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The Calendar For the most part, the populace of Tarien uses the Eldorian Calendar. The calendar, based on the motions of the heavens and the seasons of the year, was developed by the Imperial Astronomer Fredriech DuMare. Emperor Jethrick d'Uthar II sanctioned the calendar in 48 AC and ordered the re-writing Imperial Histories to correspond to the new calendar. Until this point, the Soulmeliti calendar was the standard measurement of years. Until the Great War, the Kingdom of Galencia, the Flietch-ta Empire, The Elanthai Council, and the Soulmeliti Forests maintain the Soulmeliti Roll of Years and month names as a standard measurement. For the sake of simplifying the recent boom in international trade and multi-national alliances, the civilized nations have all abandoned the old system in favor of the Eldorian standard. Despite its current disuse, even in the Soulmeliti Forests, the Soulmeliti roll of years remains popular in written works, as naming years is more poetic than numbering them. Arbitrarily setting year 1 as the year when Emperor Kern d'Uthar I was crowned in Eldoria, DuMare coined the terms Before Crowning (BC) and After Crowning (AC) to describe the years. Years before the crowning are counted backwards. Thus, the construction of Phelandria in 197 BC occurred 197 years before Kern's crowning. Years after the crowning increase with the passage of time. Thus, when Eldoria granted Yaty home rule in 301 AC, it was the 301st year of the d'Uthar dynasty. DuMare made one mathematical error when standardizing the years. He labeled year 1, not year 0 as the year of crowning. A year 0 does not exist either After the Crowning of Before it. Eldorian' therefore have a misleading system insofar as the first year of Kern's reign is labeled the first year after his crowning, when in actuality it is the year of his crowning. While this difference means little to the average humanoid, many scholars have debated its ramifications for years. DuMare, using astronomical principles, also determined the length of the year, or the amount of time that it takes a Heavenly body to run its course across the Tarien sky and return to its original position. He determined that the year has 365 days. He divided this by twelve, the number of lunar cycles in a year, and found thirty as the nearest whole number. Thus, each month has thirty days. This is a small variation from the Soulmeliti system. The Soulmeliti, working on a straight lunar cycle, had a thirteen month calendar with twenty-eight days to a month. This of course, means that the Soulmeliti year had 364 days, not 365. Their system of reckoning has been inaccurate for over three thousand years, "misplacing" almost ten years of history. The problem has yet to be addressed by Soulmeliti scholars. DuMare, in an effort to maintain a calendar that was simple and in accordance with both the stars and the seasons, rectified the problem by adding five festival days. The system has standardized throughout Tarien, with Festival Days observed in grand fashion throughout the civilized world. The Eldorian Standard Calendar, therefore, is: The New Year's Festival, Drakkan, Mendrick, Serine, The Spring Planting Festival, Endrick, Mandirine, Corten, Juric, The Midsummer's Festival, Therine, Sentrien, Andreth, The Harvest Festival (which lasts for two days), Andreth, and Decander. Of the old Soulmeliti system, only the Roll of Years is left. Only poets and scholars maintain it, although certain sages have proposed that the cyclical Roll has prophetic qualities. They cite the fact that the Year of Fire, last time in 456 AC, corresponded with the beginning of the Great War and the burning of the Soulmeliti Forest. The Year of the Child, last time in 475 AC, has also been used as it was in that year that Aliquias banished the extra-planar forces fueling the Great War and an era of peace was born. Recent developments, with Dyian'ri's Army, have failed to follow the pattern. The ten years surrounding the present are as follows: 486 AC The Year of Roses; 487 AC, The Year of the Lion; 488 AC, The Year of the Swan; 489 AC, the Year of Oak; 490 AC, The Year of the Poet; 491 AC, The Year of the Antelope; 492 AC, The Year of the Dragon; 493 AC, The Year of Steel; 494 AC, The Year of the Mage; and 495 AC, The Year of the Lilac. Languages Several languages exist in Tarien, most falling into a language group. Languages exist both written and spoken. They vary from region to region, although the Eldorian, Zennonaize, and Soulmeliti languages have become the languages of trade. From the Nerrid Alliance all the way east to Yaty, Zennonaize is the primary language of Trade. Eldorian becomes popular in Yaty and most people speak Eldorian all the way to New Solarin. People in Galencia, Dalencroft, and the Soulmeliti Forests generally speak Soulmeliti. In the Flietch-ta Empire and the Elanthai Council, learned people know both tongues, and some may even know Soulmeliti. As for regional languages, each area has its own language. The languages of the Kari-zaro and Tzenchni'korack are similar in grammar and root structure. The Holy Order of the Shariishta provides both languages with the only written form for both languages, although each has its own, often very different, pronunciations for the words. The written language, known only as Shariishta, has no pronunciation of its own. It consists of basic pictographs that convey general ideas, exceedingly open in their interpretation. . The language of the Soulmeliti has its roots in these tongues, and therefore belongs to this language group. The written form of Soulmeliti also has roots in Shariishta, but the pictographs have evolved into complicated calligraphic characters, each representing a specific word and its grammatical structure. The language of the Elynthi has evolved from the Soulmeliti language. In its spoken form, it is about 25% identical to Soulmeliti. Thus, a character proficient in one understands about a quarter of what is said in the other language. Its written form, however, uses calligraphic symbols to represent not words, but syllables. The characters are combined to make words. This makes Elynthi texts two to three times as long as their Soulmeliti translations. The Flind, Orc, Goblin, and Khadric tongues all possess harsher sounds than the sonorous Sharishta Group languages. Each language is distinct, possessing a cognate ratio of only five or ten percent with the other languages in the group. No written Orc or Goblin language exists. Written Flind uses the Elynthi calligraphic syllables, and several of their own design for sounds not present in Elynthi, to form the language based upon their the sound of Flind. Khadric is similar, however it uses the Galencian runic alphabet to create words based on Khadric phonics. The language of Galencian stands alone as a language group. Originally, it came from Ancient Eldorian, and language now understood only by scholars. It uses a complex alphabet of thirty-two runes to mimic various sounds. The runes are combined into words, anywhere from one to twenty runes long. Eldorian, Mennithite, and Yatian all grew out of the Ancient Eldorian tongue. Each has a twenty-six letter alphabet and follows basic phonetics. While Ancient Eldorian was a grammar driven language, with multiple conjugations for every word, modern Eldorian only conjugates verbs and matches the genders and plurals or non-plurals of nouns, adverbs, and adjectives. Written Eldorian is exceptionally complicated. Most words have two or more silent letters and eight symbols are used to mark subtle changes in the sounds of both vowels and constants. The language of Mennith resembles the language of the Eldorians. The pronunciation of sounds differs and the words have evolved slightly differently. It also sounds exactly like it looks, a great change from the mass of silent letters in written Eldorian. Accents are only used for purposes of stress. The Yatian language has two verb forms, plurals and non-plurals, in each tense. They have also dropped distinctions of gender in all words except those pertaining to males and females. They do not distinguish between quantity in adjectives and adverbs. Written Yatian has dropped accents all together. It does, however, contain a large quantity of silent letters. Nerridian is a language that also stands alone in as a language group. It consists of over a thousand small words, stung together to make tremendous words that describe things. A red horse that runs very fast and leaps very well would be a long word consisting of the root words for horse, red, fast, gallop, and leap. Written Nerridian is obscene. Words resemble sentences and paragraphs stretch for pages. Zennonaize grew out of Ancient Eldorian and maintains a similar grammatical structure. All words have many forms, depending upon person, gender, tense, quantity, voice, mood, and pitch. Nouns have varying declensions while verbs have complex conjugations. Consequently, most people who speak Zennonaize cannot read it. The alphabet, consisting of twenty-nine letters, vaguely resembles that of Ancient Eldorian, but not enough to provide and cross-comprehension without a working knowledge of both. The tribal languages of the Wemics and the Dharja are not related to any other language group. Both use a simple pictographic written system. The Dharja system has pictographs to express both concrete and abstract ideas while the pictographs in the Wemic system only express objects and their quantities. The Kenku have no language. They communicate through telepathic powers using mental imagery to convey complicated ideas in an instant. Monetary Systems Most trading nations mint their own coins. Typically, they mint coins of copper, silver, and gold. A hundred coppers and ten silvers equal a gold piece. Coins from different countries are worth about the same no matter in which country they are spent. Eldorians also mint platinum pieces, widely accepted throughout Tarien. These are worth five gold pieces. Galencians and Khadric mint small trade bars of gold, mithril plated gold, and adamantine plated platinum. The gold bars are worth 10 gold pieces. Mithril bars are worth 100 gold pieces and the adamantine bars are worth 500 gold pieces. Blacksteel, an alloy jealously guarded by the Elynthi (carbon-steel in scientific terms) is so rare that it is never minted into coins or trade bars. It has a relative value of one thousand gold pieces per pound in its raw form, and five thousand gold pieces per pound or more for crafted items. Some currencies have names. Eldorian gold pieces are called crowns, silver pieces are called tenths, and copper pieces are called bits. Platinum pieces, common among the wealthy, are appropriately called five-crown pieces. In Galencia, gold pieces are called ounces, as each weighs one once. Silvers are called dimes, and coppers are pennies. Other nations simply use the term coins. Coins weigh one hundredth of a pound, where trade bars weigh one tenth of a pound. In order to make large purchases, characters will have to convert money to trade bars, or wheel it away in a barrel. Armed and professional armored cart services are common in Karradone and other major cities. Banks keep their money in secret, safe stashes, using high security, both magical and mundane. In fact, these banks are little more than safety deposit boxes. Money placed into them does not accrue interest, it is instead levied a storage fee, usually equal to one percent annually. Banks do not lend with these funds. Moneylenders use their own capital to loan out, not other peoples. Clever banks have used accrued fees to make even more money lending. Using "saved" money, however, is against the law, punishable by death for violating a contract of trust, by Eldorian law. Other countries have less strict restrictions. |
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