The world of Wanderer follows the calendar devised by the former Oda Empire; the Oda Lunar calendar. The Oda, distant ancestors of the Celestial Empire, or the Land of the Festival, were particularly interested in the moon’s cycles and observed the planet’s revolution around the sun perfectly matched the phases of the moon, dividing the year into twelve, equal segments of thirty days. They ordained this perfect alignment as a sacred structure of the heavens, establishing the first year to the supposed mythical event one hundred years prior that founded the empire, and adjusted all recorded dates around it. The calendar lacks a year zero, and the dates preceding the empire’s foundation are marked as BOE, Before Oda Era, while the proceeding dates are marked as OE, Oda Era.
As the Oda Empire conquered the shores of the Continental Ocean, they spread their calendar to many different lands. Even after the collapse of the empire, both the Golden Horde and Xin Empire, former territories of the empire, continued to use this calendar, spreading it inland of the West Continent as they waged their own conquests. The renaissance that followed the Xin Empire further cemented the Oda Lunar calendar as the global standard.
A notable competing calendar was the Gaia calendar. The early ancestors of the Gaia village, which is the modern day capital of the Kingdom of Nomads, or Land of the Sky, also observed that the seasons closely followed the moon’s phases and based their calendar around that cycle almost a thousand years before the Oda Empire. However, the first year of the Gaia calendar was based around the supposed creation of the world, immediately marking the year of the calendar’s founding as the year 8000, celebrating the convergence of the eight, thousand-year sages on their Eight Paths to bless the Gaia with this knowledge and understanding of the heavens. It was roughly the year 8832 by the time the Oda Empire established their year 100, leading the two calendars to differ by 8732 years, despite sharing the same number of days in a year. The Gaia calendar also marked the new year with the arrival of the spring equinox, whereas the Oda Lunar calendar marked the arrival of the winter solstice. Unlike the Oda Lunar calendar, the Gaia calendar had a year zero, but that year is attributed to the mythical beginning of the world, and it is believed nothing existed before that year.
The Gaia calendar was not widely adopted because the peasantry of the West Continent and the rough tribes of the south found it difficult to remember dates with four digits, often dropping the first digit of ‘eight’ from their records, which became a problem once the calendar rolled around to the year 9000. Additionally, the West Continent’s lack of connection to the East’s religious justifications for why the year must be so large further distanced them from adopting the calendar. The Kingdom of Nomads eventually begrudgingly accepted the Oda Lunar calendar as the de facto calendar once the nations centered around the Continental Ocean increasingly adopted and recorded dates using the Oda calendar during the magical renaissance. However, the kingdom still maintains their holy scriptures using dates from the Gaia calendar.
The final notable competing calendar was the Astraea calendar. Devised by the ancestors of the Kingdom of Light, or the Land of the Sun, the ancient calendar focused on the sun’s angle in the sky and when it returned to its zenith. For the Astraea, a desert kingdom, the sun was of utmost importance. This led to their calendar years being marked by the arrival of the summer solstice. Though the calendar was also divided into twelve months, the number of days in each month varied. The winter months had more days whilst the summer months had less to equalize the amount of sunlight each month received. This was to satisfy the deities assigned to each month, making sure each was reveled equally by the sun. The calendar also did not have a year zero, with year one marking the creation of the world known as the “Day of Brilliant Sunlight”. The Day of Brilliant Sunlight was a real, historical event, but that is a tale for another day.
Similar to the Gaia calendar, the Astraea calendar was not widely adopted. This was largely due to the reclusiveness of the early Astraean peoples, remaining in their small pocket of the desert for centuries. It was roughly the year 1144 when Oda Empire established their year 100, leading the two calendars to differ by 1044 years. The calendar was abandoned around the time of the Oda Empire’s pinnacle of power, as merchants hailing from the ports of the Continental Ocean, which were all mostly conquered by the Oda Empire by then, used the Oda calendar, forcing the Astraea to adopt the Oda calendar to participate coherently with this burgeoning global trade.