Timekeeping in Faerûn

Each year of 365 days is divided into 12 months of 30 days. Each month is divided into three tendays.

The Calendar of Harptos

Holidays

Five special days fall between the months. These annual holidays mark the change of the seasons.

Midwinter

Nobles and monarchs greet the halfway point of winter with a feast day they call the High Festival of Winter. Traditionally it's the best day to make or renew alliances. The common fold enjoy the celebration a bit less--among them it's called Deadwinter Day, noted mainly as the halfway point of winter, with hard time still to come.

Greengrass

The official beginning of spring is a day of peace and rejoicing. Even if snow still covers the ground, clerics, nobles, and wealthy folk make a point of bringing out flowers grown in special rooms within temples and castles. They distribute the flowers among the people, who wear them or cast them upon the ground as bright offerings to the deities who summon the summer

Midsummer

Midsummer night is a time of feasting and music and love. Acquaintances turn into dalliances, courtships turn into betrothals, and the deities themselves take a part by ensuring good weather for feasting and frolicking in the woods. Bad weather on this special night is taken as an omen of extremely ill fortune to come.

Highharvestide

This holiday of feasting to celebrate the autumn harvest also marks a time of journeys. Emissaries, pilgrims, adventurers, and everyone else eager to make speed traditionally leave on their journeys the following day--before the worst of the mud clogs the tracks and the rain freezes into snow.

The Feast of the Moon

The Feast of the Moon celebrates ancestors and the honored dead. Stories of ancestors' exploits mix with the legends of deities until it's hard to tell one from the other.

Shieldmeat

Once every four years, Shieldmeet is added to the Faerûnian calendar as a "leap day" immediately following Midsummer night. Shieldmeet is a day of open council between the people and their rulers. It is a day for making or renewing pacts and for proving oneself in tournaments.

The Hours of the Day

The day is 24 hours long but time pieces are rare so most people divide the day into 10 large slices. These divisions are only approximations.

• Dawn
• Morning
• Highsun (or noon)
• Afternoon
• Dusk
• Sunset
• Evening
• Midnight
• Moondark (or night's heart)
• Night's End

Traveling the Land

The following sections detail traveling in the world of Faerûn.

Overland Travel

Characters covering long distance cross-country use overland movement. Overland movement is measured in miles per hour or miles per day. A day represents 8 hours of actual travel time.

Walk

A character can walk 8 hours in a day of travel without a problem. Walking for longer than that can wear the character out (see Forced March).

Hustle

A character can hustle for 1 hour without a problem. Hustling for a second hour in between sleep cycles deals 1 point of nonlethal damage, and each additional hour deals twice the damage taken during the previous hour of hustling. Taking nonlethal damage from hustling causes fatigue.

Run

A character can't run for an extended period of time. Attempts to run and rest in cycles effectively work out to a hustle.

Terrain

The terrain through which a character travels affects the distance he can cover in an hour or a day.

Forced March

In a day of normal walking, a character walks for 8 hours. The rest of the daylight time is spent making and breaking camp, resting, and eating.

A character can walk for more than 8 hours in a day by making a forced march. For each hour of marching beyond 8 hours, a Constitution check (DC 10, +2 per extra hour) is required. If the check fails, the character takes 1d6 points of nonlethal damage. A character who takes any nonlethal damage from a forced march becomes fatigued. Eliminating the nonlethal damage also eliminates the fatigue. It's possible for a character to march into unconsciousness by pushing himself too hard.

Mounted Movement

A mount bearing a rider can move at a hustle. The damage it takes when doing so, however, is lethal damage, not nonlethal damage. The creature can also be ridden in a forced march, but its Constitution checks automatically fail, and the damage it takes is lethal damage. Mounts also become fatigued when they take any damage from hustling or forced marches.

Waterborne Travel

Rafts, barges, keelboats, and rowboats are most often used on lakes and rivers. If going downstream, add the speed of the current (typically 3 miles per hour) to the speed of the vehicle. In addition to 10 hours of being rowed, the vehicle can also float an additional 14 hours, if someone can guide it, adding an additional 42 miles to the daily distance traveled. These vehicles can’t be rowed against any significant current, but they can be pulled upstream by draft animals on the shores.

Adventures

Sons of Gruumsh

The starting adventure will be "Sons of Gruumsh" which takes the group from level 5 to 8. Here is a brief description of the adventure:

This adventure takes place in the Moonsea region of Faerun, an inhospitable land marked by seafaring city-states. The city of Melvaunt has a crisis. Several scions of the great families have disappeared, and the player characters have been recruited to find and rescue them.

The Wizards Tower

After we complete Sons of Gruumsh we will do a few small pre-written adventures I am using to advance the plot. These adventures will take the group from level 8 to 10.

City of the Spider Queen

At level 10 we will then move into the adventure "City of the Spider Queen" which will take the group from level 10 to 18. Here is a brief description of the adventure:

Daggerdale is reeling from a sudden series of murderous drow raids. As a grave threat to the entire surface world develops in the war-torn dark elf city of Maerimydra, intrepid heroes must discover its source and destroy it, if they can. City of the Spider Queen draws the heroes into the deepest reaches of the Underdark and plunges them into an epic adventure with dire consequences.

Slumbering Tsar

After abandoning the Spider Queen due to personal reasons we will regress to Level 7 and begin the Slumbering Tsar adventure which will take the group from level 7 to 20. Slumbering Tsar is not setting specific and takes place in an area known as the Desolation. I will be replacing the Endless Wastes on the Forgotten Realms map with the campaign area. The size of the two areas is not necessarily exactly the same and I will post relevant distances as need as we move forward with the adventure.