After dividing the project into three phases, I decided to focus on the astronomy of the fictional world. Most parameters will remain Earth-like, with one exception: I want the year on this planet to last 384 days. In this article, there will be some facts, some numbers, and an explanation of how I came up with this “Earth” with a 384-day year.
Why a Longer Year?
In short: for story reasons.
Once I knew this was going to be “another fantasy world,” I started thinking about the Creator and the myth of the world’s origin. “Since then – that is, from the creation of the entire world – the Creator watches humanity, hoping to understand its own nature through them.” Thinking about this, I was inspired by one personality assessment tool that divides people into sixteen personality types. I thought it would be a great idea if that were the key for the Creator to understand itself. I do not have all the details yet, but I decided that the number 16 would stay.
I then imagined an ancient society that could have a good — or at least any — contact with the Creator and understand the meaning of that number. In any case, the idea seemed interesting to me, and I decided I could expand on it. But I wanted not only the society, but also the world itself — the planet — to be more or less connected to that number. That was when I thought: what if I made it 16 months?
The type of calendar and the way time is measured are human matters, something very far in the future of this project. Still, I figured I could already do something now that would make calendar work easier later.
How Many Days Should a Year Have?
I already knew I wanted to create a calendar with sixteen months. What I did not know was how many days the year should have. At first, I wanted it to be roughly the same length as Earth’s year, but not shorter. For a moment I even considered making the year twice as long, but I felt that time would drag too much and I would only create more problems for myself later. So I started adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing.
I thought about a 368-day year. That would allow for exactly 16 months, but something about it did not feel right. I wanted something different, and to my taste this was too close to Earth’s year. Then I thought that maybe 400 days would be better. The year would be clearly longer, but not too long. It was a nice round number. Too round. It felt strange to me that a year should last such a perfect number of days. It probably could, and there would be no problem with that, but it did not feel right to me. I wanted something less “perfect.”
In the end, I chose a third option and settled on something in between: 384 days. The year would be longer than Earth’s, not too long, and it had that sense of “imperfection” I was looking for. And of course, the number of days would be divisible by 16.
That still was not enough for me. I wanted to make it even more interesting, so I thought of adding one more detail. That was when I remembered leap years. Earth’s orbit around the Sun takes about 365 and a quarter days, so every four years we add one extra day to the calendar. I wanted something like that in this fictional world too. At first, I thought a leap year could happen every 16 years. But I immediately decided not to overdo the whole sixteen theme that much.
What if the leap year happened every 64 years? Yes, that is another number divisible by 16. In that setup, the leap year would be a very rare event — maybe not even every living person would experience one. I really liked that concept. Maybe later I will create a culture that celebrates a holiday on that day, once every 64 years? Maybe it would be a “magical” day?
Whatever it ends up being, I calculated that in this setup the year would have approximately 384.015625 days, or 384 and 1/64 days.
Summary
In the end, I was guided by the story idea, by intuition, and by what simply seemed right. I did not want to drift too far from Earth-like parameters, but I did want to do something different. In the end, I think I found the middle ground that fits me.