Aurora

The world of Aurora, like so many, follows a pattern of wheels within wheels.

Each day, the planet spins once on its axis, turning each face to the sun. The red moon, Sword, spins around the planet, completing a full orbit every fourteen days. The white moon, Shield, is much faster, and completes its orbit in only five. As they race around the world, the planet itself makes a slow and steady march around the sun.

The planet makes one full rotation around the sun in three hundred and eighty days, marking one year. In that time, the planet’s tilt and elliptical orbit produce fluctuations in temperature, and the seasons change. In the northern hemisphere, the year begins with a sudden plunge into winter’s freezing temperatures, followed by the Long Spring that takes half the year before ending in a scorching summer. In the southern hemisphere, this seasonal cycle is offset, and the year begins halfway through the Long Spring, with summer and winter framing the midpoint of the year.

The year is divided into thirteen sindahlan, intervals of twenty-eight days. This in turn is divided into four sef of seven days each. Sindahlan means “two-hand pass”, and it refers to the fact that Sword makes exactly two full orbits in this interval. Each sindahlan begins with a feast day that is not considered part of the 28-day schedule, and each feast day honors a different major deity. The Ancients established this simple numerical calendar during the early days of their empire, but the divine associations were added later.

• The Feast Of The Scales begins the first sindahlan and honors Wys, god of balance and temperance. Shield is always full on this day, and this festival marks the beginning of northern hemisphere winter. Crops are harvested, and bonfires and feasts prepare the people for the coming cold. In the southern hemisphere, the Long Spring is in full swing, and the people celebrate new beginnings without the threat of the coming frost.
• The Feast Of Liunn begins the second sindahlan and honors Liunn Keen-Eyed, goddess of inspiration. For artists and creatives, this feast is more than simply a fun public holiday. They present their unfinished work for public scrutiny in the hopes that this mortifying ordeal will draw the attention of Liunn and grant them a burst of inspiration to finish their work. Chefs also use this as an opportunity to taste-test their more experimental creations – it’s often considered unwise to eat any suspicious pastries on this day.
• Ishva’s Turn begins the third sindahlan and honors Ishva, The March Of Stars, deity of time and decay. In the heart of northern hemisphere winter, families celebrate in the comfort of their homes with hearty meals and an exchange of gifts. Some children honor Ishva with effigies made of snow – as they melt and deteriorate, it is seen as a reminder of Ishva’s inevitability. In the southern hemisphere, with no snow to speak of, Ishva is instead honored with a special drink where a hardened sugar candy in the image of Ishva is stirred into warm milk and allowed to dissolve.
• Twin’s Turn begins the fourth sindahlan and honors The Twins. This feast day was celebrated by the Ancients, who otherwise had very little time for gods, and is one of the oldest traditional celebrations. This sindahlan sees many animals reproducing in advance of warming weather, and the new life is celebrated alongside the snowmelt with unique pastries and bonfires. Despite the fact that the Ancients never colonized so far south, this celebration reached the southern hemisphere largely unchanged.
• Hesta’s Embrace begins the fifth sindahlan and honors Hesta, The Open Hearth, goddess of compassion. In the northern hemisphere this sindahlan marks the beginning of spring, while in the southern hemisphere it heralds summer instead. The whole world embraces the coming heat with dancing and song, and in honor of Hesta, all food is shared with at least one other person.
• Pendulum’s Swing begins the sixth sindahlan and honors Graiann, god of justice. Shield is full again on this feast day, and it stands as a turning point of the year. This festival is more subdued and grim than some. Debts are either repaid or forgiven, a tradition that sometimes involves a symbolic exchange of gifts. Some vengeance-seekers choose this day to take their revenge, hoping Graiann will support their endeavor.
• The seventh sindahlan holds the exact midpoint of the year, both an equinox and the point where the distance between the planet and the sun is exactly midway between its two extremes. This feast day was considered too significant to devote to any single conceptual god, and is instead dedicated to the sun. The sun does not have a god – or rather, while a handful of very rare historical occurrences have documented the appearance of a shining sun-like figure who may be the sun god, they do not appear to function like any other conceptual gods, and it is generally accepted that the sun god is hypothetical at this point. Still, the sun is personified in artwork and literature as Yanna The Golden, a shining figure with indistinct features. A wide assortment of pastries and fruits are eaten on this day – as long as they’re round and yellow-to-golden-brown. Many regions also bake “sun-cakes,” distinguished by the stylized sun stamped on their surface – though beyond that, the recipe varies wildly from place to place.
• Lyssandra’s Turn begins the eighth sindahlan and honors Lyssandra, She Who Finds A Way, goddess of survival and adaption. In the southern hemisphere it marks the beginning of winter, while the northern hemisphere is halfway through the Long Spring. In the south, this festival is celebrated with a harvest and a feast of the last fresh fruits of the season, in addition to cured meats and very solid breads in preparation for the cold.
• The Feast Of The Storykeeper begins the ninth sindahlan and honors Shanyasi, goddess of music and stories. Poets and bards sing stories, plays are performed, and overall this feast day is dedicated to the performance arts. Supposedly, Shanyasi herself incarnates in disguise every year and shares a story no-one has ever heard before, though the truth of that story is very unreliable. This puts her at odds with Sennaia Word-Seller, goddess of knowledge, who supposedly also incarnates on this day to try and fact-check Shanyasi before she misleads any mortals. Some of the older bards say this is just how those two flirt.
• The Feast Of Rest begins the tenth sindahlan and honors Emnis, god of dreams. Emnis is one of the oldest gods in the world, and this celebration likely has very ancient roots, possibly even predating the emergence of humans and elves from the singing caves. Very low-key public festivities and soothing mulled beverages are staples of this festival, and revelers hope for sweet dreams and uninterrupted sleep. Some also share their more interesting or wild dreams, which has the handy side effect of lulling listeners to sleep. But some also remember to honor Emnis’s less well-liked sister, Erebas, The Nightmare Queen. Erebas’s dreams are unpleasant, but they often bring warnings of future danger, and her worshippers ask that their nightmares hold meaning and hints of the future. Erebas is honored with a bitter drink mulled with a mild hallucinogen.
• The Feast Of Serenis begins the eleventh sindahlan and honors Serenis Bright-Eyed, deity of love. This sindahlan marks the end of southern hemisphere winter and the beginning of the Long Spring, as well as the beginning of northern hemisphere summer. Spirits are high and permeated with an air of togetherness. While many would-be couples take this opportunity to confess their feelings, Serenis appreciates honest expressions of love in all its varieties, and many revelers simply spend time with their friends or families.
• Siodha’s Turn begins the twelfth sindahlan and honors Siodha Swift-Footed, deity of safe travels. With the world warm and temperate, many people travel in this sindahlan, and some trade routes reopen in earnest here. Siodha is honored casually, with very few public festivities, but anyone planning on traveling in this interval leaves a drink outside for Siodha to quench their thirst. If the cup is emptied by the following day, it’s seen as a good sign for the hopeful traveler.
• Learner’s Lesson begins the thirteenth and final sindahlan and honors Brenn Ever-Changing, god of learning and wisdom. On this day, people reflect on the lessons of the previous year and what they’ll do going forward. Some pray to Brenn to help them internalize the lessons they’ve learned and develop better habits. Many treat this as the last chance to make good on their resolutions for the previous year, too. Public festivities are common, and many revelers engage in a form of self-deprecating humor where they explain the funniest, most slapstick lesson they learned that year.
• However, the thirteen sindahlan only cover 377 days of the year. The final three days of the year are considered outside the normal calendar, and are celebrated in a myriad of ways around the world. Usually they end up dedicated to more local deities and spirits, while in some more laid-back regions they mark a general period of rest, relaxation and contemplation.

With the year over, a new year begins. But even the years follow cycles of their own. While Shield’s five-day orbit evenly divides the 380-day year, and thus Shield plays out the same phases on the same days of the year, Sword’s fourteen-day orbit does not. Every year, Sword begins the year two days farther along its cycle than the previous year. This produces a septennial cycle. Once every seven years, both Sword and Shield are full on the first day of the year.

Every 200 days, give or take a few hours, eclipse season begins, lasting about three days. This is when the orbit of each moon intersects with the planet’s orbital plane. Eclipses occur when this interval overlaps with either a full or new moon. Sword eclipses are somewhat rare (solar Sword eclipses happen roughly once every 3.7 years, followed by two lunar Sword eclipses, each one almost exactly one year after the previous eclipse), but Shield eclipses happen very frequently, sometimes more than once in a given eclipse season – it’s not unheard of for Shield to produce a partial lunar eclipse, and then two and a half days later produce a partial solar eclipse.