Eras and Reckoning
Time in Elshore is reckoned in eras hung on a single great rupture, the Chaos Event The Chaos The Chaos was a continent-wide civilisation-collapse spanning approximately ninety-eight years, beginning around year 1700 of the Inarin Calendar when the Iru Parliament of the.... Years are dated Before the Chaos, within the Years of Chaos, or After the Chaos, alongside the older Inarin Reckoning and the New Order count. The world is played across two defined ages, the present age of After the Chaos Year 50 and a later age three centuries on.
Key traits
- BTC, Before the Chaos: years before the great rupture.
- Chaos: the years counted from the outbreak of the rupture itself.
- AC, After the Chaos: years following it, the line on which the present age is set.
- IR, the Inarin Reckoning: the older count carried from the Iru People Iru The progenitors, and the only naturally evolved people of Elshore.-led civilization.
- N.O., New Order years: the reckoning of the new order that rose after the Chaos.
- The present age is After the Chaos, Year 50, the era of the novel.
- The later age runs After the Chaos, Year 350 to 364, three centuries on, a more medieval era.
Elshore reckons its history around a single great rupture called the Chaos, and the eras hang from it. Years before it are dated Before the Chaos; the rupture itself is counted in the Years of Chaos, numbered from its outbreak; and the time that follows is dated After the Chaos. Alongside these run two further counts. The Inarin Reckoning is the older line, carried down from the Inarin civilization that the Iru raised, the world remembering the long order that stood before the rupture. The New Order count marks the reckoning of the order that rose afterward. A reader of dates may meet any of them, but the After the Chaos line is the spine on which the present world is hung.
Two ages of the world are set out for play, and they are kept distinct. The present age is After the Chaos, Year 50, the era of the novel and the time most stories return to. The later age stands three centuries on, After the Chaos, Years 350 through 364, a more medieval era in which the world has moved and settled into new shapes; it is in this later age, for instance, that the Northland Continental Bar People Northland Continental Bar A Bar subspecies that appears only in the later, medieval age: the descendants of Bars who left the forest of Baramma and took refuge in the Maan empire generations before. exists, the folk who left their homeland and were drawn into the Maan People Maan The most numerous people of Elshore and the baseline cultural reference of the age. empire across those three hundred years. The phrase "current age" always means whichever of these is being played rather than a fixed point in the calendar.
Because the eras are anchored to the Chaos and counted forward, the whole sweep of the world's history can be laid out as a single timeline, from the deep span of the Inarin Reckoning through the rupture and into the After the Chaos years. That fuller chronology, with its named turning points and the relation of the two ages, belongs to the Timeline codex; the eras described here are the frame on which it is built.