Work Text:
We know a few things about time relative to ourselves: the Humans went extinct ten thousand years ago; the Umbraan War ended forty years ago, and the stories of the Beast of the Elderwood began when it ended; stories of a "wild boy" roaming the Elderwood began roughly twenty years ago.
What the game never tells us, however, is what precise year it is in Palia. This is understandable from the developers' perspective, since the game's events themselves occur over a few months at most, while development has taken several years at this point. Choosing a definitive year for Palia's calendar would mean having to update that every year, despite not having any story progress to match.
Still, we can make an educated guess, based on two arguments: one that gives us a minimum year, and one that gives us an approximate maximum.
Our minimum year comes from a list of Grand Luminaries of the Order, found in Tamala's room after you complete her level 3 friendship quest. It lists the first names of every Grand Luminary, together with the years of the start and end of their appointment. This is the list:
- Nia (0-110 FC*)
- Jabron (110-118 FC)
- Yazek (118-209 FC)
- Sadi (209-266 FC)
- Amani (266-299 FC)
- Omar (299-315 FC)
- Nara (315-377 FC)
- Jioni (377-425 FC)
- Erwhin (425 FC–present)
*: FC here most likely means First Council, where the year 0 is the year of its formation. Nia herself was most likely directly involved in the Order's founding, which would explain why she's the first Grand Luminary.
In various pieces of dialogue with Subira, she mentions that the current Grand Luminary is Erwhin; this proves that this list is still up-to-date, giving us a minimum year of 425 FC. Do note that this is the absolute minimum, and it could very well have been more than a decade since Erwhin's appointment.
Our maximum year is a little more nebulous. In one of her casual chats at friendship level 2, she states the Order was founded "over four hundred years ago", as a result of the Palian Unification Wars.
Notably, she does not say "almost five hundred years ago", or even "over four hundred and fifty years ago". Her phrasing has implications, though it does not give us an exact, hard limit. The absolute widest possible range is between 425 and 499 FC, but this is extremely unlikely. Somewhere between 460 and 480, people would likely start saying "almost 500 years" or "over 450 years" instead of "over 400 years". Our most likely time frame for the present day, therefore, is beween 425 and 460 FC. While it's possible it's slightly later than that, there is absolutely no way the present year is anywhere after 490 FC.