Gian:
> The tricky part is that, according to Theyalan Lightbringers, Goddess Time was born 'when' the
> Darkness ended and Arachne Solara devoured Chaos, thus giving birth to Time. But this 'event'
> comes 'after' at least 100.000 years of solar history.
Remember that the "years" might measure different things. The Dara Happans observed the sky a lot. They could have counted such-and-such planet doing its thing. Oops. It fell form the sky. Well, we know that so-and-so star met the such-and-such planet's thing on completing its 9th whatever. So, there are 5 of one for 1 of the other, so we can keep counting! Oh, dang, the so-and-so star fell fromt he sky, too. Well. . . and so on.
Since there's no other way to measure time consistently (assuming time exists pre-Dawn), there is no way for them to know that the amount of time per celestial even might have varied.
Then, you work backwards using pure numerology to come up with the 100,000 year reign of Yelm. Obviously, if you've found the pattern of increasing reigns the further back you go, it muist hold to the pattern.
> The answer might be that Time is different from Causality, but better answers probably exist...
My favorite. We can always say that there was a reason that the stars did what they did with regularity. Likewise, Zzabur turned the pages of his book with regularity, giving the pre-Dawn count for the west.
But if you realy buy the argument that there is no time, but there is causality, you can't locate two pre-Dawn events with respect to each other unless tey are related by causality. For example, unless the such-and-such planet doing its thing was one of the causes of someone doing something, you won't normally be able to place them with respect to each other (with one occurring "before" or "during" or "after" the other). one thing that creates the illusion of time, though, is where the events named all cause someone to write about them. Later readers infer the passage of time from the fact that they are written in a book in order.
Fun, eh? OK, maybe not.
Chris Lemens
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