The diagram shows one of the chronologies I used throughout the writing of the Stone Dance and still use. This covers not only the calendar used by the Masters, but also how this interfaces with our own. The seasons of the Plainsmen are shown as well as a comparison with Mayan calendar which was what I used to give me an understanding of a monsoon based tropical climate. Other information is included which is related to the seasons.

The Masters have inherited their calendar from the Quyans. Like all calendars, the Quyan one seeks to measure and describe the passage of time and the seasons as accurately as possible. The drive for this is particularly important in an agrarian based civilization. This importance is reflected in the calendrical stones which are located in the Plain of Thrones and which are called the Stone Dance of the Chameleon.

There are twelve months and three distinct seasons each characterized by a colour. Thus we have the Rains (black), the Growing Season (green), the Dry Season (red). The months that fall into a season are also considered to take that season's colour. This arrangement can be seen in the colouring of the 12 calendrical stones that form the innermost ring of the Stone Dance of the Chameleon each one of which corresponds to a month.

The Rains consist of the two black months Sural and Arulla in which the monsoon comes from the sea in the far south-west to break over the Guarded Land and Osrakum. The first day of Sural is generally the beginning of the new year, though the year can actually begin on an intercalated day (see below).

The Growing Season consists of the two green months Gua and Hahor the period of the most intense vegetative growth.

The long Dry Season consists of the the eight red months Mandara through to Tuta when hardly a single drop of water falls from the skies.

Quyan astronomers calculated their year to be 396.145 days long. This they divided into 12 lunar months each of 33 days.

Clearly, if they had left it at that, their calendar would quickly have gone our of sync with the actual observed year. To avoid this corrections are applied between the end and beginning of a year. These are termed intercalated days and are applied as follows:

An extra day is added every 8 years - unless this falls at the end of a 48 year period in which case two extra days are added - unless this falls at the end of a 1200 year cycle in which case only a single day is added.

The Apotheosis of a new God Emperor generally occurs at the beginning of a new year and can thus occur during one of these intercalating days.

In the world of the Stone Dance a day lasts 23.63 of our hours. Inspite of this, because of the extra number of days, the Stone Dance year is longer than ours. As a consequence the characters in the books are actually older than their stated ages might suggest.

Underlying all of these timings is the strange fact that the Stone Dance is supposed to be set on our own world in the Late Cretaceous when the Earth turned more quickly on its axis and when its orbit around the sun was slightly further out...