Ailhaotnůṙ

Corasur is a flat world of unknown (potentially infinite) extent, and (quite obviously) cannot have the same physical properties as Earth and the real universe. See World Map for more geographical information.

Creation Myth

Before time itself, there was only an infinite, formless, static Expanse. In this expanse, a spirit arose, an infinite and eternal consciousness, named Ailistiff. Ailistiff has few traits we mere mortals can comprehend, but among them is the capacity for boredom. The Expanse is nothing, and no thought can stem from it.

Ailistiff determined that Form was needed to stimulate thought, and created perfection. Ail created from the formless nothing the World Seed, a diamond that contained within it the form of an entire world. For uncounted aeons, the great emerald forest Nacis crystallized around it, the pinnacle of geometric order and beauty. Yet, Nacis was as static as the Expanse itself, and Ailistiff grew bored of it as well.

Ailistiff sealed the borders of Nacis from the static Expanse, and created twelve Aspects to expand the world in a way that could not be predicted. Only this could entertain Ailistiff for an eternity.

Calendar and Cosmology

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 JS 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.

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.

Days

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".

Regions and Points of Interest

Corasur: The name of the world. I haven't yet decided what shape Corasur is, but I think I'm leaning toward flat. It's anchored to Nacis, as are all things with physical forms, because forms do not exist in the Expanse.

Nacis: The site of the World Seed, and the center of the universe. Nacis is a great and perfect forest of emerald and glass, and within its borders nothing changes. At the very center is the World Seed itself, a veritable mountain of pure diamond, the static core on which the entire world is anchored.

Kormar: The glorious and ancient Capitol of The Empire is a thriving port city, just as glorious as when it was built, or so it seems. The fringe wars are rarely spoken of in polite company, but after dark, or all day on the docks, rumors are whispered, and the security of The Empire is in doubt. Many realize that, when The Empire does fall, it will fall hard, and the more forward-thinking of the citizenry make plans for emigration. Politically, Kormar is divided into four wards, the Temple District, and the Central Commons, the seat of government. The first ward most people encounter is the Docks, which actually covers much more than just the docks themselves, but is rather everything outside the walls. Inside the walls are the High Ward, the Middle Ward, and the Low Ward, where the High Ward is closest to the Temple District, containing housing for the government and Priests, the Middle Ward surrounds the Central Commons, mostly the haunt of merchants and doctors, and the Low Ward is the area of the city farthest from the Temple District, containing those members of the lower caste, as well as the barracks.

The Temple District: The Temple District is the glory of the Priesthood, a sprawling complex of muraled walls and red roofs covering over a hundred acres of land in a hexagon on the hill overlooking Kormar. It was built in ancient past, and maintained and improved over centuries. At the center is the Spire, dedicated to Ailistiff, and arranged around it in two offset rings of six are the Aspect Temples. The Temple is surrounded by a wall, though it has never seen a battle and is not as impressive as the wall of the Capitol, though it is far better decorated.

The Fringes: A general name for all of the satrapies farther than a week's travel from Kormar. More broadly, the areas that are politically unstable, because the Empire cannot mobilize fast enough to effectively stifle revolts or because the native people are protesting the rule of foreigners. Several satrapies are in outright war, in fact, and the Empire might lose some of its most economically important territories.

Satrapy of Dai'ala: Three weeks away from the Capitol, Dai'ala has been unstable for two generations, ever since the low caste soldiers staged a coup and publicly executed their satrap for the crimes of theft of land and liberty in K1359.La. (49 cycles (162 yrs) before standard present period begins.) The Priesthood conceded to them representative rule, because the satrapy is the largest source of refined copper. Dai'ala means approximately "Unending Peace". As it was founded in K1086.Chron, (The farthest region claimed in the second crusade) the name did prove to be fairly accurate.

Brief History of Corasur

For now, this is very Kormar-centric. I'll look this over rather extensively later as well, this is a first draft while rather very tired.

BK200

   Current estimation of the time a city first surpassed 5,000 citizens. The site has been named "Firsthome" in the Common Tongue and is in the territory of the modern Surihay Satrapy. Older sites exist, but the Empire has not developed radiocarbon dating and all estimates are very broad.
   Note that 1600 cycles is 5300 years. 

K0.List.1.1

   Calendar Starts. Estimation as of K800 of the dawn of human civilization. Widely considered considered falsified now, but it's beyond changing. Earlier dates are expressed with a B preceding the date, applied before the K for Kormar. 

K250

   First recorded habitation of the area that is now Kormar. 

K400

   Founding of the original Kormar, under the name Salmar, "Silver City". 

K500

   First clear evidence of the operation of the Priesthood in the area of the Temple District. 

K600.Kof

   The First Great Fire of Salmar - Salmar is largely rebuilt. 

K950.Sal

   The Union of Five is formed of five city-states and nations into a loose theocratic republic. Salmar is designated as the seat of the secular government. 

K1030.Kof

   The Second Great Fire of Salmar, the city is replanned, renamed, and rebuilt on the hill under the already-extant Temple District, henceforth to be known as "Kormar", "City of Order", or "The Capitol" in the common tongue. 

K1033.List - K1055.Jaf

   The individual nations in the Union expand semi-independently during this time. 

K1060.Voli

   Taking advantage of the lao of change, the Priesthood declares that the Union of Five is to be the central core of the new Empire, now known as Salta Colra ko Fisuria. The lands claimed since K1030 are reclassified as 4 satrapies, but little power is moved from the nations. In the lands claimed by --name--, a representative government is established, with a satrap elected from the high class. 

K1070.List

   The First Crusade is launched by the Empire, first 6 conquered satrapies are formed. 

K1085.Fi

   The Second Crusade is launched by the Empire. Dai'ala is founded in K1086.Chron, along with 7 others. 

K1107.Sal

   Third Crusade launched, founding 6 satrapies. The Empire reorganizes with the inception of the Court of Lords, and political power is finally granted in limited form to the citizenry of the satrapies, of which there are currently 24. 

K1138.Sul

   Fourth Crusade launched Westward, is an utter failure due to an unusually harsh winter that cycle. Only the Satrapy of Corasal is founded; the economy of the Satrapy of Calasuri (A very important cereal grain exporter) collapses due to the cost of the military effort leading to famine in many regions. Nationalism declines significantly and the Empire's military is left mostly unused until the Fifth Crusade. 

Interim

   *Much political upheaval* 

K1221.Chron

   Fifth Crusade launches, successfully founds five new satrapies in the fringes. 

K1232.List

   The Satrapy of --name-- does not deliver the winter tax, and the navy is dispatched. Current satrap is deposed and a new satrap is instated, drawn from the family of a High Seer. 

K1309.Sal

   Sixth Crusade launches Southward, founds three satrapies. There are now 33 satrapies. 

K1359.La

   Dai'ala Peasant Revolt - Satrap executed and after military threat fails to quell the populace, the Priesthood cuts their losses and declares that Dai'ala's satrap is to be elected from the people. 

K1360.Ail

   "Sympathetic" revolts in --name-- result in similar provisions from the Priesthood, however, realizing that they are setting unfortunate precedent, all further revolts are met with military action. Within two cycles, order is tentatively restored. 

K1362.Ail

   The "Lost Crusade" is launched to the East, but nearly three quarters of the soldiers die from a mysterious and highly virulent disease. The satraps in that direction are ordered to build a wall and further Eastward expansion is forbidden citing the will of Rakofar. 

K1408.List

   Standard Present Period begins. This is the time period depicted by the map. 

K1412.Sal

   Eighth Crusade launches Northward and Westward - No new satrapies, this crusade is only meant to quell attempted revolutions in the fringes. The satrapy of Forlasi is significantly reduced in territory and the satrapy of Forlhay is created from the reclaimed land. 

K1425.List

   Standard Present Period ends.