Yup, bad news, your bills are still due.

The Mayans and their predecessors, the Olmec, figured out the concept of zero hundreds of years before other parts of the world including the Mediterranean and Europe. But the confusion about the end of the world occurred because the same marker used to indicate zero also could be used for 13.

The Mayan long-count calendar has names for certain chunks of time. A baktun is a unit of time that represents close to 400 years. On Friday, there will have been 13 baktuns passed since the Mayan "year zero." The baktun is the largest chunk of time depicted on most long-count calendars, but there are also pictuns, or 20 baktuns.

Mayanist Michael Coe may be responsible for starting the fear surrounding the end-of-the-world scenario in the 1960s, before the great revolution in Mayan studies. Coe speculated as to how the Mayan people might have envisioned the end of 13 baktuns:

"This, our present universe, would be annihilated when the great cycles of the long-count reached completion."

In these enlightened days, of course, no one believes a word of it.

• Toukai with the Cudgel of Obviation,
• Tulvarus with Eagle's Talon, and
• Xylarius with Elemental Dominance