Astronomical matters

From: Peter Metcalfe <P.Metcalfe_at_student.canterbury.ac.nz>
Date: Tue, 17 Dec 1996 11:54:49 +1200


Stephen P Martin:

[New Planet]

>It was called Diros by
>the Theyalans and Anaxial by the Dara Happans, and was the original
>marker of the Dara Happan Four-Day period mentioned in Genertela, which
>is not used any more. It disappeared no later than the Closing, of
>course.

I actually had an email from Greg about this. He was suprised about a mention of a four day week and thought that the Dara Happans divided the _day_ into 100 time divisions (roughly 15 minutes long). From these time divisions, they construct 25 hours (15 of light, 10 of darkness - cosmic compromise be buggered!). The original passage in the Genertela Book appears to have been a misunderstanding of his notes, it seems.

I have no problem with the Anaxial planet itself. In fact there's two runes for the Blue Moon in the GRAY and one of them is a semi-circle over a wavy line (ie the water rune). Is this what you think Anaxial's rune is?

>I think that the Gloranthan
>year was originally 280 days long, not 294, and that the Sunstop lasted
>exactly 2 weeks. And permanently changed the length of the year/nature of
>time. This is in keeping with my theory that Nysalor was, ultimately, an
>attempt to replace the deity Time with a new time god. And that it was
>only partially successful.

This has a flaw in that only the westerners are said to have noted the change in time. If there were more days in the year, I think more people would have noticed. Furthermore the proposed changed means that people live longer rather than shorter as the westerners complained.

I have doubts about the Sunstop lasting two weeks. The last song of Horned Ulf implies that it was frozen and people could become aware of this and break out. I'm told the people of the East Isles viewed the Sunstop as a century in length.

My personal theory is that the days themselves were longer (say 1920 minutes long rather than the current 1440 minutes). Then the Western Hours are of normal length. Come the Sunstop, the days shortened and the tradition prone westerners noticed the difference in their hours (they used water clocks whereas the Dara Happans and others used sideral time). Hence their complaints.

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