The Cave of Dragonflies Zodiac
Ever wondered what that funny date at the top of every page of this site is? It's the date according to the Cave of Dragonflies Zodiac, one of the most historically important and unique features of this website. It has a whole made-up history behind it, in fact:
Long ago, when the world was young, only the legendary Pokémon existed; but Mew had been given the power of Life, and began to make from itself the lower Pokémon. But Mew worried that the Pokémon would have difficulties surviving on the young planet, and therefore asked that for every Pokémon that it created, one of the legendary Pokémon named itself as its Guardian and would watch over the species for ever and ever.
The legendary Pokémon had previously divided the year between themselves, each of them reigning over eleven days, but Mew asked that they keep only three days to themselves, such that they might dedicate the other eight to the Pokémon they were to protect. And all of the legendary Pokémon agreed to it, and when Mew created a family of Pokémon, one of the legendaries would name itself as its Guardian and dedicate to it one of its days. But sometimes Mew would later add another member to the family of Pokémon, and then the Guardian of the family would dedicate another one of its days to it, because what had been decided could not be later changed.
And one day humans created a Pokémon, and they named it Porygon; and the legendary Pokémon were upset, but Deoxys, for he had secretly inspired the humans for the creation as he felt jealous towards Mew for having created all of the Pokémon, stepped up and said: Let me be its Guardian.
But Deoxys still bore malicious feelings towards Mew, and again gave humans the inspiration to create a new legendary Pokémon that would be a replica of Mew, but more powerful. But when Mewtwo had been created, Mew talked to him and became acquainted with him, and turned him to the legendary Pokémon's side.
And Deoxys was furious, but Mew told him: You who have plotted against me, you could have done a terrible thing by inspiring the creation of a new legendary Pokémon; but if you swear that you will never do such a thing again, you may continue to inspire the humans to create lower Pokémon. However, if you refuse, Mewtwo will take your place as a legendary Pokémon and Guardian to the Pokémon that you have protected.
But Deoxys did not want to be expelled from the ranks of the legendary Pokémon, so he swore never to inspire the humans for the creation of a legendary Pokémon again; but instead he inspired the humans to create two new Pokémon of the Porygon family. And Mew said: I will then be Mewtwo's Guardian myself, and to him shall be dedicated a whole three days of my Reign, because he has realized the error of his ways and he truly deserves to be called a legendary Pokémon, even if he will not have a Reign.
And the legendary Pokémon then lived in peace and prosperity; but Deoxys planned his revenge in secret.
(The above history may not be copied or reproduced in any way.)
The Zodiac was originally created for the third generation of Pokémon after I had noticed that there were exactly 365 non-legendary Pokémon. Somebody had to make use of this magic number and do something like this, and because to my knowledge nobody else had, I did it myself. The year was split into five 'Seasons', each of which was split into four 'Reigns' (dominated by one legendary each) and one extra day that fell into the 'Reign of Mewtwo'. Each of the ordinary Reigns had 17 days, each assigned to one species of non-legendary Pokémon that I had manually placed to fit at least somewhat with the legendary Pokémon of the Reign. This way, every single existing Pokémon had either a day or a reign to itself, and people would look up their birthdays to see if they got a Pokémon they liked.
Unfortunately, with the arrival of the fourth generation, there were no longer exactly 365 non-legendary Pokémon, so when I set out to update the Zodiac, I knew it would never be quite as perfect as the original one. In the end I decided on this system:
- The first and last days of the year would be called Day of Beginning and Day of Ending, and be excluded from the Reign structure such that only 363 days would be included in it.
- Each of the 33 non-Mewtwo, non-Phione legendaries would get one 11-day Reign (33 * 11 = 363).
- The 33 Reigns would be split into three Seasons of eleven Reigns each (11 * 3 = 33), this time of Emotion, Knowledge and Will. Mesprit, Uxie and Azelf would each get the first Reign of the season of the quality they represented.
- Each evolution line of non-legendary Pokémon would get one day to itself, but be split if it was multigenerational. For example, Scyther has a day to itself (August 6th) and Scizor the day after it (August 7th) because at one point Scyther was a whole evolution line by itself; however, Charmander, Charmeleon and Charizard would share one day (February 7th) as they have always been together in one evolution line. Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan, since they are part of the same evolution line now despite not having been at the time Tyrogue and Hitmontop did not exist, share a day. This makes 258 non-legendary days.
- The beginning of each of the 33 Reigns would consist of three days dedicated to the legendary of said Reign, named that legendary's Festival. The first day is the festival of the legendary; the second is the festival of its shiny version; and the third is the festival of its shadow version (shadow similar to XD001). These days are 99 (3 * 33) in total.
- Mewtwo and Phione, despite not having a Reign, would have three-day Festivals to themselves in the Reign of Mew and the Reign of Manaphy, respectively, thanks to their close connections with said legendaries. These festivals take place directly after the main legendary's Reign. These days are six in total; 258 + 99 + 6 equals 363, the number of days within the Reign system.
- As incidentally February 29th falls exactly between Mew and Mewtwo's Festivals, it is named the Day of the Cloning and is out of the Season and Reign system.
However, note "258 non-legendary days". A whole 107 days of the year are not dedicated to a Pokémon, but simply one of three days dedicated to a legendary Pokémon or the Day of Beginning and Ending. I realize that it is probably disappointing to look up your birthday only to discover that it's "just" a Festival day. The days are no longer entirely unique in the same way as they used to be. I am sorry for this; it simply could not be helped. Therefore, if you want to see your birthday in the old Zodiac, you can still look it up in the tables here. However, I do believe that the new fourth-generation Zodiac works perfectly well as simply a calendar as it is used here on the website, and with the shadow and shiny versions of the legendaries somewhat compensating for the lack of complete uniqueness, I think it's not too bad. If you want to look up a particular date in the new Zodiac, you can do so using the form below, or if you just want to see the whole thing, get a .txt file listing the days here.
Jan 1: Day of Beginning
As a bonus, if you put your birthday into the form to get your Zodiac birthday, you will also get a selection of images (below) which you can save to your computer or upload to your website or image host to display on your website or in your forum signature. The number of images you can choose between depends on your birthday: if there are many Pokémon on that date, you may choose your favorite of them, and if the Pokémon of your birthday have multiple forms, you may choose between them as well.
All I ask in return if you display your Zodiac image somewhere is that you link it back to this page (http://www.dragonflycave.com/zodiac.aspx). There will be little point in displaying it otherwise, since then nobody will know what the heck it is about! If you're lazy, copy and paste the appropriate one of these codes and replace IMAGE URL with the URL of wherever you uploaded your image:
HTML:
BBCode (forums):
Page last modified February 23 2010 at 23:16 GMT
