998 (WOD)

998

This Year In Other Timelines

Chronicles of Darkness: 998

World of Darkness: 998

Events

• The 1136th Year of Aries: A Grand Tribunal is held. Pisitulus bani Flambeau used poor but excusable judgment in slaying Forcus bani Tytalus, who was approaching Pisitulus' sanctum with apparently but not obvious intent to threaten his laboratory and apprentice. Pisitulus is punished with the loss of his familiar. As a result, the Tribunal declares that every sanctum shall be marked with a circle inscribed in a square, with straight lines connecting the square's opposite corners. The marking shall be in plain view so anyone approaching will be aware that it is indeed a sanctum.

• The Great Embarrassment: Due to the challenges in converting between the Age of Aries astrological calendar (with its year starting in March), and the increasingly-common Julian calendar (with its year starting in January), a Hermetic scribe conflates some references to 905 AA with the year 905 CE. As a result, several upcoming Tribunals are scheduled counting forward from next year rather than from the Founding of the Order. The Tribunals are thus all scheduled one year earlier than intended. The error is eventually caught, but by that time the new routine had been set, so everyone continued with it.

Notes

With the Age of Aries (AA) declared to be in 139 BCE, ArM: The Order of Hermes variously describes the founding of the Order in 767 to be in both 905 AA (which is correct), and 906 AA (which is not). It appears an author made an error, simply adding 139 to the current year in the common calendar. However, the common calendar does not have a Year Zero, which introduces an off-by-one error. This error is repeated with the dates of all future Tribunals and Grand Tribunals, which are not multiples of seven or 33 years forward from 767 as intended, and these dates are used in later books.

Thus, we've taken an ambiguous line from page 42: "other, smaller Tribunals that grew out from [the founding of the Order] meet every seven years, using year 906 as their starting point." This was doubtless intended to be 906 AA, but counting forward from 906 CE results in the same off-by-one results as the Year Zero error above, and therefore, the above in-universe explanation was added as the most reasonable one.

References

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