Time and Calendar

Time in Carrisor is reckoned similar to modern European time, but due to the planet’s orbital perturbation, the year has a variable length between 280 and 415 days.
Days are divided into 24 hours, each divided into 60 minutes, though an hour in Carrisor would be 67 minutes here.
There is one Moon, Elana, who cycles through her phases in an interval between 22 and 37 days. Compared to Luna, she appears nearly twice as large in the night sky.
The astronomers in Sierin and Higale can predict the length of each year to the hour, and the phases of the moon to the minute. They have devised complex mechanical devices for this very task (the best of which come from Fris, as you might expect).
Solstices and equinoxes demarcate the main seasons, and farmers of all lands are well acquainted with predicting the seemingly random changes in the length of the year. The Council of Tempors, time masters from many kingdoms, convenes annually in the Grand Orrery at Meere to consult and revise the common calendar, also known as the Calends Miris, which predicts the dates and seasons for the next 77 years.
Seasons: Colten, Sewara, Sunder, and Elan (roughly corresponding to, and commonly called, Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall).
Months: Months have at most four weeks, which is 28 days. A year contains a variable number of weeks, between exactly 40 (a Seele, or Dry Year), and just under 60 (a Wender, or Storm Year). Typically, summer storms are longer and wetter during a Wender. (More on that under Weather, below.)
Annum is the name of the first day of the year, and is marked by festivals of light in the northern cultures. Southern cultures tend not to pay as much attention to the passage of time, and do not mark as many holidays based on anniversaries or the changing seasons, preferring to celebrate events such as weddings, battles, and harvests.
Many days of the calendar are named after historical figures or saints, and these names vary greatly from place to place. A small number of days, such as Annum, are common to all regional calendars.
Weeks and months must be added to longer years, and therefore a Seele (the shortest year) contains only the ten primary months, while longer years contain additional months, up to 15. These additional months are inserted by convention after primary even-numbered months. If a secondary month would contain fewer than seven days, it is not used, and instead the last month of the year grows by that amount. These extra days of the final month are called “a Vilo,” or “the wheel.”
The months are as follows: The Primary Ten, also known as maizes (main months): Annuls, Talus, Deres, Tiris, Belenes, Jelis, Septun, Jelaris, Benes, and Seeles. The Additional five months, also known as friezes (free months) in their calendar position: Colors, Walus, Gerin, Benerus, and Wendus.
As noted above, the friezes are inserted in the calendar where appropriate in longer years, always following an even numbered maize. Gerin is the most frequent frieze, falling after month 6, Jelis. If necessary, Wendus is then added after month 10. Then Colors, Benerus, and Walus after months 2, 8, and 4 respectively.
What seems completely random is perfectly natural for the people of Carrisor, who have known no other way throughout history.
Birthdays: People do not generally count their birth day as a special day, since about one sixth of the population is born on a day that doesn’t appear on every calendar.
According to some, being born in a rare month is lucky, Walus especially, and the phrase “a rare month” means “a lucky time.” But in practice, people in most cultures count their years in terms of a specific season or annual event. By extension, any short month is also considered lucky. The days of the year’s short month are known as “the shorels,” not to be confused with the wheel above, which would be the extra days added to either Seeles or Wendus.
Astrology: Birth signs are based on constellations, not days of the month, since the constellations rise and fall in an annual cycle based on the length of the year, rather than on specific days. There are twelve birth signs, three per season, very similar to our Western and Eastern zodiacs.
Note: In Higale and points south there is a civil rivalry between people born in short or long years, which is summed up by “Seeles or Wendus,” which means “were you born in a short year, which ended in Seeles, or a long year, which ended in Wendus?” About half the population falls into each camp.
Weeks: In the common tongue, the seven days of the week are: Onta, Birda, Terada, Quarta, Chinqe, Sulama, and Lorda. Each week includes (for most cultures) a single day of worship and rest. Generally, north of the Warelmont, this day is Onta; in the South, it is Lorda. In Tiris, every day is a holy day, but Lorda is still the day of rest.
Days: A day is divided into 24 hours. In most places these hours are numbered 1 through 12 twice, exactly as we do. Noon and midnight have their usual meanings.
Other hours of the day also have names, usually related to bells. In the morning, 6 hours is “trebel,” and nine hours is “corbel.” In the evening, hour five is “warble,” and hour nine is “fall” or "fell." Other hours have other names, but these are by far the most commonly known and used.
Due to the shifting lengths of the year, the total length of days does grow and shrink a tiny amount from year to year. Hours are usually reckoned by the sun, however, so this change is imperceptible in normal daily life. (Daytime and nighttime change dramatically with the seasons, as they do on Earth; this is not about that but about the exact length of a “24 hour” day.)