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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

I don't know if I've ever mentioned this before or not... I once sat down to write the backstory of a particular NPC. As I was working on it, I noted that I didn't have any names for many of the dates I was including in his history. So I made them up and kept going... Later, I decided to compile my own list of the Roll of Years, and I started notating every year name as I came across it. I knew this was a major undertaking, but it seemed a worthy cause.

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

I opted against this when it was pointed out that 1228 DR is the Year of the Tattered Banners. This date does still match The Sage's reasoning, but not as well as 1176 would have.

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Originally posted by The Sage

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

I opted against this when it was pointed out that 1228 DR is the Year of the Tattered Banners. This date does still match The Sage's reasoning, but not as well as 1176 would have.

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Fair enough.

Interestingly, the Dwarves Deep reference could still refer to the 1228 DR year. Because scribes can be wrong at times. Though, I'll note that I'm not completely comfortable with just assuming that a scribe could be so wrong in his research as to classify the period between 1228 DR and 1357/59 DR as "two centuries."

Thus, there is a possibility that the "two centuries" reference may have been made to reflect a long standing event that only come to a resolution in 1228 DR. And, then, the only error the scribe would've made, would be missing "the" from the year name.

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

Year of Glassharks, –310 (A contraction of glass sharks, perhaps?)

[...]

Year of Windragons, –237 (another odd contraction, perhaps?)

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Originally posted by The Sage

I don't have time to go over this fully now, but I can probably offer an opinion on two of your queries...

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

Year of Glassharks, –310 (A contraction of glass sharks, perhaps?)

[...]

Year of Windragons, –237 (another odd contraction, perhaps?)

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I'm thinking contractions are probably relevant here... given the past contracted year references we have in the form of "the Two-edged Axe" [878], "the Far-flung Harp" [958], "the Eight-legged Mount" [1410], and "the Dog-Eared Journal" [1424]. Though, I would assume that last one is a slight error, and should include a lower case "e" for the "Eared" instead -- to conform to the previous contracted year references. A few others... "the Six-Armed Elf" [1464] -- and this one should probably also have a lower case "a" for "Armed," and "the Long-toothed Tiger" [1530].

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

I found three more oddballs...

Year of the Shandon Eyes, 741
Year of the Shandon Veil, 962

I have no idea, and neither does my dictionary, as to what "Shandon" means. The only reason Word didn't twig to it is that it's a name of a real city.

Year of the Sinhala, 916
As far as I can tell, Sinhala is another name for Sri Lanka.

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

Another general question, while I'm doing this...

On the alphabetical list, should I leave the "the" in there while alphabetizing them? Doing this means that if you're looking for a particular year name, you've got to look for it twice. Separating out the "the"'s means you only have to look once, but it's not quite as neat. Thoughts?

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert
Year of the Corrie Fist, 450

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Originally posted by The Sage

It's not really such a satisfying answer, I know, but it's the truth for the most part. Fact is, Alaundo and Augathra's prophecies are cryptic and poetic, not descriptive, as I said, and many of them are nothing more than the year names. The idea is not that they definitely refer to large-scale events: sages differ, even after the fact, on what the prophecies refer to. These guys are crazy mystics, not big-man-theory historians, and their visions were not all of the RSE-type events that TSR has trained some of us to think 'important'.

Thus, I think it's important to keep that in mind as we work further through the apparent errors on the Roll of Years. We should appreciate the possible reality that some errors may not be errors at all... and, rather, just simply are.

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Originally posted by The Sage

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

Another general question, while I'm doing this...

On the alphabetical list, should I leave the "the" in there while alphabetizing them? Doing this means that if you're looking for a particular year name, you've got to look for it twice. Separating out the "the"'s means you only have to look once, but it's not quite as neat. Thoughts?

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The second option has some appeal, but for me personally, I prefer seeing the "the" reference when it is applicable with respect to the year names. So I'd leave them where they are.

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Originally posted by Asharak

Year of the Sad Orm, 243

I found this on Wiktionary :

Swedish
orm
1. (zoology) snake; a legless reptile of the suborder Serpentes

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Originally posted by The Hooded One

Fair meeting once again, scribes! Thy Lady Hooded rides in with another reply from Ed, this time for the April 18th questions posed by Bakra, Lord of the Outlying Thread:


Hi, Bakra. Well, I can tell you that unless editing prunes these lore-mentions away, the forthcoming Serpent Kingdoms product will identify important events that befell during both the ‘Year of the Sighing Serpent’ (1289) and the ‘Year of the Ormserpent’ (1295), giving the usual cryptic hindsight reason behind the two year-names.
“Ormserpent” is a corruption of a “wormserpent,” and this is an old name for a naga. I can add something NOT mentioned in Serpent Kingdoms: that there once was a gigantic, unique reptile called THE Ormserpent (briefly worshipped in its own cult) that legend tells us was able to disgorge, after great agonies, “spawns” of 3-6 living creatures of all manner of other serpentine races (a maximum of 2 creatures out of such a spew being the same sort of creature), and that it would perish if it ever vomited forth another ormserpent. One tale also claims that a clan of very-long-lived, immune-to-all-poisons women of sinister intelligence and purpose, who can shapechange into various snake forms (from small to monstrous), are the “Daughters of the Ormserpent,” spewed out by it, one by one, on rare occasions.
This is old, old Realmslore from my personal scrolls, hitherto hidden even from the keenest scholars of Candlekeep, and it may or may not be more than mere legend.


Whew. Ask and ye shall receive, Bakra! WELL, now . . . Daughters of the Ormserpent, eh? I’ll have to investigate more fully, in our Realmsplay sessions, as to whether or not certain fell females might just be members of this clan. If, of course, it truly exists.
THO

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

It's just that I'm trying to understand what some of these things are. Not necessarily to have any lore to attach to the year, just to understand the name of the year. Shandon Eyes does sound poetic and all, but what does Shandon mean in the Realms? What's a medyox or a pernicon? What is eloene?

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I'm not saying these things are errors, but they are entries that stand out for using what appear to be non-Realms terms. I want to know what these words mean in general, not in regards to the specific year.

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

Well, I'd not remove the word. I'd just do something like either move it to the end (Prince, the, 1357) or -- more likely -- put the "the"'s in a separate column. They'd still be next to the year name, but they'd be one column over -- so the Prince would be between Prideful Tales and the Prisoner Unfettered, instead of the Preying Griffon and the Prisoner Unfettered.

Or for a better example... The way the list currently is, if I want to find when the Year of Blinding Lightning is, and I'm not sure if it includes the "the" or not, I've got to look under the "B's" and then under the "the B's". Separated the "the" as a factor -- but still having it as part of the name -- would mean you look in one place.

And actually, I don't even have to separat them out... I could alphabetize them without the "the"'s and then add them back in... But that still leaves the question of whether or not I should.

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