Keeping Time in Felarya

Okay, so I think most of us knows what the problem is facing this subject. We've already attempted a number of times to create a calendar for the place but nothing seems to have panned out. The main issue is the way time passes in Felarya, with the sky being one of the truly few ways to tell time is passing (since, as far as anyone's seen, most places in Felarya only have one season). And that's not even reliable because the sky changes from time to time (how often is not even specifically defined). Therefore, I've come up with a couple of theories with which we can explain how Felaryans, or at the very least Negavians (and maybe Chioites) might keep and tell time.

The first, and probably harder to grasp theory, is that of the thirty-day, which could also be called a month in Felarya. The idea is that, someone from another world brought a clock to Felarya, and upon studying the lengths of days with it, he discovered that, even though each day's length varies from the last, when the lengths of thirty days (including nighttimes) are added together, it always equals the same length of time, no matter which day you start from, as long as it's thirty of them, from sunrise to sunset. After discovering this strange natural phenomenon, he began to plot on paper every thirtieth day from when he started recording time in Felarya, then divided those times into five equal lengths of time he called six-days (under the premise that 30 / 5 = 6, though for simplicity we might just call them weeks), then divided each of those six-days (or weeks) into six shorter but still equal lengths of time, which he called n-days (or neutral-days) because the lengths of these days were independent from the physical lengths of each individual day and night. Taken further, n-days could be divided into hours, minutes, and even seconds, finally giving Felaryans a way to keep time that is based on a physical property of their own world! ^_^

Using the Thirty-Day (or Felaryan Month) Theory to explain time-keeping, we now have a way for people to describe how long it's been since something happened (like a birth or some other event), and how long it will be until something planned happens (like a concert or a festival), which would be a huge boon even just to Felaryan writers who struggle with things like those because of the lack of a canon time-keeping measure! Depending on other ideas, we could eventually expand the Thirty-Day Theory into a full-fledged Felaryan (or Negavian/Chioitian) Calendar! ^_^


The second theory I have is that of the sky-cycle. It's a little more basic. The idea is that Felaryan astronomers studying the changes in Felaryan skies eventually noticed a pattern, wherein Felarya naturally changes skies in a cycle, which repeats itself every so often. Now, this could mean that Felarya borrows skies from subsequent worlds in a 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 and so on pattern, or changes out worlds for other worlds in a recurring pattern, in a 1-2-3, 2-3-4, 3-4-5, 4-5-6, 5-6-7 sort of pattern, if that makes sense to anyone. Really, there's all kinds of different patterns that Felarya's sky-borrowing property could follow, possibly an infinite amount, so I don't know which one we'll want to go with, but I will say the more complicated the pattern, the harder the idea will be to implement for writers and RPers. In the end, that aspect is probably going to be up to Karbo, but that doesn't mean he couldn't use some suggestions. Anyway, the Felaryan 'year' would then be based on the repetition of this sky cycle, where each new cycle (based arbitrarily on which sky the astronomers decide to be the 'first' one) marks the beginning of a new year. From there, the years could be broken down into however many months (or thirty-days ;3) we decide we want to have in Felarya, which can then be broken down into however many weeks and days we want to have, and so on, until we have a full calendar and time-keeping system to implement in canon! ^_^

So, thoughts, everyone? :3 Anything to criticize? Anything to add?

Personally, the keeping of time as we view, doesn't make sense on other planets other then earth, since our year months weeks and days are all based apon the earth, and religion, the sun and the moon.

So in fact, each universe connecting to Felarya, should have a different system of time, let alone have the names "Day, Week, Month, Year"

In Felarya, as my understanding is that with the random selection of sky.

I am actually working on a character that was going to relate his age by Cycles of the Silvery Night, which in return is a random event as well, but a constantly less random event.

Since Felarya selects "life supporting planets" (aka ones that match the requirements, not necessarily a planet even just a bit of space) from an infinite amount of possible matches, the silvery night still shows up consistently.

The inhabitants from other worlds most likely would have brought their own version of time with them, thus you could create an infinite amount of different times, where you could be 'ageing' (becoming as year older) at four times the rate as the person you live with, because your view of the passage of time is different.

Where technically should be no time on how long a day or night lasts BUT!! Theoritcly it could be monitored by a tempiture system. Yes, I am saying your clock is now a thermonitor.

THe Rate of which the universe would need to select a new sky would be based on keeping the planet the same temputure, since it always picks X distance from sun to provide Y lifesupport you could say that like earth, the direct sunlight heats air and surface of the planet. and since the system is regulating (Apparently) that once the plane of felarya gets to Z degree it would need to switch to a night cycle to cool off for Y lifesupport.

Thus creating a day night cycle you could monitor very closely with simple devices, and would maintain a constant effect.

Now that you have a Clock that can tell you how close night, or day is, or how far into the day it is, you could base a time system off it, that acutally has nothing to do with our terminology for time.

So morning(day cycle start) Could be called 0 degrees (lets say 10 C for time based exmaple) By noon it would be roomtemp (22 C) and called 12 degrees then night cycle kicks in at 12 over thus 24 degrees, thus creating a theological 24 possible hours in a day

Though it would probably be more of a jungle temp seeing how most of it seems to be more of a rainforest/jungle setting


Based upon the new day night cycle you can start to measure the time between silvery nights and use that night as the night of celebration of a new year, Now considering it is suppose to be a random event, it is acutally the least random event of sky you cant have, so you can start to predict due dates like it has been X day night cycles so it should happen, thus creating your "Cycle" or "Year"

Then for example say that it takes 365 "Short cycles" (day and night) to make a Long Cycle (A year)


Or you could say the silvery night happens as often as a blue moon even... thus complecationg the system more so that you measurements mean that the silvery night would fall on the new year once every 19 years.....

Well the problem is it still feels too much like its earth-related. Think how would we be able to, or how would we have to tell time when it comes to months? Or season for example? What would constitute a month or a Season in Felarya anyway? Nobody knows. Its always random. Always. That's why its basically impossible to come up with a system of time keeping for Felarya is because its apparently canonized in such a fashion so that nobody knows the hour, or the cycle of the moon/sun because it changes in random times throughout...well, time. Thus the world descends into chaos and darkness. Stabs would be proud.

Anyway.

Remember that seasons only occur on Earth because our Axis is tilted, so particular parts of the planet are facing the sun from various angles throughout the year and that changes slowly. This is important because most planets in existence dont have tilted axis, and therefore, the "seasons" are generally the same all year round. Baring of course any weather patterns, which also vary depending on various geological patterns that involve the earth. I'm not a meteorologist, but I know that basic idea involving the Earth and Sun, and its one we're forgetting. The stars Felarya borrows light from wouldn't innately influence the particular season that cycles through felarya anyway. The star isn't what dictates the season, its the planet itself, and since there IS NO planet, there wouldn't be any season, which actually begs the question why The Tundra is right next to a forest that likely has a much different weather pattern.

Sorry (this statement to Karbo), but unfortunately, in order to make a calendar in the world of Felarya we'd have to change the way it operates fundamentally. I'm sorry to say. Let me try to see if I can help make it work though before I give up on it.

Here's another issue:

Because there's no planet, it doesn't rotate, so how would you tell when it's day/night. It's like Northern Siberia probably, where the sun is out at like 2AM or 3AM. Likely scenario is that night in Felarya isn't dark, unless the way the "borrowing" works is that it mimicks the planet that is using the light from the star it's borrowing, so when one particular part of the planet is dark, so would the part in relation in Felarya. (but how do we determine which part of the felarya is borrowing from which part of the planet's area? maybe the tundra just borrows from the polar caps, which would make walking from the forest into the Tundra go suddenly from evening sun to bright daylight)

What if:

We take out the concept of the "month" altogether?

What does a month represent in Felarya anyway, we need to divide the blocks of time so that it makes sense to the world. If there is a pattern to the hours, which I like about your idea Nyaha, maybe we could make it something simple, like 5 days always average out a certain amount of hours no matter what, or 6 days, if we feel like this is nature, and nature is randomized.

So we have a number of these blocks of days all together which take up a particular "season", and each "season" is judged by how many of these "weeks" are in it until it changes. Of course what dictates a year?

How do we figure out when a year passes, and how did the people hundreds of years ago figure out when a year passed without knowing that the earth really revolved around the sun? The most basic way I'd imagine would be because the start of the harvest in spring, then the cycle goes around to the harvest, then the time when all plants are dead, and finally when the plants start growing again, would consider a full cycle.

This process in felarya is dead in the water, because you could (as we all know) have summer, spring, summer, spring, winter, fall, spring, and how would that all work out? This is a process that should probably be changed due to simplicity, and I don't think the plants would be able to take that sort of stress anyway. How would they relate to suddenly growing their leaves back after they lost it, then right after summer, instead of a harvest like fall, going back to the spring? I don't think plants can work that way.

So probably whatever happens, is that the plants always go through a full harvest, maybe two full harvests per year, and that's how its determined, regardless of seasons passing (if they should pass at all), its related to the production cycle of plants.

>I still would like to know how the plants would deal with winter coming right after spring in one year. maybe that year lasts longer? or maybe the plants have a surefire way of the harvest maturing instead of straight up dying right after.

>Maybe the types of seasons available are relative to each area? Like a forest cant go through a winter season because felarya doesn't want to kill the fruit production cycle of plants?

There are so many questions here that need answering, and clarification it just goes on. Until these issues are resolved though, we cannot make a calendar for Felarya.

So far the only thing I can see is a week>season>year (judged by the harvests from treess). Actually, the years could average out too, like the days. One year could be short, but the following year could be long to make up for it? Anyway this is getting a little bit long, so I'll save my next batch of questions and thoughts until someone else pitches and follows these up.

edit: I wrote this based on the idea that has been or is widely acknowledged...each area in Felarya has its own sky portal. which makes me want to bang my head against a wall because of how bad that complicates our problem for Felarya time keeping.

You need to tweek the system or justify how the system works, but finding something that you can base it off.

Life support. If not for it, there would not be a vore plane that works "flat disk" style. So that needs to be constant enough to keep life on felyara working how it does.

Like i said have time relations to how the day night cycle would be randomly selected but based upon the temperature need of area to regulate itself,with how it chooses a sky, it does not rotate on an axis, so it would have to somehow go "HEY!, its getting alittle on hot now, NIGHT CYCLE!" or vise versa, then you can map out the pattern of a event that happens and repeat, like once in a blue moon, we can figure out what time it takes for a blue moon pattern to restart and follow the same pattern, then break it up where you have 6,935 Cylces in a Sliver Night Cycle lets break that up 19 pairs of 365 leave no decimal place, lets call that our long cycle, the the bright sky and dark sky, as a short Cycle.


Since the planet well keep having a wandering temp. (hot cold areas dont matter, because they are isolated to be at that temp) Everywhere would get heated the same, everything would cool down the same, thus the whole of felarya would have zoning, like daylight savings...but a different average temp by location. so if its +50C in the desert and -50C in the arctic, if you have a cycle change every 10C difference, your night would start at +60 and -40.

And I can say this change IS NOT A RANDOM FACTOR cause the wiki says that it picks stars for "suns" all at the same distance, so the heat from the lightsouce would always be the same, otherwise it would not be able to provide the right conditions for the plan of existence, furthermore, since Felarya is a flat plane(it has a hieght and depth limit) there would be no variation on temp since it all is X space away form the sky all at once, there is no planet tilt or rotation.

Even with multiple skies this still works, each zone would need its own sky, and once again be switched around to stay the same type of day, and same type of night, to keep the area the same as it should be.

Once again, it as an infinte amount of universes to choose from, being X away from Y Star = Z Acceptable Felyara sky.

The consistence of day(X+Y=Z) and night(X+Y=Z) means that the atmospheric 'heat based' life support well always be the same, considering the days and nights cycle. Life support Z has to be the cause of the switch otherwise there would be no point in finding a night sky or a sunny sky at day/nightX+Y for Z, it would just go Daylight= X for star= Z and still Daylight but now =Y for temp control


Now the silvery night happens once in a while. IT is not random on that purpose, your not going to get one three days apart suddenly, felerya pick this sky for a special reason, and not out of random, cause it is the same system that is picked for THAT night, so the plane has something that it needs for its X+Y=Z system that requires it to hit that exact spot in these conditions so based off that you can now use the temperature changes too measure the lightCycle and DarkCycle in a Short Cycle, you can now make a longCycle out of this eventby measuring the shortCycles til it happens, then measure til it happens again, if A cycles happen between every Silvery Moon, your set, if it doesn't it's X+Y=Z means that it can't always be not the same, cause it needs that set event

So leading off that you can learn it patterns A to B to C to D to A to B.... and so on, thus making A to D a long cycle.

Not that you have your long cycle, you can start to break it into Silver Phases of A,B,C,D, you now have four 'months'

So now we have a time system that goes
Degrees into a LightCycle and a NightCycle that make a ShortCycle and so many of those are in a Silver Phase and 4 make a LongCycle


Now we can go in father saying that the system allows for X+4, this drift would have to fall in a pattern (like how our seasons work to maintain temp differances) on felarya, your alway at the equatior, this is no north and south or tilt and wobble, so to keep life (our sexy X+Y=Z) working the same the It would need to pull back into X-4 at some point to stop its Z from losing what it needs to stay Z.

Now why am i bringing this up? Seasons at X+4 the plane would be getting colder in the nights, and not gaining heat fast enough in the day, this might happen for T Short cycles, making your cold season, well now it needs to have some form of Warm season to balance that and keep life support system the same so you now have X-4 for T shortcycles.

SO now we have a full set of Time based things off what is canon right now, without having it change the world's core to make up for it.


Time is an abstract concept, that well...is based on time. Cause really, when it comes down to it, Time = A lenght of time. You cannot Explain time wit out some form of lenght of time itself, so really you can just have people who have no idea what time is cause really, without time, there isnt time. :3

Think for a second, and try to explain time without needing to use something that needs time to explain what it is.

Okay, what I'm seeing here is a bunch of people coming up with their own ideas instead of trying to build off each other's concepts. Now, that's not to say any of the ideas are bad, per se - I myself am pretty interested in Thy's idea of basing the time-keeping system on Felarya's regulation of it's own temperature. There could be a lot to do with that, and it's clear that he's thought it through quite a bit (even if I don't completely understand it all <.<; ).

Bael, there's an inherent problem with your idea - I don't think any of us are sure how exactly seasons work in Felarya. I, for one, thought that Felarya only had one season, like, summer all the time everywhere, whereas you think they change in a random pattern (which, if we take into account what Thy pointed out, wouldn't make sense with Felarya actively supporting life on itself, at least, in my mind). We'd need canon confirmation on how seasons work, which can only come from Karbo, in order to know if we can base a time-keeping system on it.

I'd also like you guys to keep in mind that we're just trying to work out short-term time keeping in this thread - like planning how long it will take to set up for a festival from any given day. I feel like you guys are going a little beyond that, with seasons and cycles and harvesting and the Silvery Moon. ^^; Of course, if I'm wrong and that's what we need to figure out before we can look at short-term, you'll need to point it out to me. That being said, I'd really like it if we could work on maybe one or two ideas at a time (ideally mine because I like them best XD hehe).

Nyaha wrote:

Bael, there's an inherent problem with your idea - I don't think any of us are sure how exactly seasons work in Felarya.

That's actually part of my point. Because nobody is sure how seasons really work, we cant really figure out how to make the calendar/timekeeping work. (Nyaha sometimes I feel you miss my point...)

The reason? Well how else would you come up with a calendar? The stars and the crops, and the seasons were all how people kept time back in ancient times, and so we cant just say "a week in felarya is 6 days because I feel like it" there has to be a reason for it that makes sense with the world, otherwise we'll come to contradictions (eventually).

This is also why I suggested years be based off a harvest cycle, and like your idea - where all the days in a week average out at the end of 6 days (which is where that week comes from, so its not a half bad reason), the years can also average out. If we want to related it to earth, it can be every four years, like how we have leap years here in real life which account for the lost time in the calendar. (I believe its because a day is actually shorter than 24 hours, and all that adds up when accounted for in the leap year)

Nyaha wrote:

I'd also like you guys to keep in mind that we're just trying to work out short-term time keeping in this thread - like planning how long it will take to set up for a festival from any given day.

Wait what? I thought this was just about setting up a calendar. Or at least day/week/whatever. (I still like the idea of removing the "month" concept to account for just measuring the seasons.)

Thanks. I'm a bit pressed for time so I dont know how long this'll be.

I cant remember where I heard that either. I think it was some documentary video or article I read. I just remember some place saying that the galaxy's planets are generally straight axis, and therefore seasons are constant. I don't know why a portal would rotate though, would it absorb light and what-not from either side? I thought it'd be constant. Also a rotating portal doesn't mean that there will be seasons either.

As for the number of days it takes to balance out it doesn't really matter. We could just use whatever number we like best I suppose (nine?). A pine tree could work fine for the years though, I believe there's a type of pine tree that's canonized? I used a fir tree as a base for my fur tree which was renamed to something else though on the wiki...can't remember what though.

I'm much more inclined to do harvests as that's my personal preference and makes a lot of sense anyhow, but if there's another part of Felarya canon that could be used instead, by all means :B

I grasp your first theory just fine, Nyaha. A specific amount of time between a set number o' days, say, 30, as measured by something with its own cycles, be it an offworld clock, for instance. But why stop there?

I was thinking, maybe elves back in Ye Olde Elvene Empire had clocks... or special music boxes capable of altering their tune with mathematical precision depending on the amount of time that passed. The idea of measuring time with different things seems worth a shot to me. Maybe the Sagolians used magic to keep track of the time, the Vishmitali use isotope decay, and the Dridder Empire used... I don't know, copper reduction in spinning electrodes?

That said, Nyaha, if the time doesn't actually measure anything in Felarya, you have to be ready to adapt to the fact that one of your n-days might start as the sun's coming down, and end when it's coming back up. That would make such timekeeping of little use. I'd recommend you to have time being counted every day starting at dusk, when the sun comes up, using whatever arbitrary time units we decide on. If timekeeping cannot predict when a day will start, it needs to lock on to the start of the day somehow in order to be of any use.


As for the sky cycle, I suppose it could be done, though I don't like it that much. If you have a cycle that goes 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-from the top, then you have seven skies and that puts those seven skies as the seven official skies of Felarya. Which brings up why those skies and not others, and makes me curious as to what makes those worlds special.

I'd suggest instead that we had infinite random skies, and it was the reruns of old skies that came on a regular basis. For instance, for every seven nights, six skies, one repeats. 1.2.3.4.5.6.5, and the next week Felarya gets a new cast of handsome new skies, going back upon 1.2.3.4.5.6.5 lol.

If this step changed over time, that'd be great, too. Imagine that by recording the sky every night, and assigning one note to every sky, you'd get over 100 years a melody that might as well be handed down by the Guardians. Music of the Spheres and all that.

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As for Thywolf's idea, thermal regulation, life doesn't work that way. Besides heat, there's sunlight to consider, and plants are gonna need a lot of it if they're going to metabolize enough food for everything out there. Besides, it'd be a lot of coincidence if Felarya was all about constant temperature ranges.

There's something we ought to rescue from what Thy said, though- the moons are always the same. The sky changes, but it does so from BEYOND the moons, because one can actually go up in Felarya far enough to be gone, and that happens long before you reach the moon.

So despite the fact that Felarya's sky ends at the Von Karman line, the moons themselves are still visible at a distance that takes even light a perceptible amount of time to cross. Unless we're talking really tiny moons that are actually close enough to zoom through the sky. That'd be cool!

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That'll be it for now.

it pretty much is trying to be based off two things related to the random system that it constantly does, its just randomly picking a place that has certain settings

then you take the reasoning that the sun as a source of light and heat would increase a temp, and then night would decrease the temp, then the wiki says that it always picks the same distance from the star it chooses  so it would be the same, then your seasons would come from it floating back and forth few time but it would have to remain roughly the same to keep its constant life support.

Stabs, I am talking about sunlight, and ita not a coincidence that the change would happen everywhere, because the plane always picks the same distance for a star, as stated by the wiki, so he sunlight (which includes the thermals from the sun) heats up the planet

Now that I'm not on a phone.

back to the letters :v

X+Y=Z

Z is the zone of life support, the right amount of light, as well the right conditions for heat radiation from the sun

So Y is the sun type

and X is the distance from that sun type.

So X+Y=Z can have unlimited possible combinations as long as Z stays the same (within acceptable range).
but one thing remains the same Z!!! Z is the acceptable conditions that the random selection of Felarya picks, so EVERYTHING THAT MATTERS is Z

But, Since Felarya is 'stealing' a sky it is also taking the same heat.

LEts put it this way. The sun gives off heat what is something you can do to stay cool on a hot day? go in the shade

What happens to a hot summer day at night? it cools down


Now, based on this fact of Facing a sun = heat and Not Facing sun = heat loss


Now lets go back to what you said about areas not heating up the same. Welp, sorry your atmosphere seems to be Nitrogen/Oxygen based, and well, that well heat up and cool the same pretty much everywhere, now you just have zones of rock and snow that change how it is effected, thus you now have a zone.

My basis on the odd math, is actually based on the rotation of a "Blue Moon" since the saying "Once in a blue moon" refers to a rare event, I randomly picked it to say the silvery moons happens as much as a blue moon, which has a 19 year cycle :3

Now yes I took something from earth to make it logical, which I hate doing but you need to realize something

FELARYA IS NOT A PLANET. IT should not have a horizon. IF anything once up above the tree line you would see forever (until the light refraction off the air stopped you from seeing father, like our sky does in the day)

This means that the sections of sky over the area, or even in a one sky theory, which there can't be due to the nature of some zones

Exposure to sunlight does = a change in temperature. You could go wear a teeshirt on mars, or even swimming trunks on pluto if the distance to the sun didnt change the amount of heat energy it gave off. Even if they have an atmosphere the same as earth, they are just not in the same zone (aka Z) range.



Once more Felarya is an unstable place, a new zone would be require for every part of a world it steals and then keeps unless it is within acceptable range for the area it s in.



So don't say your disproving what i am saying. Or I'll point out once fact, just one fact that well kick the shit out of everything you say. This is not earth. Meaning There is no time, no seasons, no hours, minutes days or weeks.

All this trying to make a time system for something that cannot have one, is now pointless.

Now if your done trying to shoot holes into something I am piecing together out of what we can from the wiki, that would put a constant basics of having something to measure and make time. But sadly, like us, the creator of the wiki IS ON EARTH.

So yes there are some logical fallacies in what i am making, but due to it being FELARYA a made up dimensionally unstable sky shifting, landmass stealing, switching, considered to be flat, or too large for anything to be living beyond the horizon to survive/travel a notable horizon(which would instantly break my theory, and throw the flat world out of possiblity..wait...if the world is flat to the rivers have currents....)

IT does not spin, It does not tilt, it just does the hoky poky and spins itself about. Meaning that THERE IS NO SUNRISE, OR THERE IS NO NIGHTFALL  The sun should be set constantly at a midday point always, so it peeking out of the horizon, like it does on earth.

SO yes It should go "oh by the way, its night now"

Going off the fact that Karbo seems to make to make creature have a sleep cycle that matches up with night, means that Day and Night have to have a reason for changing when they do, I simplely put a reason there, and now you can measure that reason and make time.


If you feel like saying my points are invald cause they don't make sense on Earth, do me a favor

EXPLAIN TIME. Liek TIME What does time mean.

I'll save you the time : D

Time is a measurement of Time.


IF the world is going to have something measurable to make into time, then we need something that is measure able, within the constant RANDOM switches, I found a constant, if it ended up at pluto for a day cycle with a sun like ours, it wouldn't be effective for maintaining the life on felarya.

Maintaining life is now our variable that is constant in a random cycle. A little hook for infinite possibility.

Then I decided that might as well use a event that happens Felarya wide pretty much when it happens as far as i can tell from the wiki, so now we have an other constant in a random

you have infinite possibility, on a scale that goes both ways forever

<---....-5, -4, -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5....---->

why does 0 keep showing up constantly?




Or, I can make this even more simple and through everything out the window everythere.

The founders of Negav had a pocket watch from their exact copy of earth matching planet. THE WORLDS NOW MOST PROMINENT TIME SYSTEM IS NOW EARTHS!

You now can sit back and relax happily knowing that while the day only lasted 3 hours today, and 72 hours the yesterday, you can still puff on your pipe every second.


Further more the silvery night HAS A EFFECT ON THE CREATURES OF THE PLANE!!!!!!! AAARRRRGGGGGGGG!!!!!! WHO GIVES A F( :3 )CK ABOUT THE TIDES IT CAUSES!!!!!

It is obviously more complex then you even imagined *flails about*

And the world is mixxed of vairous regions that donet even make sense why they are ther or how they are there, these Zones regulate themselfs seperatly from the rest of the worlds zones, so a desert suddenly being in the middle of the tundra does not have an effect on the tundra or the desert itself because the two are now together -noms on- grrrrr!!!

Alright, Thywolf, let's see what I can follow...

Okay, I guess there's no real reason why Felarya couldn't decide on when to turn day to night simply by temperature changes. Yeah, there's ice and snow and rocks and tree cover that can alter how it heats up, but if we're not picky about the temperature ranges that result, we'll be ok. No reason why it couldn't be that way.

That said, I'm still a big fan of the one-sky theory. If the wiki mentions some zones as having their own sky, I figure it's because all the others have a common sky. Besides, there's a million ways to alter the heat effects of sunlight, y'now. Particulates in the air, air composition, ozone layers, surface albedo, evaporation...

And it may not be Earth, Thywolf, but we're assuming that you can still count to one in Felarya. Which should take one second. You can still starve to death, which should... not take one second. And trees can still grow: that also takes more than one second. We have the same problem in Earth regarding what time is.

Also, there is time. There's years. There's years all over the wiki, Thy, Crisis has 60 of 'em. No one said they were all the same length, but there's plenty of them.

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And if the founders of Negav had a clock with seconds on it, what about the elven empire? Or the Dridder empire? Or Ur-Sagol? Magic, maybe?

I actually like your idea of keeping the time with magic .

Karbo said in the Tech Musing thread the general discussions that Negav would have clocks that operate using the same hour system as ours for the sake of simplicity.  I think chances are good the day, week, month and year system is also going to be the same as ours just to keep things simple, though I'm fairly sure days of the week and months would go by different names.

That being said, I would be cool with the idea of how long daylight hours last vary from day to day. For example, one day, daylight hours lasts for quite a while like it's summer, then the following day it lasts much shorter like it's winter. I think it would help make the setting feel like it's dimensionally unstable.

Stabs wrote:

So despite the fact that Felarya's sky ends at the Von Karman line, the moons themselves are still visible at a distance that takes even light a perceptible amount of time to cross. Unless we're talking really tiny moons that are actually close enough to zoom through the sky. That'd be cool!

Only if you aren't flying an airship that's less dense than a tiny mini moon missile I think. ^^; Not to mention the velocity of what it'd be traveling at. O_o; Though it would be amusing if somebody tried to capture it! XD I can see all kinds of incompetent thieves and adventurers as well as a hopeless romantics trying to get it.

Stabs wrote:

I'd suggest instead that we had infinite random skies, and it was the reruns of old skies that came on a regular basis. For instance, for every seven nights, six skies, one repeats. 1.2.3.4.5.6.5, and the next week Felarya gets a new cast of handsome new skies, going back upon 1.2.3.4.5.6.5 lol.

I always thought that's the way it worked. Personally I think it works best. It also means if you're a star gazer you'd have a endless array of skies to observe! That'd be killer to me. X3 Though one would wonder what a Felarya Zodiac Sign list would look like. ^^;

Shady Knight wrote:

I think chances are good the day, week, month and year system is also going to be the same as ours just to keep things simple, though I'm fairly sure days of the week and months would go by different names.

I agree. Simple is good. Complex things tend to hand and hand with Felarya's weirdness, but honestly for writers and RPers simple works best. It's easy to remember, to plan out and to implement. As for a calendar well in Brave Fencer Musashi they had a pretty normal calendar till you got to an eight day. Sky Day. Granted that was so a certain dungeon could be accessed only on that day but I always found it amusing to think of a eight day calendar. It didn't seem to affect the 24 hour day though... In Olbivion they have their own made up day names, but honestly? I can't keep up with it! Weirdly named days. If we do try to make new sounding day names we must make sure they have simple shortened forms. Like Thursday is Thur and such...Hey he's a weird thought XD How about Alzcaloth's Day? For the day the Titan's were defeated? We could call it Alzcaday!...Nah just having fun there trying to draw parallels.

Okay, since nobody else is saying anything I will. First, I like the idea of having multiple calendars, each of which might still be used in present day Felarya, depending on geographic location. As for the last one, it's clear to see you put some definite work into figuring out how to arrange it all. I'm glad to see my idea not going to waste, too, personally. I do have a little problem with the terminology - while I like that you went for simplicity, the way you describe it sounds like they just happened to name them things that are the same as what we called them in English. Which I think is extremely unlikely. I think it would be more realistic if what they ended up calling each unit just translated into what we call them in English, but that might be seen as kind of a handwave, maybe? I dunno. I can't follow at all any of the details you described about how he rebuilt his clock, myself. I think it might have to be dumbed down a bit, I am sad to say, or maybe just put into layman's terms. I mean, overall it seems like a good system, but as I can't really follow everything that's been put into it I can't say too much about it. I also think there should be some mention of the fact that one of these calendar days could very well take place during a physical nighttime, seeing as their measure is meant to be independent of the actual length of days. At least, that's how it looks in my mind.

This is all getting too complicated for me. Consider me out of this conversation.