So, how long was each era?

I'm doing a bit of writing and I'm trying to figure out how long ago each era was. The closest I can come up with, based on trolling around various wikis, is;

• The Sixth Astral Era began roughly 1,600 years ago
• The Fifth Astral Era began roughly 3,200 years ago
• The Fourth Astral Era began roughly 4,700 years ago
• The Third Astral Era began roughly 6,000 years ago
• The Era of the Twelve (preceding the First Astral Era) was approximately 12,000 years ago

And that's about it. Do we have any more precise details than that? I'd especially love to know how long the Era of the Twelve, the First Astral Era, and the Second Astral Era were.

Yoshi-P has used "about 10,000 years ago" when speaking colloquially about the First Umbral. We know Umbral Eras are relatively short compared to Astral ones, so if you use the Umbral Eras as changeover points and stick with that list, I think the First Astral / Second Umbral / Third Astral is the only one it's hard to get an approximate idea about.

Seventh Umbral changeover takes is 5 years ago, so "basically now".
Sixth Umbral changeover was 1577 years ago, so "basically 1600", leaving 8,400 years before that.
Fifth Umbral changeover was "basically 3200" years ago, leaving 6,800 years before that.
Fourth Umbral changeover was "basically 5000" but we can go with 4,700, leaving 5,300 before that.
Third Umbral changeover was "basically 1,000" years before that, leaving 4,300 before that.
???
First Umbral Era was "basically 10,000 years ago.


Personally I just split the difference, tentatively put Second at 2,150 years, and awaited further orders.

I was actually a little impressed after mathing this out myself a while ago that it actually does all line up; if we take the data we have for known calamities as a given, then it seems like calamities were happening every 1000-1500 years, and if we extrapolate that into the range of the unknown calamities, actually can line up pretty much exactly to not just the 'twelve thousand years ago' Sundering timeframe, but also the 'ten thousand years ago' citation Golbez gives, if we assume that the Thirteenth's failed rejoining was close to the first successful calamity. (And if Golbez can accurately keep time in a world like that, which might be the bigger 'if'.)

It implies that the 'era of the Twelve' was longer than any other Era by about five hundred years, but that does itself track with the fact that the Ascians did need to figure out their approach.

7th astral was nearly very nebulously short, and 8th umbral lasted a century or so until midgardsormr woke up again? But I think this was down to louisoix phoenixing the realm - does the thirteenth’s conversion impact the source similarly or specifically not because they weren’t aligned properly? This might tie in with the timeflow thing too; the first was being prepared to recombine and its time synced up, so maybe? But if this is the case then golbez’s perception of time has no reason to align with the source at all unless it’s the crystal tower doing it again.

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Originally Posted by fulminating

7th astral was nearly very nebulously short, and 8th umbral lasted a century or so until midgardsormr woke up again? But I think this was down to louisoix phoenixing the realm - does the thirteenth’s conversion impact the source similarly or specifically not because they weren’t aligned properly? This might tie in with the timeflow thing too; the first was being prepared to recombine and its time synced up, so maybe? But if this is the case then golbez’s perception of time has no reason to align with the source at all unless it’s the crystal tower doing it again.

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Seventh Era was an anomaly because it didn't start with a massive societal collapse and reset; by all evidence, a big reason that it took 1000+ years for them to do another calamity is because they blow up the civilization(s) that cause it, and then the Ascians have to spend a bunch of time waiting for them to rediscover the means and impetus to do it again.

Louisoix managing to snuff out the calamity before it did that caused a very different situation; the Ascians didn't have to put their toys away, they could just keep going with what they had lying around as backup plans.

So since they did nothing to the source when trying to reattach the thirteenth, would there be a longer first age or does the stretchy time thing come into play?

I would imagine that after the Thirteenth, the Ascians would have spent some time analysing how and why they failed with their first attempt and coming up with the way that would eventually be successful. Also they were probably extra careful to avoid a repeat of their previous failure. Though they also didn't have to contend with the Source being devastated, so it could go either way with the first proper rejoining taking longer or shorter to set up, than the following ones.

I wonder, if the Ascians ever came up with any ideas of how to salvage the Void after all. To fully put Zodiark back together, they would have had to tackle that issue eventually... unless they believed that a 13/14th complete Zodiark was already complete and powerful enough to awaken and gobble up the final reflection himself.

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Originally Posted by No_Nick_Needed

I would imagine that after the Thirteenth, the Ascians would have spent some time analysing how and why they failed with their first attempt and coming up with the way that would eventually be successful. Also they were probably extra careful to avoid a repeat of their previous failure. Though they also didn't have to contend with the Source being devastated, so it could go either way with the first proper rejoining taking longer or shorter to set up, than the following ones.

I wonder, if the Ascians ever came up with any ideas of how to salvage the Void after all. To fully put Zodiark back together, they would have had to tackle that issue eventually... unless they believed that a 13/14th complete Zodiark was already complete and powerful enough to awaken and gobble up the final reflection himself.

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Presumably the Ascians had a plan, because they didn't call it quits after doing that. We just weren't told the plan, because it wasn't actually important for the story.

My guess is, yes, they just planned to get Zodiark to fix it. That was gonna require more sacrifices, but the Ascians don't care about the immense human cost of their plans, so it's no skin off their nose to schedule in an extra sacrifice to a mostly-complete Zodiark to fix that one before they get to all the sacrifices they actually planned to do to bring back Amaurot.

The calamities seem to be fairly consistently paced. 1,500 years, give or take 500 years.

I assume the Void's passage of time is the same as the Source, since it's the closest shard to the Source, to the point that natural fissures between the two open regularly.
Open fissures should synch the time in both worlds, and we know there's been a continuously open one since at LEAST 5,000 years ago, not even looking at all the micro fissure small voidsent get through.

With this assumption, the first, failed attempt was 10,000 years ago.
The 3rd Calamity was about 6,000 years ago.

So eyeballing it, it seems the ballpark of 9,000 years ago for the 1st Calamity, and 7,500 years ago for the 2nd seems about right.