The Wonders of Time - Part 2

Ah I am a fool. Yes, I am so so foolish. I really enjoyed doing that post about 'The Wonders of Time' last week as well... Little did I know it would come back to haunt me, and cause me to do so much maths my brain has actually died and I didn't wake up until 1pm today with the stress of it all...

Well, that last bit is a lie. I did actually wake up at 1pm, but that is just a side effect of my chronic laziness.

So there I was, thinking I was sorted with time. "Goodbye time," I said. "It's been fun but now I'm moving onto more exciting things like making up religions and wars and things. I really can't wait actually, it's going to be so... Oh wait... Oh wait Damn!"

You see children, I was silly, because I forgot the reason I started doing my 'Gospel of Tainted Glory' in the first place. If you go back to my 'World Building' blog you will see I wasn't sure if I should use our day names or fictional ones. And then I forgot...

And then I remembered...

In fact I remember right whilst I was in the middle of creating a really cool religion for one of the larger nations in my book. I was looking forward to telling you all about that as well, but alas, time is a bitch.

"Stop moaning and get on with it Ian!" Sorry weird voice, I will.

So a few things have changed since my last post. I realised that whilst measuring peoples ages in cycles is cool, it might be confusing given the whole 9 year things. I decided it would make it easier if I played around with how long the days/years are so that 9 years in my book is roughly equal to a decade on earth. That was, if you see someone who is 3c. 5, then you know they are in their thirties, and about 35 or 36.

I'll tell you it took a hell of a lot of maths to sort that out... A hell of a lot... To get my years to be the right length, they had to be 1.11111111111 times longer than our years. But I didn't just want a super long year, and the days were 23 earth hours at that point which would have made it an even longer year! But I also didn't want to have super long days, as that would be silly and mess with peoples sleeping patterns. So I slightly changed both instead. I multiplied both my currant year time and day time by 1.111111111/2.

Wait, that suddenly seems easy...

Well it seemed like a lot at the time, ok!

Then I played around with the numbers a bit, so they weren't exactly accurate, and ended up with days of 24 and a half earth hours, and 397 days!

YAY! I've finished, I can go carry on working out more exciting things. I've been waiting for this moment for so long I think I might... Oh wait. Damn.

So no one would measure a 24 and a half hour day with 24 and a half hours. I considered them measuring the day with a strange number of hours, like 18 or something, but then would confuse the reader when one hour lasted for ages. So I decided to go the easy route and measure the day in 24 hours, each with 60 minutes, and 60 seconds in a minute, just like us. Some things it's best to keep the same, so as not to confuse the reader. Seconds will last ever so slightly longer than they do on earth, to make up for that extra half an hour in earth time on the day. So every hour would be roughly 1 min 15 seconds longer.

Before now I had The Provinces of Dolindium, where my entire first book takes place, use a time system made up of bells. It was all very confusing, with a bell an hour, and different types of bell for different times of day, and there were some bells that would go on for 4 hours and some that would only go on for 2 and so on. It was a mess really. And it wasn't that cool.

But I liked the bells.

So I decided to keep that basic idea in, but simplify it. To disguise the fact I had 24 hours days like earth, and to tie everything back into the Cycles mentioned in my last post, I decided the day would be split up into 9 hour cycles. This makes two 9 hour cycles, and 6 hours left over. So I had a cool idea that there would be this time, from 10pm to 4am, when no bells would be struck. It would be the time when you weren't supposed to work, are were meant to relax and sleep and stuff. Some people would take this more seriously than others, but i thought it was a neat idea. I decided to call it the Grace.

Then I named my 9 hours cycles. The first I stole a name from the old bell system, calling the bells from 4am to noon the morn bells (morn being short of morning, rather than mourning). The afternoon cycle I decided to call the maine cycle, but I don't know why. That's the magic of world building!

Other places have different time systems. Asfulen, a nation to the south of my world, only measures time from when the sun rises to when it sets, so that hours are shorter or longer depending on the time of year. This is actually a system used historically in some places I think.

So there we go, I'm done! Thank Iilisha the Sun God of the Krri for that! Yay!

"DAY NAMES IAN!!! BLOODY DAY NAMES!!!"

Oh yeah!

So before I sorted out day names, I needed to think of months. Once again I didn't want to confuse the reader by having super long or super short months, so I divided my year into 13, which makes roughly 30 days a month. Then I needed some names. Well, here goes:

• Baera (30 days)
• Thea (30)
• Veana (30)
• Tecka (32)
• Odeou (30)
• Phayu (30)
• Eractu (30)
• Faktu (32)
• Nerrebre (30)
• Torrembre (30)
• Elbre (30)
• Kimbre (32)
• Lorrendi (31)

I made all these up from nothing really, apart from the final month which is named after the dude who made up the calender. But after I'd made them up I though they seemed too random to just be made from nothing. So I decided they would be based on the names of the Gods of a new religion, the Gods they follow in Defon, the nation the calender was made in. So there we go, I accidentally made up a new religion. Cool!

So now you are expecting me to do a list of day names aren't you... Well, to be honest, I haven't made any up yet.

"What? You made me read all that rubbish about maths for nothing?"

Sorry...

I did decide that they use a 6 day week, and then on months with 32 days they have an extra 2 new days they add on. Same with the 31 day month. That way, unlike us on earth, they always have the same day on the same date!

But as for day names, I'm struggling. Do I end them in 'day' like we do? Or do I abandon that idea and just make up random words again... If you have made it all the way to this point in the blog (well done by the way) then please help out a struggling author and let me know your opinion. Think of it like a competition! Whoever helps me make up new day names the most wins the prize! Yay!

Thanks for reading!

Ian.