Calendar era

A calendar era is the year numbering system used by a calendar. The dating system used in most of Evora is known as the Unification calendar and dates events in relation to the Council of Guelmo.

Unification calendar
The Unification calendar came into use after the Council of Guelmo which marked the end of the Quirinal Empire. The Council also formalised the unification of the Three Kingdoms of Gallias, Diutir and Ispalis and so events occurring before the Council of Guelmo are dated with the notation BU (Before Unification) and events occuring after the Council with AU (After Unification). This calendar is widely-used in Evora although Angeltir tends to date the year simply with the number rather than with reference to Unification for political reasons.

The Unification calendar is broken down into 12 months of 30 days each with five intercalary days for the New Year Festival between the months of Dark and Unlocking. The names of the months and the seasons they correspond to are as follows:

Suisland calendar
In Suisland, a separate dating system is used based on the foundation of the capital of Bethgorod by the folk hero, Suiruss. In that system, the year is 1109 although it is a common practice to use Unification calendar dates in communications with the Three Kingdoms.

Quirinal Empire calendar
The Quirinal Empire historically used an archonic dating system in which each year was named for the presiding archon, going back to the founding of the city-state of Quirinum (modern day Charinton) in 964 BU. This dating system required continual reference to lists of archons and was further complicated by the fact that many archons came from the same few leading families and had identical names. For administrative purposes, Quirinal documents tended to indicate the year since the founding of the Quirinum along with the eponymous archon. For example, the year in which Malcavius Sinistrum was archon would be followed by the number 200, indicating he was archon 200 years after the founding of Quirinum (corresponding to the year 764 BU). The notation post construit quirini (lit. "after Quirinum was made") or pcq would also sometimes be appended to this number.

The Quirinal Empire calendar was broken down into 12 months. Each month had 30 days except for every fourth month which had 31. This caused the calendar to drift of out alignment with the seasons the months were meant to represent. An intercalary was meant to be added every four years but this was done irregularly especially during the extended periods of conflict that the Quirinal Empire faced. By the end of the empire, the intercalary day had not been added for nearly a century and the calendar was out of alignment by a full month. As a result of this, scholar find it difficult to determine exactly when a given event occurred based solely on a date given in the Quirinal Empire calendar. The names of the months were as follows (note these are translated from Quirinal into Gallish):