Calendar and Ages in New Kulo Seeri

Hi everyone! It's been a while since my last post - still taking pics for the first rotation of new Kulo Seeri - but I have no intention of letting my blog fizzle. And here's a new rambly worldbuilding post to ensure that it doesn't!
Lately I've been following the story of my good friend Shannon SimsFan's Medieval Charter hood, Ayre.One of her behind-the-scenes posts is about the passage of time in Ayre, and it got me thinking that really, I'm not happy using Hat's Gestational Age Mod in my game either. It just feels like I'm getting nowhere... every time I have to rebuild, I'm rebuilding the same group of Sims in the same age stages, pretty much. Then when I get to playing, I've been losing my hoods two rotations in - and it becomes a vicious cycle of ever-decreasing motivation.

So, like Shannon, I've opted to go back to Maxis age spans for the latest version of Kulo Seeri. I want the satisfaction of seeing my Sims grow up without having to wait forever for it. And no more counting ages in a way that makes sense according to human lifespans for me, either. Sims now count their ages in quartermoons (see below) but don't make a big deal of most age transitions. I figure that my Sims have a lot of rituals and festivals already - if they celebrated birthdays too, nothing would ever get done!

It wasn't an easy decision. At first I felt that, although it would feel too slow sticking with Hat's mod, removing it would mean I'd have to rethink my calendar. Then I just decided that I don't need to rethink - I'm just going to keep saying the calendar is longer, but my Sims age faster than earthly humans. And now I shall ramble on about my calendar, because I know if you weren't into rambly worldbuilding, you probably wouldn't have read this far anyway. :)

I found this site a while back: it's a site that lets you create fantasy calendars that actually support all my overly complex ideas! My calendar is more or less finished - I haven't added all the events in yet, or named all the days of the week (as you can see in the screenshot below) but it's coming along nicely, I think. It's called the New Solupian Calendar, after my first attempt at an overly complex timekeeping system back in 2011(!)

The basics (which are hardly basic!) are:

My Sims' world has a full seasonal year of 1008 days. There are two moons - the littlemoon, with a lunar cycle of 112 days, and the longmoon, with a lunar cycle of 1344 days or 12 littlemoons. So yes, a longmoon cycle takes more time than a year, and a year is divided into nine littlemoons - or, in Kulo Seeri's calendar, eight full months and four quarters. (It took me ages to work out all the details with my little calculator buddy, Mike. But we got there!)

The months are named after the eight elements: Freshwater and Earth Moons occur in spring, Wood and Saltwater in summer, Metal and Air in autumn, and Fire and Stone in winter. Each month consists of eight 14-day weeks - two weeks are a quartermoon. Then there are the cusp quarters, or the first two weeks of every season. They're named after things that combine traits of the two elemental moons either side of them: Ice Quarter (Stone and Freshwater), Green Quarter (Earth and Wood), Ghost Quarter (Saltwater and Metal - long story involving Nuidya superstition) and Ash Quarter (Air and Fire).

Then there are the zodiac signs, which I've decided to tie to birth dates rather than personality. Each of the 12 littlemoons that makes up a longmoon is a different sign (this is actually why I made the longmoon that long). I renamed them for story purposes, to make it fit Nuidya culture better, but they still appear in the same order (The Sisters is equivalent to Aries, not Gemini, for example). The screenshot under here shows the events I've currently got in my calendar:

So that's the twelve signs and when they start, as well as six major holidays.

Great Cycles come every four years when both the moons are in the same phase at New Year. They're a very big deal to the Nuidya, and to most cultures on their world, for that matter. This year in Kulo Seeri marked the start of a new Great Cycle, as well as the first year of the New Solupian Reckoning.

New Year's Eve is... not as we know it. The hours of darkness are believed to be outside both the old year and the new. From sunset to dawn, it's a time for Weird Stuff to happen. Most Sims hide under their sleeping furs - those who draw the short straw face a night of silent vigil against supernatural threats. Once the sun comes up, it's New Year's Day and it's time to celebrate - burn the old year, wave flaming torches all over the place and have as much of a feast as the remaining winter stores will allow.

The Freewalker Games are a summertime celebration of what it means to be Nuidya. They involve a lot of contests of skill, covering all seven skills in the game. I haven't fully decided what else it involves yet, but it's also a celebration of not being like those crazy city folk up north in SimNation. :)

Brain's Night celebrates the defeat of a horde of zombies by a bunch of mostly-also-dead-now Nuidya, led by outsider Nate Gorski (the only Sim in KS who'd ever seen a zombie movie). It's a day of fasting for the adults, but once night falls everyone gathers in the village centre to nom on brain-shaped candies.

Ancestors' Day is sort of the Nuidya Day of the Dead. It's a time to honour the revered spirits of the ancestors, tell stories of departed loved ones, and get one of the elders to dress up like a kora (that's the Nuidya word for a reaper) and hand out little gifts to the rest of the tribe.

There's also the Winter Flames Festival, which I haven't added to the calendar yet. Oops. That's the midwinter festival of light and warmth, taking place just after the winter solstice, and incorporates a few "Christmassy" elements that hitched a ride into Kulo Seeri with some of the Northern immigrants.

And... I think that's it? I'm sure I've forgotten something, but I think I've rambled enough for now.