Re:History and Time in the West

From: Peter Metcalfe <metcalph_at_yx2XCGgw2ZVACDa5y3vhRT-4GA6we-OURvGpg9omhjQ7LEebPTckObaB_UdTev0mrUn>
Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2011 20:33:23 +1200


On 4/10/2011 7:12 PM, hcarteau_at_ebscv8sz6Zam6e9NP4PBBb2RnYFU6l0OHXX_d_CgPS1Ds_sCcSumW1eXs5rR8UutVFYJhDWplQM6gw.yahoo.invalid wrote:
> So the key issue is : how do use these notions to make our Glorantha even more
> interesting to play and live in ? Are there scenarios that might be built around
> the differences in time measurements ? I half-see a campaign built around the
> notion of Time. Time is the ennemy which must be negated to go back to the Ideal
> Era (see Mircea Eliade's notion of the eternal return).
The neatness of the Solara Tempora system strikes me as a bit off.

Since the days are described in terms of magical phenomena (windsday, fire day etc), it occurs to me that then rather than simply presume that godsday takes place after wildday, the magical cycles are running only roughly in synchronity with each other.

Say for example, I have a spell that detects the day of the week. I cast it on windsday and it tells me it's windsday. What if I cast it early next morning and the spell still tells me that it's windsday? It's only after midmorning that the spell finally tells me that it's now Fireday and the fireday prayers can now be said.

At other occassions, the magical day might arrive early. For instance on late godday, it suddenly becomes freezeday - a chill wind blows and disrupts the ceremony.

You can extend this further by having missing days - the day after clayday is normally windsday but sometimes, _sometimes_, it turns out to be fireday and the resulting week is only six days long. You could also have leap days and the same day gets duplicated.

To make things easier for our chronologers, we can always stipulate that the surplus or deficit in days gets made up at Sacred Time. For the debt collectors, it might be an opportunity to inflict lateness penalties.

Another possibility is that for a given region, the magical day might be stuck. While the sun rises and sets in the small village of Yelm's Griddle, it's has been waterday for six days running. Only when waterday normally comes again does the magical day shift to clayday and the villagers breathe a sigh of relief and change their brown trousers.

Lastly there is the possibility that two magical cycles start diverging noticeably (say the lunar phases and the elemental days) - one a day early while the other a day late.

--Peter Metcalfe            

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