Andy's Guide to Dating in the Empire (Patreon)

I was tapping away on the World Anvil articles for our game's timeline, when it occurred to me that several of my players have zero idea about how the dating system of the Empire works. Which will make it harder to understand the timelines.

So, I recorded myself blathering on about that for a bit and uploaded it. That stream of consciousness, all done in a single meandering take, is now attached to this video.

The video also acts as another soundtest and a check of how OBS is working. If you have opinions, please share them. Sadly, the video shows I still have some sound lag, so that's something to fix.

When the video was done, I set to quickly typing out all the rambling that went through my head as I was doing the video.

If you're more a text person, here's the rambling gathered together in a somewhat more concise and cohesive form.

So, with no further ado...

ANDY'S QUICK GUIDE TO DATING IN THE EMPIRE

OR, IN WARHAMMER, EVERYTHING IS BIGGER, EVEN THE DAYS

I included a calendar for The Enemy Within campaign in Enemy in Shadows. I also added a lovely aside there about the ‘Harmony of Spheres’ examining the planets in the Warhammer solar system. But not everyone gets to read those as they’re all hidden in a book that’s for GMs only. So, I figured it would be cool to take a look at the Empire calendar and sum up the differences between it and the real-world equivalent. This will hopefully be handy not just for my players, but for other folks out there, too.

So, let’s start off with how years are recorded in the Empire, WFRP’s core setting.

All years in the Empire are followed by the letters IC, which stands for ‘Imperial Calendar’. The years are numbered from the date that ‘Sigmar’ was crowned as emperor. Now, if you don’t know already, Sigmar was the tribal chief who founded the Empire and wielded the Warhammer that WFRP is named for. He's so important, he was later deified, and even got a whole game named after him: Age of Sigmar. He’s a huge deal. And even the dates make this clear. So, if your game starts in 2512 IC, which for the Actual Play I’ll soon be streaming it does, the game starts 2512 years after the coronation of Sigmar as the first emperor.

Now, every year in the Empire is split into twelve months, with each month having from 32-33 days each. As will be immediately obvious, that means Warhammer years are longer than real-world equivalents. Indeed, as you will soon see, basically everything in Warhammer is bigger or just completely different to the real world.

How different?

Well, another difference is that the Warhammer calendar doesn’t just mark the passing of the year with months. It also includes 6 intercalary days in its year – that means it has 6 extra days that lie between its standard 12 months. 4 of these intercalary days are major festivals marking important solstices. The other two are ill-omened and, well, just nasty. But, I’ll explain more about those two days in a moment.

So, with all these extra days, just how long is the Warhammer year?

Well, the Warhammer world takes exactly 400 days to travel round its sun, which is called Söll. Further, both the Warhammer world and Söll are larger than our Earth and Sun, so everything, as I mentioned before, is just a bit… bigger. But that’s not all that’s different. While we’re here, let's take a brief aside to consider some of the local cosmology.

The Warhammer world has not one, but two moons. As I said, everything is a bit… more.

The larger moon, Mannslieb, has a cycle of phases that lasts exactly 25 days. So, full-moon to full-moon takes 25 days. It looks largely the same as the real-world moon and moves through the sky in a similar fashion.

Basically, you already know what this moon looks like.

The smaller moon, Morrslieb, is the bad boy of the pair and is more widely known as the ‘Chaos Moon’. As I’m sure you can imagine, that is not a good thing. Morrslieb has an erratic orbit that defies normal physics, and its appearance is always seen as a dark omen. When at its smallest, Morrslieb appears like a wan star, sometimes skimming the horizon, sometimes arcing across the heavens. When at its largest, often much larger than Mannslieb, the Chaos Moon casts an ugly green, light over everything, and bad things tend to happen. Bad things that only grow worse when Morrslieb is full. That’s when good folk retreat indoors and wait it all out, often praying to their gods to save their souls from whatever terrors they imagine are preying upon them. It’s also when bad folk generally get out to do all bad-guy things they love to do, like enacting scary rituals, contacting daemon gods or… well, worse.

Now, remember those two ill-omened days I mentioned earlier? Well, for reasons not understood in the Warhammer world, Morrslieb is always full on those two days, one of which marks the start of a new year and is called Hexenstag, the Day of Witches, the other of which is in the middle of summer and is called Geheimnistag, the Day of Mysteries. And, given these two days can be guaranteed to have a full Chaos Moon, they are the days of choice for the aforementioned bad guys to plan their biggest bad guy deeds. And that alone is a good enough reason to keep off the streets when the sun slips below the horizon and the world turns an awful shade of sickly green.

So, big world, big sun, two moons, one of which is EVIL, a 400-day year with 12 months, 6 intercalary days, two of which are also EVIL. Anything else?

Yup, its week lasts 8 days. Not 7. Because, yes, everything is bigger.

Got it?

Great, I'll maybe make another video discussing the Warhammer months, the Warhammer week, and those 6 intercalary days in depth.

Until then!

13 days to go!