Geneforge Calendar Dates?

[EtherealCatalyst]

Hello,

 

I am taking a crack at some Geneforge based creative writing and ran into a dilemma. Is there any indication in the games anywhere of how the passage of time is measured? Perhaps data logs or historical writings? They reference days, weeks, months, and years, so I know they have them, but I don't know how long they are, how many there are per cycle, or when (approximately) major events occur. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[alhoon]

The world of Geneforge is unfortunately light on such details. The creator of the games didn't like long texts for stuff that is not relevant to the story itself.

Thus, I would say a week is 7 days and a month is 30-31 days as usual, etc etc.

[TheKian]

There is a servile, Amena Blade, who shows up from Geneforge 1 through 4 (I dunno whether he's in 5 too). You can talk to him about the past (His location is, I believe, Kazg, Taker village in G2, Rebel village in G3 I think, and Derenton Freehold) and tells you the previous story of the game and also slowly gets older. You'll be able to gather the approximate spacing between the various events in the games, but specific lengths of time are a bit elusive. Seconds and hours, of course, will be same no matter what (not being defined as a portion of a day), and it's reasonable to assume the day/night cycle is similar due to the Earth-like climate (different day/night lengths would probably affect the vegetation in the long term, at the very least.) The year is likely similar to ours in length, given references to the unusually long lifespan of serviles and how serviles who are somewhere in the realm of 150 or so are exceptionally venerable. Finally, off the top of my head, the only two logs of which I can think that make reference to lengths of time are Monarch's journal in G4 (which simply refers to "Day XX") and a journal in the sealed lab in G1, which refers to the progressively increasing craziness of the researchers.

[alhoon]

2 hours ago, TheKian said:

There is a servile, Amena Blade, who shows up from Geneforge 1 through 4 (I dunno whether he's in 5 too). You can talk to him about the past (His location is, I believe, Kazg, Taker village in G2, Rebel village in G3 I think, and Derenton Freehold) and tells you the previous story of the game and also slowly gets older. You'll be able to gather the approximate spacing between the various events in the games, but specific lengths of time are a bit elusive. Seconds and hours, of course, will be same no matter what (not being defined as a portion of a day), and it's reasonable to assume the day/night cycle is similar due to the Earth-like climate (different day/night lengths would probably affect the vegetation in the long term, at the very least.) The year is likely similar to ours in length, given references to the unusually long lifespan of serviles and how serviles who are somewhere in the realm of 150 or so are exceptionally venerable. Finally, off the top of my head, the only two logs of which I can think that make reference to lengths of time are Monarch's journal in G4 (which simply refers to "Day XX") and a journal in the sealed lab in G1, which refers to the progressively increasing craziness of the researchers.

 

Well, the span of a servile's life is not set in stone from what I've seen at least between games. Unless I am grossly mistaken, there are 12-year old serviles in GF2 that have children of their own. I think there are mentions here and there that different "breeds" of serviles have different lifespans.

 

As for that old Servile... it's a few years from GF2 to GF3, 7 years from GF3 to GF4 and 10 years total from GF3 to GF5. We can't be sure how long it was from GF1 to GF2, but I would bet it didn't take decades for the Shapers to come to Sucia to clean up the whole mess after the protagonist of GF1 reaches them. Zackary the Deceiver is at this "failed" colony for at least 5 years. So I would say... 10 years or so from GF1 to GF2, and 10 years from GF3 to GF5 with "not sure, but at least a few years" from GF2 to GF3.

I.e. the whole thing is probably over 20 years and less than 30.  

Edited July 12, 2018 by alhoon

[EtherealCatalyst]

Thank you! To be honest, I was writing with the basic earth system anyways, so this just confirms it for me (and saves me time on editing). The year intervals for the story beats are particularly useful. Thank you, once again!