: Getting tired of these posts, yet? Just one more.
: I've been thinking a lot about the old calendar and I
: think I've come up with a way for it to work: Each
: date is broken down into three terms. The first is a
: number. The second is a noun. The third is a noun
: which is sometimes modified by an adjective.
: Here's how I think it works: Instead of being broken down
: into months, the calendar of the Cath Bruig goes by
: fortnights (the numbers range from one to fourteen).
: The phases of the moon would be divided into waxing
: and waning portions, each of which gets a fortnight.
But the narrator speaks in months and days!
: The first term is the actual date, the second term is the
: name of the fortnight in question. The third term is
: variable and describes the year (much like the Chinese
: calendar: year of the dragon becomes year of the
: skull, and so on). Those years with adjectives would
: be special event years, such as the year the Myrkridia
: were captured, the year an emperor was crowned, etc.
: "Stalking", "Burning",
: "Bloody" would suggest warlike years;
: "Jewelled" and so on would suggest peacetime
: events.
: What's missing is an actual number for the year--but I
: think I can be forgiven for this since the narrator of
: the levels doesn't name years, either (except to
: specify which year the war is in, back in TFL).
: Any thoughts, suggestions, complaints, evidence that
: blows this out of the water?
I still stick to my old theory that the journeymen are named in a similar way to the way native indians used to be named. The mother would name her child after the first thing she saw after delivery, and I think this fits with the Heron Guard. They not only have indian-like names, but I just checked through them all and they all make sense. Exactly when they are named thus I am not sure, perhaps straight after initiation, perhaps they choose their own name.
Still, I don't know why the first number is chosen or why the (sometimes appearing) second word is chosen.
