Flight Rising Discussion

Alright so I made a tumblr post about how I'm thinking of recording my clan's timeline and the way the time in-game works, but I can't stop thinking about it. This whole thing probably isn't new and my thoughts have likely been repeated, but I thought I'd post this all in case anyone would like it or find it useful. Of course it's just an idea/headcanon and everyone probably has their own way of sorting out timelines, but still. Any opinions on this would be fantastic as I'm sure I've made mistakes somewhere since its 1:30am.

Anyway, onto the headcanons.
(Also credit to this thread by FlightHopper, this post by Birdskull, this post by Llanai, and the lore threads of clarax for inspiring the basis of my ideas. I didn't ping just in case.)

RL to Sornieth
Month = Year
Week = Season
Day = 14 Days (365 in year)

Sornieth to Sornieth
4 Seasons = Year
3 Months = Season
7 Days = Week
Month = 28(1)/30(4)/31(7) days

Leap day every 4 years
Month layout similar to RL
Month long festivals at end of year
Dominance lasts a season

January - Year of Frost
Febuary - Year of Trickery
March - Year of Gales
April - Year of Tides
May - Year of Growth
June - Year of Luster
July - Year of Sparks
August - Year of Embers
September - Year of Magic
October - Year of Rot
November - Year of Stone
December - Year of Rest

The last season in a year is dominated by the celebrating flight as a sign of the Reigning Deity’s influence and as a gesture of goodwill. Breaking this tradition is highly frowned upon, and many consider it a taboo of the highest degree. It has rarely happened, and the times it did are spoken with scorn and disgust and remembered as an attack on the Reigning Deity’s flight.

History recorded in either the eras of Before Pillar’s Fall (BF) and After Pillar’s Fall (**) or by the ages First Age (FA), Second Age (SA), and Third Age (TA). Some historians further split up the eras and ages by world-changing events. (ex. the Pillar’s Birth, Arcanist’s Creation and Shade’s Return)

Fully writing a date can get very long depending on the way it’s recorded
(ex. (Today) Year of Frost, Season of the Icewarden, 11th month, 18th day)

Many write the date in either some sort of shorthand (18th of 11th, Frost and Ice) (day of month, year title and flight) or use the Ages/Eras as a guide for the year (like we would write day/month/year (though that would be confusing and I would use XX to replace the year so I wouldn’t have to figure out the eras so it would be 18/11/XX)).

@AbyssalAnathema Oh my goodness! I opened this tab a few days ago but didn't have the time to read it until this morning (and then I went to class before I could post). Just know that you can always ping me for lore discussion haha!

And yes, I always felt that Sorneith's time doesn't align with Earth time, so I struggled for a while to find a system I really liked before I was even able to start my Clan archives thread. 1 month = 1 year works really well, too, and the lore thread I use it in still doesn't have consistent Sorneith time for the way days work... I don't know if Sorneith would also have 365 days - tbh I kind of just eye-ball the day of the season by looking at how far along in the week we are. ^_^;;

I really like your method, though, and love how leap years are written in! :D

I have never incorporated it into my lore, but I have a small, niggling headcanon that seasons are about broken into a more orderly month/week system because the magic in Sorneith is too turbulent, and would be different based on where you are on the continent (I'm also wondering if there is more to the world of FR than the continent of Sorneith. Is there another continent on the opposite side of the globe where Longnecks rule? or Harpies? or an undiscovered BeastClan? and they look down on the BeastClan of Sorneith for living alongside Dragonkind? or they are under the impression that their cousins on Sorneith are actually superior because they have dragonkind at their beck and call... anyway that's getting off topic :P)

I'm so glad I found this.

Bumping this to the front page! Because it deserves some more discussion haha. :D

@AbyssalAnathema Fascinating! Though I wonder if Sornieth would also have 365 days, and if their days would be the same length as ours. But it works to help us understand it! I really like the concept of each of our months roughly being a Sornieth year.

You know, what would be interesting is if different flights referred to the seasons and years a little differently. I'd imagine there might be variations on the names based on which kinds of foods were available and also in flight-specific things. For example, Arcane would have names based more on the stars and cosmos and fluctuations of magical energy, while Lightning might have names based on work schedules -- they'd possibly have to run different types of maintenance shifts based on the weather of each year.

@clarax
Ahhh I'm glad you like my system!! Reading your clan's logbook really inspired me to try to figure it all out, as I very much liked reading it all. c:
Also the reason I went with 365/366 days is due to the wiki, actually. From what I can understand, one of the questions from a previous Weekly Q&A was about how that works and Aequorin stated that the length of them are about equal to the length of ours. Though it seems that time can be a bit wonky in Sornieth due to all the magic, like you said. I can only imagine how strange time can get in and around the Starfall Isles!!

Also seasons especially seem to be easily thrown off due to the varying and extreme climates of the various territories, which can probably make an accurate judging of time pretty difficult. Maybe the dragons don't go completely by a uniform weather/climate and instead use different tells? Migration of certain species? The slight shifts in the unique weather or other changes of their home territory? There's so many possibilities that people could use to tailor the calendars of Sornieth to their clan as needed!

(And that's an interesting idea. It seems as if the Deities don't have much influence anywhere other than the dragons' continent, so the life over there could be so different! It's definitely another concept that I'd love to think about more.)

Also thanks for the bump!!

@Kittystar
Like I said above, who knows? Time is confusing in real life where there's no magic, so a world saturated with it could definitely have some weird variances! That's why I love hearing how other people sort these kind of things out; it's always so interesting to read about.

Ohh that's a cool thought, honestly. The flights and territories have a lot of influence on the clans that live in them, so I can definitely see that affecting how they'd name things and even affect how they judge periods of time. c:

I really love this because trying to justify RL time with in game time is a hot mess. You did a great job of it!

@AbyssalAnathema

Thank you for doing all this math!!! I've always headcanoned Sornieth time as different than Earth time and I thought of it as approximately a year a month, but I like how you've taken it futher! I also like how it's on a 12 year rotation! I think I'm going to bookmark this page for future reference! You've obviously put a lot of thought into this, so thank you for posting!

Ahh thank you all for your kind words! I'm very glad I could help some people out with this sort of compilation and expansion of time theories. I may make a sort of calendar or some other thing at some point to make figuring out dates and such easier in the Sornieth format, but that may be a while coming. Regardless, thank you for taking your time to read all that!