Moon, Time, and History in Runehack

Sometimes, it is tempting to go way too deep into worldbuilding details to make the world feel more real. Since people can't remember every little detail about the world, I'd rather keep things simple. It could be neat to have custom names for months, week days, hours of day, centuries, etc. I've decided to keep things simple... relatively speaking. I don't want to focus on custom names, I want to focus on curiosities instead.

Moon

Let's start with a very important fact that you can already see in the picture below. Yes, the Runehack's Moon is a torus.

If you love it you should put a ring on it. I love how Runehack is turning out.
This, as well as other pictures of the Moon in this article, were kindly rendered by Kobold. Thank you for the help!

Years ago, I watched a video about how a donut-shaped planet could exist. While it's theoretically possible, it probably isn't formed naturally, and it would need to spin very fast around its axis to balance out the gravity that would otherwise cause the celestial object to collapse with centrifugal forces. I figured that if this works for planets, it could also work for its moons, no matter how unlikely it could be.

Runehack's Moon takes exactly 30 days to orbit the planet, and just like our own Moon, this Moon is just far enough from the planet to cover up the Sun all around its edges when it eclipses the Sun... with the exception of the hole in the middle, of course.

Some of the Runehack's Moon phases. Going from top to bottom, left to right: Ring Moon, Waxing Gibbous Moon, Waning Broken Ring Moon, Waning Double Crescent Moon.

Culturally, torus has become a symbol of change and cycle, while a circle without a hole in it stands for a stasis or permanence. This is because the Moon changes its phases, but the Sun doesn't (at least not visibly to a human observer). There's also another symbol that's culturally prominent, and it looks like a ring with a small dash crossing it on the upper left side (similar to the letter Q rotated 180 degrees). The founder of the Pantheon of Misfortunes religion has witnessed one day a comet flying through the Moon's hole, a once in a lifetime sight. This holy symbol represents a cycle that "heads somewhere", describing the core philosophy behind scorning the pantheon: one should give up on all the negative aspects of life, and learn to move on beyond them.

Calendar

Runehack's year lasts 360 days. There are two calendars that are used widely around the world: the seasonal, and the lunar.

The seasonal calendar divides the year into the seasons instead of months. Each season lasts 90 days, and their names are identical to those in our world: Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. Of course, depending on where in the world you are, they can have different effects on the weather. It is widely used in the modern cities with the mistweb access.

The lunar calendar divides the year into 12 months that are 30 days each. All of the months are divided into the same four seasons as listed above, and thus commonly named after them, with prefixes that determine whether the month is at the start, in the middle, or in the end of the season. Thus, the full list of months is as follows:

Evespring, Midspring, Endspring, Evesummer, Midsummer, Endsummer, Evefall, Midfall, Endfall, Evewinter, Midwinter, Endwinter.

The modern world sees this sort of calendar as archaic, similar to how we would treat the Roman numerals. In the present day, it's more often used in the cities without access to the mistweb, such as Wineholm.

No leap years, no irregularities. Even the day lasts exactly 24 hours. This world is almost suspiciously consistent.

History

I've been avoiding this part for a long time, and I'd love to keep avoiding it for as much as I can, but we'll see.