Federation Standard Calendar

The Federation Standard Calendar, created by a committee of most of the Ervo Sector powers at the then-neutral planet of Faraa in the Charell System, is the primary calendar used in international correspondence and internally by many Ervo Sector powers. Shortly after the discovery of the Szalana Wormhole, the perennially disagreeable powers of the Hinthorn Sector agreed to adopt it as a secondary standard as well to avoid seeming favoritism of any one state.

Origin

With the Verdan Federation just off the ground and the Tyran War well underway, the next order of business between the newly allied powers was to find a standard calendar. The Krask Hegemony used the Diasporic Calendar counting from the razing of Tekarani in very short red-dwarf years, the Varbudians measured from the death of a famed philosopher at the hands of an authoritarian regime in substantially longer years, the Campurans had yet another even longer year length, and so on and so forth. This made coordinating extremely difficult, with conversion between disparate systems being a common point of contention between allied forces.

To solve this problem, each of a number of powers sent delegations to a (relatively) neutral backwater star system, in the sphere of influence of none of them. The committee set up shop in a room on Karamanski Station in high orbit of the second, desolate planet Faraa, and started to debate.

For almost a year, the delegates argued, proposing well-put-together, complex proposals, only for them to immediately get shot down by some of the other delegations for showing some real or imagined favoritism towards a certain group. A common mistake was pinning the length of the year to the orbital period of an important planet to one of the delegations, be it Teralla, Campura, Canamar, Darossa, or any other such world. The one group present who didn't try to pull this was the Krask Hegemony, as they felt it would be disrespectful to use the memory of Tekarani to gain political points.

At the end, the final breakthrough came from a seemingly random assistant speaking up to fill a silence left by the moderator's screech. The slight Campuran proposed the most immediately obvious solution that had ever been seen: "Just use the planet we're standing next to! It's neutral!"

They were laughed out of the room. Then everyone realized how smart it was. The next serving of coffee tasted really weird, likely out of spite. Now, the orbital period of Faraa around Charell was to become the standard year. No favoritism! Instead of immediately taking this concept to its logical conclusion, the delegates began to argue anew, with a fresh topic to replace the stale old one that was just knocked out. Now the problem was where the zero point would go, and all sorts of times were proposed. More than one group pitched their own first orbital flight, the Falacians really wanted their first great conquest to get picked, the Varbudians had a philosopher they really liked and wanted to use as the zero point, and so on and so forth.

This argument ended when the Terallan delegation finally pitched the idea of just using the day that the calendar went into effect as the zero point of the calendar. This would avoid favoritism, as the mysterious assistant's suggestion about the year length did as well. The deadlock thus ended, the delegates finally agreed and set to work drafting the final unified proposal to send home to their respective nations.

The Verdan Federation, being the nation that sponsored the delegation in the first place, immediately put it into place, swiftly followed by the Talarian Union and Krask Hegemony. Next to adopt the new calendar's use was Voyorras and the Enolian Coalition, two breakaway states from the Tyran Empire eager to assert their independence. They felt the best way to do so was to completely ditch the old Tarash-based calendar used in the imperial core, and switched to that of their new, steadfast allies.

Because of its origins in compromise, the Federation Standard Calendar was able to make inroads as a compromise elsewhere, even in as far-flung regions as the Hinthorn Sector on the other end of the Szalana Wormhole.

Operation

The Federation Standard Calendar is fairly simple in operation. The beginning of the calendar, marked 0 AC or more rarely 0 BC, is simply the year that the calendar was agreed upon. For simplicity, the calendar has only two divisions of time–before and after the zero point–in contrast to the multitude of eras found in the religious calendar of Marwanism within the Talarian Union and the Falacian Dominion's classical system of numbering years from the start of the reign of a certain emperor.

The present year is 150 AC, shortly after the end of the War of the Broken Bow.

Conversions

First Orbit Calendar (Terallan)

Diasporic Calendar (Krask)

1 EA (Eka'Aikiera – Year of the Diaspora) = 326 BC
1 KA (Kata'Aikiera – Year of Freedom) = 43 AC
1 Standard Year = 5.263 Aikierat
1 KA = 1942 EA
Formula – AC to EA: EA ≈ (AC + 326)*5.263
Formula – EA to AC: AC ≈ (EA/5.263)-326
Formula – AC to KA: KA ≈ (AC + 326)*5.263 - 1942
Formula – KA to AC: AC ≈ (KA+1942)/5.263 - 326

Gregorian Calendar (out-of-universe, for reader convenience)

As Earth does not exist in this universe, or at least has no relation to the plot, converting from AD to AC is an exercise in timewasting. However, the year of the planet Faraa, the neutral world that was used as an unbiased reference frame at the calendar's creation, is equivalent to that of Earth for reader convenience. The writers felt that doing anything else would be needlessly confusing, and given that Faraa is not an especially major world in the lore this felt like a concession that it was safe to make.