[Dargon-writers-list] Time Discussion

[White, John]

>From:  Victor Cardoso
>
>On Dec 21, 2007, at 1:56 PM, William Donahue wrote:
>
>> Sunrise and sunset occur at different times every day (okay, they are
>> the same twice a year), so I don't see how you can map a bell to a  
>> time without specifying a day.
>
>
>1.2 earth hours equals 1 hour and 12 minutes. Ignoring the sunset/ 
>sunrise thing *for the moment* ...

This is not something that can be ignored for the moment or any
other amount of Earth time.  The variable nature of bells has been
locked in for years, and some of us have even managed wrap our
heads around it (in general) and have been writing under that
understanding for a long time.


>I have somewhat of a problem figuring out how the heck they ring the  
>bells properly if they don't use a fixed measure of some sort (like  
>the dropping of sand in an hourglass or water running through  
>something or a candle burning, etc). They can't use a sundial when the  
>sun goes down. What do they use to measure the passage of time and  
>ring the bells at night? A magic sock?

Several methods have been proposed as to how they figure out when to
ring the bells - as Liam said, we've wrestled with this already and the
results are in the logs of the list.  One of my proposals had to do with
using candles that are precisely measured and poured and burned to
mark the time between the bells - lots of recorded lengths and a wax that
burns at exactly the same rate always (possibly magical) gives bellringers
a way to measure any rate they wish.  They would have to calibrate for
every latitude, as Orn said, but again, the even burn rate and a bunch of
rods of the appropriate lengths lets you mold hundreds of candles, mark
the bells against the candles, and ring the bells when the marks are reached.
(Only primary campaniles would go to this trouble of course - as Jim said,
the secondary towers would ring once the primary bells are heard, though
I doubt that the sound would carry all that far as to be able to cover an
entire kingdom).

Orn put together an alternate version as part of his Black Idol stories, though
that was eventually scrapped.  We never managed to put something into
canon (it's a complicated process and at the same time, not something that
is likely to be the center of a story, so how do you get the detail you need
while also moving a plot along?), but its still something that might need to
be resolved some day.


>And the whole idea that a mene is *longer* in the summer than the  
>winter just blows my mind. I understand that the medieval society  
>doesn't use time the same way we do -- they mainly think of hours, but  
>then that just raises the question again: how do they tell time when  
>the sun goes down?

One of the things we've never tried hard enough to do is make Dargon
different from Earth.  We pay lip service to the idea, and then name our
months bastardized versions of the English Earth names (which all have
meanings that get lost or corrupted in that bastardization, especially
the final quartet of Seventh-month, Eighth-month, Ninth-month and
Tenth-month (Sept/Oct/Nov/Dec) turning into Seber/Ober/Nober/Deber ...
but anyway ... 

One of the benefits of having variable-length bells is that once it is
internalized, it helps you to divorce the watch-centric view of time of
modern Earth from the sun-position view of time of "modern" Baranur.
We're writers - we can imagine that kind of thing!

In terms of night bells - see above.

>Victor Cardoso


              \\Dafydd
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