Hirèrk Moonscale

The Hirèrk Moonscale [Hee-Rerrk] (HM) is a luni-solar calendar used at least since the time of Miyarris, which measures cycles based on the moons, solar years as well as the millennia-long cycles of global climate change. Today years HM are only seen in historic works and not considered accurate in historical accounts.

These global cycles are called Epochs, and the Miyarrain calculated the length of each. The calendar was officially used in Miyarrisplugin-autotooltip__small plugin-autotooltip_bigMiyarris

Miyarris [mee-YA-riss], (also Miarris, from Mayápo Mayarous) was a hugely influential ancient civilisation located which flourished during the Celadon Epoch, from 4000-3000 BME. It is considered the first great civilisation in history since the the mythic Godmen.

Ancient Miyarris

BMElanguagelanguagelanguageAnásthiasEloyounlanguagelanguagelanguage, and thereafter was used by scholars throughout the world. Despite its purported accuracy, the calendar gained a reputation for ambiguity because of misuse. The calendar required restarting the numbering of years at the beginning of each climatic epoch, regardless of political or social changes. This led to confusion and misuse, so that historic dates recorded in HM are not always reliable.

Today the Moonscale is only officially used in Otekahré, but it remains basis of the most commonly used world calendar, the Modern Epoch. Many historical works still use HM.

The Moonscale was partly based on the Wheel Years calendar, used in the ancient Iskean state of Traithe during the ninth millennium BME. The Iskeans calendar used the cycles of the two moons to divide their year, the smaller moon Thea marking weeks, the larger moon Themsa marking months. In the sixth millennium BME, philosphers in Miyarris calculated the grand cycles of the world, and devised a new calendar with a system of epochs, calculating the number of years expected to be in each.

The Moonscale measures long ages of time, with each whole cycle, or Aeon, divided into eight Epochs of varying lengths. These transition between epochs are times of turmoil; war, storms famine and destruction. According to history, the last Epoch destroyed the great civilisation of Miyarrous, the Moonscale being one of the few things which survived.

Each Epoch begins a new count of years starting at year 1. In correct notation the epoch is also given, so that year 355 of the second era is 2HM-355.

The current year therefore, according to correct useage, is 6HM- .

The official annual calendar is divided as follows:

• 1 year = (414.2 days) 10 months plus 4 quarterly solar festivals, plus a leap day every 5 years
• 1 month = 41 days, or 4 weeks plus one festival day
• 1 week = 10 days
• 1 day = 20 hours

The months are named simply for the numbers in Mayapo:

Although the Moonscale is indeed a very accurate calendar, problems arose due to its misuse. Scribes during each epoch tended to record only the year number for the current period, so that when reading texts it can be difficult to know exactly which epoch a writer is referring to, particularly when reading copies of ancient works.

Worse, many nations or authors refused to restart the count of years at the beginning of a new epoch, and for the sake of practicality continued numbering years as before, even though a new epoch had started.

This can be terribly confusing when reading old documents, since when reading a year numbered simply “HM”, the author and the time and place they lived in must be taken into account when trying to fathom their meaning.

Other problems arose due to variations in the extra festival days which were added to each month. Some Eloyoun states in northwestern Anásthiasplugin-autotooltip__small plugin-autotooltip_bigAnásthias

Anásthias [a-NAS-thee-ass / ænæsθiːæs], or [an-ass-THEE-as] is an equatorial island continent, heart of the Civilised World. The north straddles the equator and is hot and humid, while most of the equatorial centre is an upland plateau with fertile river valleys, and stretches of arid plains and desert in the shadow of the mountains. The south is temperate but more wild, separated from the civilisations of the north by the almost impassable Harthera either missed these altogether, so that over time the year got out of sync with lunar cycles, or scholars forgot to count festivals and therefore wrongly accounted for the passage of time.

Due to this confusion, historians in both Ororr and Harthera eventually agreed upon the “Modern Epoch” calendar, which dispenses with epochs, simply numberering years from the start of the Fifth Epoch of the old system, 5HM-1, or 1 ME.

The only region still using the official Moonscale calendar is Otekahré, although most people are aware of the ME system, which predominates in international trade.