On the properties of Time

by Brother Damaso, of the Society of Aurelius

A common universal among the peoples of Canon is Time. It is so apparent a concept that our Faith in Almighty Aurelius finds its strongest foundations upon the sanctity of Time; for was it not Father Time who planted the seed in the womb of the virgin Regina to birth our Living God, Aurelius? Does not our Holy Writ, the codex Genesis, tell us that, “All began with Time.” Our Lord Aurelius Aquila is his first born and it is through him that we may find ourselves mere, “grains of sand in the passing of time.”

Time now stands before us to remind us that we mere mortals are but finite things; our life may be glorious and filled with much pleasure now, but eventually we will all die and must account for our lives in the Books of Time. So that we may better understand the passing of our lives, Father Time created the Angel of Death, his bringer of souls to judgment; and the twelve graduations of his passing. These twelve graduations mean many things to many people. Countless unbelievers have placed their own symbols upon the Cardinal Numbers and insult their sanctity. Here is an example of a heretic when given the twelve points to ponder upon. He dared to call his heresy a system and named it the Twelve Hours of Power;

Authority
Charisma
Force
Expertise
Persuasion
Fame
Ascribed Power
Ideology
Knowledge
Wealth
Domination
Fate

He claimed that each hour Time gave us corresponded with one of the concepts I have listed above. He claimed that each word who listed represented one way through which a mere man is able to influence the clockworld. For his heresy, his eyes were gouged out, his body burnt, and his corpse buried without a head. He is now shivering in the frost of the Dead God's grave deep into the core of Canon. This should, however, serve to explain that Twelve is a number of universal import.

During my travels deep into the lands of the Ternary, I have had the good sense to note that even the savages hold the number Twelve with great gravity. They, like the heretic I have mentioned, have placed their own symbols and meanings upon the Sacred Graduations Father Time gave us through his firstborn. It was realized that everything in Canon is organized in permutations of Twelve. The great families that descend from the blood of our Lord Aurelius number in Twelve, the cardinal directions through which navigation is based number in Twelve, even the mythologies of the Jade Empire number their demon worship in ranks of Twelve. It is inherent among all of us that Twelve is our manifestation of the concept of order; it is through the number Twelve that we place in order the chaos we see in front of us. It is only inevitable that Twelve would be our graduation of the Passing of Time according to the rotation of the Great Golden Hour Hand.

Father Time is known through many names. Those of the Nonary People's have contented themselves, and rightly so, with the Auric one. Aurelius called his Father, Chronos. It is from him that modern man was able to name a gift of the Gods to us , of which civilization could not have existed without. We have called it Chronometry.

Chronometry is based on the passing of the Golden Hour Hand through the calculations of mortal man. The Pantheon has seen us fit and deserving to finally receive the Sands of Chronos, through which we find our only means of accurately counting the hours that pass. The Sands are sacred grains of minerals that or of powdery fineness and color and exude a pure white smoke when burned. The burning is often done at the funeral rites of a Primarch to symbolize that all things come to end at the end of Time. These grains, after the consecration of a college of bishops, are always placed in Hourglasses, an aspect of Chronos for the measurement of time. When an hour Glass is completely drained of the sands, it signifies the end of an hour and must be overturned to start again.

Twelve of these hours further mark the entirety of a single day to a razor sharp exactness. Twelve of these days amount to a week; Twelve of those weeks amount to a month; Twelve of those months amount to a year; Twelve of those years amount to a dodeka; and Twelve of these dodeka amount to an age and each age merits the patronage of a God from the Pantheon in cycling order. We are now at the forty-second age of Aurelius our Lord and Living God.

In the keeping of Time, only the clergy are allowed to mark it with blessed ink on blessed parchment. In reading it, the form we find is sophisticated and exact. We merely have a number to signify time in the following order; [hour][day][week][month][year][dodeka] and then we place the age and the patron God of that age. An example would be written as 5.12.7.8.11.6.42 AooLA.

When read aloud by a member of the clergy, we should hear, “We, flock of our Lord Aurelius Aquila, are now at the fifth hour of the Twelfth day of the seventh week of the eighth month of the eleventh year of the sixth dodeka in the forty-second Age of our Lord Aurelius.”

There have been alternatives to this system, both discovered among the heathens, savages, and even contrived among the heretics. A most sinful example of this is a system devised by the so called Federation of Free Cities, a pit of blasphemers and apostates hiding beneath the veil of reformists. Be warned of this bedeviled trickery of theirs; made all the more alluring by their infernal machines, mockeries of Father Time's creations; which they have deigned to call clockwork.

A sure sign of the Heretic and Witch is to hold in his hands a device in the make and design of the devil, yet disguised in the iconography of the Twelve. They call this trinket a timepiece, something any common man may have on his person to tell the time. The other sign of the Heretic is to adhere to their graduation of time.

The Federation counts the days in hours, like the Auric System. This has so often misled our flock into believing their work to be nothing more than a simplifications, but no. It is truly the product of the Dead God's servants, demons. The comparison would stop at the hour, for days may hold Twelve hours; but weeks have ten days; months have three weeks, quarters have fourth months each, and year has four of these quarters.

They have had the audacity to even recalculate the years since Time began and place our days now at some number reaching the thousands. Such contrived laboriousness of theirs. Instead of telling the years in ages, they include every year since the beginning of time in writing their dates; and everyone who could read and write has the whim to keep Time in writing, as if it was nothing.

I will show no example of the appearance of their dates, for I have already achieved my purpose in educating you my fellow brothers of the cloth in the nature of Time, its most accurate and sacred stewardship, and to give you fair warning of the markings and the sins of the heretic. Be vigilant, my brothers! Tend to you flocks, and defend the faith!

Aurelius wills it!