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What time measurement system do people in the Old Republic use?


Rugu

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Since the game takes place 3500 years before the Battle of Yavin (BBY), what time measurement word or phrase does the galaxy use?

 

During the game they use "BTC", Before the Treaty of Coruscant, and "ATC" After the Treaty of Coruscant. You can find the notation used most prominently on the Galactic Timeline videos they released to promote the game.

 

The Treaty itself took place in 3653 BBY and the game starts in 10 ATC (3643 BBY)

Edited by DarthDymond
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I have to confess I've never entirely understood this. Did galactic civilization truly never have a standardized way to count the passing of years? (For example, the Common Era/Before Common Era or B.C. and A.D. systems used on most of Earth.) Would Luke, Han and Leia really have referred to the year Rogue Squadron helped free Coruscant as X year After the Battle of Yavin? Or would they have used whatever calendar standard was in use when they were born? It (the ABY thing) always struck me as something that was put in more for the reader to know "Okay, this took place before or after the original movie" than anything that made sense to me.
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Would Luke, Han and Leia really have referred to the year Rogue Squadron helped free Coruscant as X year After the Battle of Yavin? Or would they have used whatever calendar standard was in use when they were born? It (the ABY thing) always struck me as something that was put in more for the reader to know "Okay, this took place before or after the original movie" than anything that made sense to me.
In-universe, setting the destruction of the Death Star as Year 0 was decided many years afterwards, after the Empire was crippled and pushed back at Endor, by an in-universe standards committee which decided that Yavin was the most significant event in recent galactic history and, like the Ruusan Reformation in 1000 BBY, represented the beginning of a new era of galactic history (replacement of fallen Old Republic/Empire with Alliance/New Republic).

 

OOC yes it's just to make it easy to relate everything to the movies, since the "first" movie (Ep IV) begins at 0 and everything can be placed relative to it.

 

But there is an in-character explanation as well within the EU.

 

There's also several other calendar systems in place, for example political bodies like the Imperial Remnant or other heavily non-Republic organizations tend to ignore ABY/BBY because they don't accept the standards or see the event as worthy of redefining a calendar around.

 

GrS (Great ReSync) is another standard, one of the most common used in sources that don't use BBY/ABY, which came about during Old Republic (post-Ruusan Old Republic), which sets Year 0 as equivalent to 35 BBY.

Edited by SW_display_name
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