Time is a construct. Unfortunately, our construct appears to be in desperate need of repairs.
-"George", Wayward Time Traveler
Several years ago, a catastrophic event commonly referred to as the
Shattering struck the world of Chromatia. This was the terrible period in which the dark god
Shuriig rose from the planet’s core and split the land in two, creating the continents
Hestroa and
Priotoris, and the great sea between them now known as
Shuriig's Demise.
Even after its defeat, the lingering remains of Shuriig’s reality breaking influence can still be felt throughout the world and beyond as a phenomenon some call “Errataschisms”. These rifts in the fabric of space and time are theorized to have the curious effect of not only altering an individual’s perception of time and its passage, but literally altering it in an instant so completely that no one even realizes it’s happened as the universe automatically corrects errors and inconsistencies.
So what does this mean?
In terms of gameplay, it means there is no in-game calendar that perfectly coincides with real world dates and times. While the game world moves more-or-less at a 1:1 ratio with seasons more-or-less matching the real world, no one in the world experiences time at the same speed and in many cases, don’t even experience time at the same time. The same character can be in multiple places and points in time at once, experiencing entire days in a matter of seconds or living through a few minutes as if weeks instead.
Because of this, players are free to take their time working through and replying to their respective threads. While we the players know the conversation has been ongoing for the past month, as far as the characters are concerned, it’s been no more than a few minutes of idle chatter and allows for a much higher quality of play than what most other, quicker paced play-by-post environments typically mandate.
In this same vein, Errataschisms are a theoretical phenomenon, like déjà vu or the ever-popular concept of the “Mandela Effect”. While a few scholarly sages believe these things exist, there is no definitive proof they ever happen (because when time adjusts and corrects itself, no one is aware it’s happened) and most folks just write it off as forgetting or confusing important details. Even a sweeping change like a character’s
Mulligan to a new class entirely can be brushed off as “I was always this way, nothing’s actually changed,” and other characters in the world are none-the-wiser.
In other words? Time is made up and the dates (usually) don’t matter.
