Who would have thought WH 40k could be so educational? In writing the backstory we had to fit the campaign into WH40k canon events and so became conversant with the Imperial Dating System at Lexicanum and many variations of contemorary dating systems.

The imperial three digit date/time group (DTG) was somewhat problematic. We first thought this was simply the ordinal date (1 – 365) but in closer reading we discovered this was a calendar year divided into 1000 equal parts of about 8 hours and 45 minutes each. All of a sudden we were reexamining all the DTGs and years to make the blog posts consistent.

What was kind of interesting was not being able to find an online coverter to easily translate a calendar date and time into the decimal code. In the process of writing a simple formula we discovered the differences between Julian and Gregorian Calendars, Ordinal Dates used by the military and programmers, and the Julian Date used in astronomy and liturgical

Date value table

(church) practices. Since we still can’t find an on line converter, we thought we would post our method for converting dates to help keep time in the campaign.

We started with claculating an Ordinal Date between 1 (January 1) and 365 (December 31) Using the table from the wikipedia article.

Or the NASA julian date converter.

We could simply multiply that number by three and call it a day, but that would yield a number up to 1095. Or an error factor of almost 10%!  It’s been over three decades since algebra but we finally remembered that if X equals the number you’re looking for, and you want to multiply that by 365 days (we will ignore leap years for the sake  of our cranium’s structural integrity) we will want that to equal 1000; or 365x = 1000. For a factor of ~ 2.73926. (We also warned you this was going to be educational.)

So if using the table, February 28 would be 31 + 28 = 59;   59 x 2.73926 = 164.8; to make it about noon round up and add one; = 166.

This should be more than accurate enough for gaming purposes, but feel free to leave a comment if you have a more accurate formula that does not involve javascripts or excel spreadsheets.

Next was to create some context for the campaign in the continuity of the 40k universe. A timeline of events on the Easten Fringe with some broader campaign maps seemed to be in order. As the default Ork player (I already had some figures) I thought it useful to provide an Ork-centric timeline against the ‘oomies and the Tau.

Timeline – Canon Events

789.M35 The Tau are discovered and categorized by the Adeptus Mechanicus vessel Land’s Vision. An unusual and violent warp storm renders the planet inaccessible.

c400.M41 The Tau begin wide-scale colonisation and invasion operations in the Black Reef region of the Coreward portion of the Jericho Reach.

735.M41 The Corvus Cluster campaign begins.

742.M41 Damocles Crusade, Imperium Invades Tau space.

c744.M41 Waagh! Dok – Warboss Toofjaw, begins an Ork Crusade against the Tau.

745.M41 Hive Fleet Behemoth enters the galaxy from the Eastern Fringe.

c775.M41 Waagh! Grognik is stopped by Aun’va.

c900.M41  War of Dakka – Grog Ironteef, Warchief of Alsanta invades the Tau Empire.

992.M41 Hive Fleet Kraken begins its invasion of the galaxy in the Eastern Fringe.

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