The Rivenese use a base 25 number system, expressing 0 through 24 in a single digit.

When Gehn writes in his journal about his rd age, it was easy to assume at first that the 'rd' must be a mistake because those digits translate as 9 and 8, so shouldn't it be "98th"? However, being able to express up to the value 24 in a single digit implies that when you have a two digit number, the first digit represents the number of 25s in the value, not the number of 10s. So, Gehn's rd age actually translates as (9 * 25) + 8, or 233 which makes sense with the 'rd' suffix.

I've been getting some questions as to whether there is an example of the zero in the game or if I just made it up. I don't remember who it was that posted, but someone said on one of the Riven web boards that there was a zero in the game on the timepiece in Gehn's bedroom. Looking at that was how I figured out which way the slash is supposed to go.

According to RAWA, the zero symbol in the game is "a mistake" and that the zero is really supposed to be a box with a dot in it. I'm going with the "game as gospel" philosophy, thus my zero is the one shown here in this screenshot from the game.

You should be able to make out the digits 0 through 5 fairly clearly (the 4 suffers from the lighting), the 0 is to the lower right and the numbers all look like their rotated versions in this image, though keep in mind they'd look 'normal' if the timepiece were held in the proper orientation.

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