the (natural) Dragaeran lifespan, and undead aren't allowed to hold office. A period of 17 years is called a Turn, and these are, naturally, named after the Houses. Similarly, 17 Turns (289 years) make up a Phase, also so named (FH 9). The numbering of Years, Turns, and Phases restart with every Reign (FH 9, PD 11). This works, since no House can hold the Orb for more than 17 Phases (Tl 96-97). [The numbering was also restarted after the Interregnum, even though that was still technically part of the Reign of the Phoenix, which probably leads to some confusion with using numeric dates.] Long-form dates often leave out one or more of these items, but this may be translation error. Perhaps Dragaeran writing includes some way of indicating what part each number in the date plays, but the translator isn't very good at catching that level of detail. Conversions between long-form text dates, "slashed dates" and decimal dates are extremely tricky to work out, as they aren't a straightforward "convert to base 17" operation. For the terms except the Turn, counting starts with Phoenix as 1, not 0. But for Turns, the count does appear to start with Phoenix as 0, and Dragon as 1. [At least, that assumption makes four apparent errors go away, and only seems to introduce one new one (and that one is dubious), so Occam's Razor supports it.] As the decimal dates are used most frequently, I've generally assumed them to be correct, and massaged the rest of the data to match. The Timeline: Wayyyyyy back The Cycle "created"??? Barlen asserts that "it is part of the fundamental nature of the universe" (PD 193). Serioli appear to be the original natives of Dragaera (Is 36). Terrans(?) discover Dragaera (P 117, D 110, Is 36). Although some theories claim they were brought in by the Jenoine (J 110), this is pretty clearly false (Is 35-36). Many Terran lifeforms are introduced to Dragaera (notably Hawks, Orca, and horses, plus many animals and plants used for food), although native ones are probably already abundant. Not all animals and plants with Terran names are necessarily the same as their Terran counterparts, due to both evolution and "translation errors", but as a general guideline, if it's called a duck, assume it's a duck. Native lifeforms at this time include Dragon, Dzur, Jhereg, and Serioli (Is 36). Are the cat-centaurs native? [Question: Why didn't the Jenoine create a Tribe of the Horse? Or did they, and it just didn't survive until the founding of the Empire? Perhaps Bolcseseg is a 'survivor' of that tribe.] The "Dragaeran" race arrives on Dragaera after the Terrans (Is 36). [It should be noted here that we have no compelling evidence that the inhabitants call this world Dragaera, or indeed, that they have any name for it at all.] ~20,000,000 BI??? The Jenoine arrive, bringing their servant Verra with them (Is 36). Jenoine begin experiments on Dragaera "a few hundred thousand generations ago" (J 109-110). Unclear how old a typical Dragaeran has to be to parent (and thus be a 'generation'), but I'm arbitrarily guessing about 200 years. Jenoine experiments create Dragaerans from Human stock (Is 36-37). ~10,000,000 BI? Mountains of Faerie start forming (BP 14). ~300,000 BI?? Jenoine Disaster, fomented by Verra "and a few others" (Is 37) forms Great Sea of Chaos, creates sorcery, elevates Verra and her peers to godhood, and kills all Jenoine then on Dragaera (J 111, P 107-108, FH 429, Is 37, 204). [This dating is extremely tentative, but I'd gather that a significant period of anarchy elapsed between this event and the founding of the Dragaeran Empire.] Ordwynac addresses Barlen as "old god" (LCB 389). Does Barlen predate the Jenoine Disaster? Or is Ordwynac younger? Events whose exact timing is unknown, but which would seem to be Ancient. Dri'Chazik a Tukknaro Dzur born (created?) (LCB 147,148). Sethra Lavode born ("older than the Empire" J 114). [Some readers speculate she helped bring about the Jenoine Disaster.] Teckla tribe invents agriculture (J 112). Chaos stones first created (by th...
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