Krynnish Calendars

D&D 3e (3.0/3.5) Rules

by Simon Lipscomb

I'm aware of an "un-official official" Ansalon Calendar that exists on the web, but all it really does is give fantasy names to the Julian calendar, and since Krynn has different celestial mechanics it made more sense to me to start from scratch and design a Krynn calendar based upon Krynn time cycles.

First off, to make the task slightly easier, I assumed a year of 365 days. This keeps some form of familiarity so that players at least know what to expect from a given time period.

From there, I looked at the main heavenly time markers. According to Dragonlance Adventures, Solinari has a 36 day cycle and Lunitari has a 7 day cycle. Nuitari has the more familiar 28 day lunar cycle, but since this moon is not meant to be common knowledge I left it out of the calculations.

So, the Solinari cycle of 36 days gives us a month to start from. If we have ten Solinari months, that gives us 360 days, leaving 5 left out. It's a start.

Secondly, I used the star map in DL5 to divide the sky up into quadrants. Assuming that the sky is seen to rotate then the constellations nearer the horizon will rise at different times of the year, forming a zodiac. There are handily ten such constellations. Thus we have ten Solinari months named for ten gods. There are equal numbers of "good" and "evil" gods, mostly grouped together. I felt it most appropriate for the rising months for the "evil" constellations to be the dark days of winter, and for the "good" gods to be rising in summer.

Elven Calendar

The elves have the oldest extant civilisation, and as they tend to be snobbish about the inventions of the other races it made sense for them to still be using the same calendar that they have done for ages. I converted the zodiacal gods to the elven equivalent, although we fell short by two so these were made up with Solinari and Lunitari. The months belonging to the prime gods of good were given 37 days each, to use up the extra 5 days and to show the dominance of the good gods (shown in italics below). Thus the elven calendar ends up like:

Ergoth

As for the other main calendar, Ergoth was the first major human civilization, and they too had a Solinari based calendar. However, they neglected to include the extra five days and so over the years the calendar became out of sync with the seasons. Originally it had the same basis as the elven calendar - ten months each of thirty six days in length named after the zodiacal gods.

Note that Ergoth does not have Hiddukel in its pantheon. The legendary first emperor was named instead.

Solamnia

The Darianists of Solamnia used this calendar but altered it according to their religious beliefs. Ergoth was dualistic and accepted the dark gods as much as the light gods. Darianism did not accept such a system and so excised the "evil" gods from their calendar. They were replaced by the planetary gods of Istar. Vinas Solamnus, amongst his other achievements, also fixed the calendar by adding the extra five missing days. These were inserted in between the months as special days, outside of any month, as dates all of their own. Four were based upon the equinoxes and solstices (Spring Dawning, Summer Flame, Autumn Twilight and Winter Night) and one, Yule was 7 Days (i.e. one Lunitari cycle) after Winter Night. These days existed by themselves. It is possible, for example, to go: 22nd Hiddukine, Yule, 23rd Hiddukine.

Istar

The months no longer matched the lunar cycles, but the seasons worked out correctly. The first Kingpriest of Istar added two extra months to correct what he saw as an oversight to the gods Paladine and Drehacht (Reorx). The length of each month was reduced to thirty days apiece (12x30 + 5 special days gives 365). This is the calendar still in use in most parts of the world today. The elves still use their old calendar, and the ogres use some ancient method based solely on solar cycles and feast days, but the predominant calendar is the Istarin one:

Hiddukel has the "honour" of being the only "evil" god still remaining in the calendar. I don't know how he managed to remain there!

Days of the Week

The elves do not name the days or divide each month up into smaller units, although they do use the ancient seven day Lunitari cycle. Elsewhere, the days of the week are given similar names across the continent. The origin of these names is obscure but seems related to the Talis deck.

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