Calendar

The sky in Corasur would look exceedingly strange to a denizen of Earth. There is no sun or moon, only the stars. On a cycle of 12 hours (these hours are actually about three times as long as ours, but Corasur's people tend to divide everything into 12) they smoothly brighten and darken, forming the day and the night. The sky, like the world itself, is fixed upon Nacis, and rotates slowly around it. (You can determine how far you are from Nacis by accurately measuring the speed of the movement of the stars, in fact.) Each Aspect has a constellation (Called a "Sign" or lao), and each constellation is overhead for 72 days, measured in 6 12-day weeks. The stars are colored differently depending on the Aspect, and these colors are the sources of the Common Tongue names, because common people care more about the practical effects than the scriptural roles. Rather than years, time is measured in cycles and signs, with dates such as 1206.Sal.3.2 for the second day of the third week of the sign of Rasalar in the 1,206th cycle.

An interesting complication is that the current sign is a localized phenomenon. For most purposes, the local calendar is used, but every locale's offset from Kormar is kept track of for long-distance correspondence. Kormar dates are written with a K preceding the cycle, as in K1205.Fi.5.B, which might be the same as the above date (The difference comes out to +597 days). Note that in Corasur, all numbers are base twelve, but for the purposes of this document, cycles are in reported in decimal.

I wrote a JavaScript widget to implement this here, so hopefully that should alleviate your confusion.

A date is formatted as: (K)Cycle.Lao.week.day:hour:twelfth:moment:tick. These terms are defined below.

Dates

Epicycles and Longer

Cycles are grouped 864 to an epicycle, which has one cycle for every day in a cycle. Rather than being numbered, epicycles are named, traditionally after great heroes of history. Which cycle an epicycle starts on is, ultimately, arbitrary, but a date was selected in prehistory and that's enough for most people. The Standard Present Period takes place in the cycle of Hukzur, a mythical smith and general.

Cycles

Cycles serve a similar purpose to an Earth year, but are actually well over three times as long. ((72*12*1.4)/365.25≈3.31) They are numbered sequentially. A human denizen of Corasur is what we would call an adult (18 years, rounded up) at 5 cycles and 6 signs. (18/((72*12*1.4)/365.25)*12≈65.22) In the Empire, legal adulthood is 6 cycles of age for citizens.

The length of a cycle presents a problem for agrarian societies, namely, the winter is longer than an entire Earth year. Food must be preserved in great quantity, and for much longer than is necessary in Earthly societies. Canning was developed fairly early in the history of humanity.

Lao'a

Each Aspect has 72 days in the sky, which is almost perfectly 100 Earth days, (Slightly more) called a "Sign" or Lao. Each Sign has its own characteristics, the most striking is that the stars are predominantly colored in the same way as that Aspect. Each is named in the Old Tongue with the root of the aspect's name and suffixed with "(l)ao".

The twelve signs form a zodiac, and horoscopes and astrology are very common in Corasur. They are also, unlike on Earth, not complete bunk.

In Order:

Iron (Listao)

The stars are dim and rusty grey in color. The sign of Iron marks the end of Dusk, and the beginning of "spring".

Silver (Salao)

The stars brighten and twinkle. The temperature begins to climb.

Gold (Chronlao)

The stars take on a golden cast, their light invigorating beast and plant alike.

Red (Kofao)

The stars burn with fiery intensity, casting enough light even during the night to keep away the chill. During this sign, people in warmer climates often adopt a "nocturnal" lifestyle to minimize heat stroke.

Blue (Sulao)

The stars fade significantly, their somber blue light rarely seen through the clouds of the monsoons and thunderstorms.

Green (Volilao)

The stars are multicolored, but more spectacularly, aurorae paint the sky both day and night, in breathtaking colors, predominantly greens, though blues, oranges, and even bright pinks are not uncommon. Unlike the other signs, which are generally very consistent, the onset and end of Volilao have been recorded to be as much as a week off from the calandar dates.

Grey (Jafao)

The stars once again lose their color, this time marking the end of the warm season. Their feeble light no longer nurtures the crops.

Glass (Korilao)

The brilliantly white, though lifelessly chilly stars form constellations of perfect geometric order during the sign of the Governor.

Purple (Lalao)

The stars become colored in deep purples, making good color vision difficult even during the day. In even warmer climates, the first frosts generally occur by the beginning of this sign.

Black (Nalao)

The depth of winter, not even a tenth of the stars present in the other signs grace the skies with their presence. Very few places remain unfrosted.

White (Filao)

The stars once again light the world, revealing that which had been hidden. Though the light is warm, life knows that Ailao is yet to come, and dormancy does not end.

Spirit (Ailao)

During this sign, the daily change of the brightness of the stars is mostly muted, and the entire 72 days is spent in twilight. Only those with clocks are ever sure of how far through they are. The temperature is generally comfortable, but food crops do not grow in the absence of the daily cycle of brightness. The duration of this sign is a holiday known as "Dusk", the celebration of the end of the cycle. During this time, gifts of charity are given every Fourth Rest, and the working days are marked by a partial fast.

Weeks

A week is 12 days long, numbered 0-B. There are twelve of them in a lao. The days are named by analogy with the stages of life. First Rest, Babe, Child, Teen (translated, original is "adolescent" but "teen" is one syllable, see Cycles), Young Adult, Second Rest, Third Rest, Adult, Old Adult (a common term used to refer to people roughly 37-50 years (11-15 cycles) old, no English equivalent), Elder, Death, Fourth Rest. It may sound strange to you that people rest 4 days in every 12, but the days are actually about 40% longer in Corasur and even-numbered rest days (second, fourth) are just short work days.

Times

A day is divided into 12 hours (Assuming a day of 24*1.4=33.6 earth hours, each hour is 168 minutes) starting from dawn, each of which is divided into twelfths. (14 min) Each of these is divided into 144 moments, (5.83 sec) and most clocks tick 12 times in a moment, giving rise to the smallest unit in common use, the tick (0.4861 sec). A time is formatted as :6::: for noon, or :5:B:BB:B for one tick before noon. A full date and time reads "K1205.Fi.5.B:5:B:BB:B" for one tick before noon on the Babe of the fifth week of Filao in the cycle 1,205, Kormar time. For a zero time, one may leave the space between the colons blank. (":8::5" for 5 moments after the 8th hour). A less precise time is denoted by leaving off colons, as in :3:0 for "within a twelfth of noon".