Your Character and their age.

[kkonstantaras]

Hey, peeps!

 

So, how do you measure your Characters' age? Given that every planet has it's own rotation period around its Sun. Do you use Earth's years a standard? Your Character's homeplanet? Perhaps, Corruscant years are the Galactic Standard for Reps and Dromund Kaas for Imps?

 

And that, actually, rises a bigger SW question: How do we measure years/time?

[ceryxp]

The sequence of events in the game is set to largely follow real world years as noted by Charles in their post about the current in-game year. As Charles also noted in that thread, while technically accurate that the Empire should have their own calendar and year dating schema all dates within the game are based upon BTC (Before Treaty of Coruscant), ATC (After Treaty of Coruscant), and BBY (Before Battle of Yavin), and an in-game year is a galactic standard year which is, as you note, based upon Coruscant's solar cycle.

 

So, that said, whether a year is 365 Earth days or 368 Coruscant days is not really relevant to the timeline since everything is notated as BTC and ATC. This timeline on TOR Community is not accurate respective to the timeline put forth by Charles, but that only affects the timeline after the start of the game. We know that the game started in 10 ATC; ten years after the Treaty of Coruscant. From Charles we know that the current in-game year is 26 ATC; 26 years after the Treaty of Coruscant and 16 years after the start of the game. Knowing this we just have to apply our chosen age for our character's at the start of the game. Since no official age is designated for the PC's we have to decide for ourselves.

 

There is one further sticking point though; our five years in carbonite. Do we physically age during that time? Do we end up with situations where our character's are chronologically 16 years older than the start of the game but only 11 years physically older? If one has played through the Smuggler story then they may come to the conclusion that we do not age when in carbonite. I tend to agree.

 

That leaves us with the question; how old is our character? Since there is no official age for PC's that will entirely depend on how old you say your character was at the start of the game.

 

For myself, I have two characters that are twins: my Rep main and my Imp main, and I have an entire backstory as to their birth, the year, how they were separated, and how they were reunited. These two characters were born in the year 6 BTC. The Sage entered Jedi training at age 4 in 2 BTC, so that makes them aged 16 years at the start of the game in 10 ATC. The current year of 26 ATC means that the character is 16 years older, so chronologically 32 years old. But physically they are only 27 years old due to their time in carbonite. The Sorc followed a different path. They were also 16 at the start of the story in 10 ATC, but they did not spend time in carbonite, so that character is physically and chronologically 32 years old.

Edited August 17, 2020 by ceryxp

[SteveTheCynic]

tl;dr The time units mentioned in-game (and in other Star Wars media) are *Earthly* units, not Star Warsian units unless they are specified in the relevant story, because otherwise we'd have no idea what the periods meant.

 

The text we see and hear in-game must talk in *Earthly* hours, days, and years because it's talking to *us*, inhabitants of Earth, and using *our* units(5) helps us to understand how long it is. If Koth said that Lana should tell the player what had happened in the past five Zakuulan years (but using the word "years", as he would naturally do), we'd have *no* idea how long that was.(6)

 

So the period in carbonite was the sort of period that we here on Earth would call "five years", and not "exactly 1826 Earthly mean solar days". Who knows what that is in Zakuulan or Dromundian(7) or Coruscanti years? (And using Coruscanti or Dromundian years wouldn't necessarily help the *character*, since all eight class stories make it clear that the player character is going to the respective capital world for the first time...)

 

(1) rotate = turn on its own axis = sidereal day(2), revolve = turn around whatever it's orbiting = year

 

(2) The sidereal day is the time it takes for the planet to turn 360 degrees on its axis. For Earth, that's 23 hours, 56 minutes and some quantity of seconds. The "mean solar day" (the average time for the Sun to return to being above hte same longitude) is slightly longer (at approximately(3) 24 hours) because the Earth travels a bit during the sidereal day, and must consequently turn a little more to bring the Sun back to "noon" over *that* spot.

 

(3) Approximately. The Earth is turning gradually more and more slowly because of tidal drag from the Moon and the Sun.(4)

 

(4) It's more complicated than that, but it establishes the principle.

 

(5) Word to the wise: the language called "Basic" is not English.

 

(6) If Zakuul's sun is brighter than our own, Zakuul has to be further from it than Earth is from ours, and the year is correspondingly longer. If it's less bright than ours, the year will be shorter because Zakuul has to be closer. I doubt you'll find *any* reliable documentation of the two stars' relative brightness anywhere.

 

(7) or whatever the proper adjective is for Dromund Kaas. For Coruscant it is definitely "Coruscanti" because there's a "Republic Memorabilia" companion gift in-game that mentions it.

[kkonstantaras]

Thank you very much both, for your replies! They really helped clarify things!

 

Special thanks for Charles' post link. I really had no idea about it, and it was really helpful!