Ghyll:Encyclopedant Calendar

To nurture the creation of a Ghyll Encyclopedia that will be of use to all of Ghyll's citizens, the Encyclopedants--key editors, and instigators of the encyclopaedic effort--are taking certain measures to ensure that some regional variations are normalised to canonical systems. One of the regional variations that the Encyclopedants have felt it foremost necessary to address is that of dates and times.

What this means to scholars is that when you submit entries that contain dates and times in a regional system, you will be asked (if we can get a message back to you) to provide them instead in the Encylopedant Calendar. It is the aim of this notice to define that calendar, and provide you with tips on the conversion. Should it be impossible for you to be contacted, the Encyclopedants will take up the changes themselves, attempting to provide normalisations where possible, and omitting dates otherwise.

The Encyclopedant Calendar

EC Linking Shortcut: When using EC dates in your entries, always use the special {{EC}} syntax to link back to this page. For example, typing "-20 {{EC}}'" will produce the proper text, as well as an automatic link back to this explanation and timeline (below).

The Encyclopedant Calendar (EC) is based on years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and seconds. There are sixty seconds to a minute, sixty minutes to an hour, twenty-four hours to a day, seven days to a week, four weeks to a month, and a dozen months to a year. Hence there are three hundred and thirty six days in a year, as corresponds with a full rotation of our seasons.

The epoch for the Encyclopedant Calendar, i.e. 0 EC, is based on the date that the call for entries was first set forth over the fair lands of Ghyll. Hence, the first year of the creation of the Ghyll Encyclopedia will take place throughout 0 EC. Since scholars will generally be mentioning dates only when they have occured before the creation of the dictionary, it is expected that dates prior to 0 EC will be most heavily represented in entries: the syntax for doing so is to use a negative number for the amount of years. Note that -1 EC is the year before the creation of the Ghyll Encyclopaedia. It is expected that the first round of definitions for the twenty six letters of the alphabet will take one EC year to complete, and hence the next time we call for definitions of words beginning with "A" is predicted to occur at the start of 1 EC.

To identify a Ghyll month, use the year followed by a slash followed by the number of the month. Likewise, for a day, use the year followed by a slash followed by the number of the month followed by another slash followed by the day. Example: the fifth day of the seventh month of -20 EC would be written as -20/7/5 EC. For the names of individual months and days, consult the Bursine Calendar (on which the EC is based).

Ghyll Timeline

In order to aid scholars' abilities to convert their regional dates into EC, the Encyclopedants have taken it upon themselves to research the dates for the events described in the first set of entires received for the letter "A". It has been a painstaking and laborious process, but it should enable scholars to more easily research the EC date for events that they describe. The timeline is as follows:

Date	Ghyll Event
-??,???,??? EC	The Avazian civilization falls.
-10,000,000 EC	(Circa) Common ancestors to Ghyll humanoids and Burnflies roam the planet.
-900 EC	The Nitenmangrey culture became extinct.
-400 EC	Primitive forms of Bindlet Ball have been discovered in art of this period.
-400 to -323 EC	(Circa) The Battle of Barnum Stones takes place.
-330 EC	Birth of Andelphracia.
-300 EC	Andelphracia and Quezlar 6 were active in this period.
-280 EC	Arariax the poet was born in the Evesque Valley.
-??? EC	The Brothers of the Lantern school is established (exact date unknown).
-200 EC	Historical records before this point are difficult to decipher.
-192 EC	Birth of Captain Riquiras.
-180 EC	Berell is rumored to have left the Brothers of the Lantern.
-172 EC	Earliest recorded drawings of Besq Boats date from this time period.
-158 EC	The Barnum Stones are moved to Stindersgrough by Corvin Axehand.
-157 EC	Death of Captain Riquiras.
-150 EC	Earliest known use of the phrase "Andelphracian Lights".
-150 EC	(Circa) Alarius published "Stepping Stones", considered one of his greatest poems.
-100 EC	The Brothers of the Lantern begin to specialize in four classical subjects.
-98 EC	Supetupheraraphes founds the Bureau of Forgotten Knowledge.
-98 EC	Supetupheraraphes becomes President of the Bureau of Forgotten Knowledge.
-77 EC	Meldersen becomes President of the Bureau of Forgotten Knowledge.
-70 EC	Two transcriptions of the Echecharion are known to exist.
-62/7/11 EC	Birth of Baron Claude Lloyd Albert Smallwood.
-60 EC	(Circa) The current form of Bindlet Ball, based on Awal shrinkage, starts.
-58 EC	Birth of Windsor Creame.
-58 EC	Birth of Qwentyth Pyre, scholar.
-56 EC	Rancticirchiretic becomes President of the Bureau of Forgotten Knowledge.
-54 EC	Ghyll Bindlet League, for Bindlet Ball, is founded.
-53 EC	The Bureau of Forgotten Knowledge's Steering Committee begins using three oxen in its motif.
-50 EC	Ball Lightning Liqueur and "Awal Sleeps" begin to see common usage.
-46 EC	Brother (of the Lantern) Honuphrius denounces Arariax's early/middle poems.
-38 EC	Incumbent Folktown mayor loses re-election; purportedly prefers another Bindlet Ball team.
-32 EC	Awal becomes President of the Bureau of Forgotten Knowledge.
-25/4/1 EC	H.A.N.D.B.A.G. petitions the Bureau of Forgotten Knowledge and is ignored.
-20 EC	Death of Edvard von Craghelm.
-19 EC	Bindlet Ball, Its Rules And History published (Aliens Press, 964 pages).
-18 EC	Birth of Gibbous Saunders.
-17 EC	The Bureau of Forgotten Knowledge's motto is translated, and quickly changed.
-14 EC	An act is passed that prohibits professional Bindlet Ball players from running for political office.
-14 EC	Bobby Shwarmph publishes paper in Brothers of the Lantern scholarly journal.
-13 EC	Folktown Records weekly newspaper founded, Ulfsday, the 22nd of Conti.
-11 EC	Doggerel plague sweeps parts of Ghyll.
-11 EC	Blivingdel becomes President of the Bureau of Forgotten Knowledge.
-11 EC	Much-publicised marriage of artist Siam Sinch and statesman Gabson Foye.
-11 EC	First, often revealing, lumograms of Bethany Mboya released.
-9 EC	First writings, in the form of small pamphlets, by Bethany Mboya released.
-8 EC	Birth of Morphous Ibb.
-8 EC	Windsor Creame weds Bavarian Creame.
-7 EC	The longest, and still in the 4th period, Bindlet Ball game starts.
-4/7/22 EC	Last known appearance of Bobby Shwarmph.
-2 EC	Bethany Mboya exposed by Gabson Foye.
0 EC	Ghyll Encyclopedia founded.

Folktown Records History

FR Editions Script: To convert the number of a Folktown Records edition into an EC date, you can use the online script. Just replace the number in the URI (the Web address) with the one that you want the EC date of.

From the first set of entries received for the Encyclopaedia, it is clear that many dates are stated indirectly using Folktown Records edition numbers. Since the Folktown Records has only been running since -13 EC, this only works for recent events, but those are the events most relevant to the inhabitants of Ghyll today, and the Folktown Records are common and popular enough that we can expect more excerpts from them in entries to come. As the editions of Folktown Records have been produced without fail every week from -13/3/22, we can provide the following dates for landmark issues:

Date	Folktown Records Event
-13/3/22 EC	The 1st edition of the Folktown Records (FR1).
-12/4/1 EC	The 50th edition of the Folktown Records (FR50).
-12 EC	Windsor Creame joins the writing staff.
-11/4/15 EC	The 100th edition of the Folktown Records (FR100).
-9/5/15 EC	The 200th edition of the Folktown Records (FR200).
-8/6/1 EC	The 250th edition of the Folktown Records (FR250).
-7/6/15 EC	The 300th edition of the Folktown Records (FR300).
-7/9/15 EC	Gibbous Saunders writes to FR312. Managing Editor: Garth Haversham.
-5/7/15 EC	The 400th edition of the Folktown Records (FR400).
-3/8/15 EC	The 500th edition of the Folktown Records (FR500).
-2/1/8 EC	FR519 conjectures about Bobby Shwarmph's possible death.
-1/4/1 EC	Morphous Ibb writes to FR578. Tim Timperton responds.
-1/9/15 EC	The 600th edition of the Folktown Records (FR600).
0/1/1	Ghyll Encyclopedia founding coincides with FR614.

Note also that the following dates are currently unknown:

• Mr. Bowers had a series entitled "Ersatz Bite: False Teeth through Time" published.
• The current owners of the Folktown Records are of the Amphitheatre Elite.