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.

The Wonders of Time

So if you've read my last blog post, you'll know that I'm undertaking the mammoth task of reinventing the world my book is set it. I'm changing/adding religions, cultures, geography, place names, history, etc. But one of the most exciting (well, actually kind of boring if you're not a geek) things I'm adding in is a new calendar system!

Blown away aren't you.

Yeah I knew you would be.

So if any of you millions of people who read my blog (or 90 total page views to be more precise...) would like to read about a specific example of 'worldbuilding' from me, you are in luck. Seriously, this one is going to be awesome.

Introducting... *drumroll* ...the next evolution of fantasy time system... *gasp* ...known only as... *silence as everyone holds their breath* ...the Defonese Calader!

"Erm... wha?"

Defon is a nation in my book. I like how their name sounds. Because of that, it is one my favourite nations. So I decided to be nice, and let them be the ones who made up the calendar system used by almost every nation in the north of my continent. So what I went and did, was I decided how many hours would be in a day, how many days would be in a year, and how often a leap year would be.

Hours in a day: Roughly 23 of our earth hours.

Days in a year: Roughly (lol) 378.1111111111111111

This all adds up to roughly the same time as an earth year.

Because of that .1111111111111 there would be a leap year every 9 year (unless I've buggered up my maths  again... Since my GCSE's I've just forgotten how to count!)

So this got me thinking. Why don't we make a bigger deal out of our extra day in February? It seems like something that ought to be celebrated really, but we just ignore it for the most part. It's probably because it's tucked away at the end of a month, not long after new year, so no one really cares.

"Oh look," generic person says, "It's February 29th. Is that the extra day? I can't remember. Oh well, back to non-existence I go now that Ian has no need for me any more."

But imagine if the leap year day was the first day of the year. Now then it would be a big deal. It would be seen as more of a cycle, the start of a new 4 years (or 9 years in my books case). Hmm... Cycle. I like that!

So here's where I decided to do something radically different to our Gregorian Calender. I decided to remove decades, and replace them with Cycles.

Here's an example for you. We are in the year 2011. If I were to set my book in the year 2011, I wouldn't call it that. I would call it 223c. 4. 


The fourth year the the 224th cycle. Yes indeedy!


(and in case you are confused why it says 223.c yet I said 224th cycle, think of it like centuries. We are in the 2011, the 11th year of the 21st century)


So you're probably thinking "You're going to base their calendar around the number 9? That's silly!" Well shush voice person, because our time system is based around the number 60, we have a measurement system based around the number 12, and a weight system based around the number 14! Cultures are strange, and the systems they use can be strange. But that doesn't mean they can't exist.


It feels like I could just leave it there. So I have my calender is done, and that's it. Sorted. Finished. Move on.

NEVER!

This whole cycles idea is bound to have an impact on the cultures of my book. It will change how they speak about things, how they think of time passing etc. A world governed by Cycles. So I added a few things in.

First of all, there's people's ages. If I'm really going to embrace this calendar system, then I think the characters should think of their own ages in terms of how many cycles they have lived. For example, my main character is in his mid-thirties. Lets say 35. But he would never say or think "I'm 35!" to him it would be "I'm three cycles eight" or "Near the end of my fourth cycle" or "Almost four full cycles." When people are less than 9 I suppose they are just referred to as being "eight" or "three" or whatever, although I might make up a name for a persons 0th cycle at some point. Obviously not many people will be born at the start of a leap year cycle thing, so Dearon's personal cycle might start/end right in the middle of a Solar Cycle or whatever I'm going to call it.

I imagine because of this, people view their lives in terms of cycles. Just like people often go "The nineties was rubbish!" or whatever, my characters would think "Last cycle sucked ass!" Well, maybe not quite that, but you know. This might cause a lack of identity for each cycle ("The two-hundred and twenty threes were rubbish!" doesn't really work) but oh well, I suppose that is a downside of the calender, and why not?

I also decided that the first day of a new cycle is very important. Because it is a leap year day, it is seen as it's own day between cycles. An extra day where you can reinvent yourself, a time for fresh starts. Although I've yet to sort all the religions, I've decided one of them calls for a day of complete freedom on the leap day, which some interpret as a day where breaking the law is ok! So for those poor nations who follow this religion, it's probably best to hide your belongings when it's getting to the end of a cycle!

So I had all that. And I could have stopped there. Done. Finished. Go have a bath. Make some cheese on toast.

NEVER!

I decided to give the calendar a bit of a back story. I have no idea if this will be mentioned in the book or not, but I thought it would be good to give the Calender a bit of context. I won't go into too much detail here, but basically...

The calender was originally created by a Defonese astronomer named Lorrendi, and used to be called the Lerrenian Calender. However, after his death, there was a lot of dispute as to if it was actually him who created it, or if he had copied the idea from someone else. So name name was changed to the Defonese Calender. However, because the term P.L.C. (Pre Lorrendian Calender, their version of B.C.) had been used so much by historians and the like to describe what came before the calenders invention, the term P.D.C. (Pre Defonese Calender) is rarely used in spite of the calenders name change.

So there is a little glimpse into the work I'm doing at the moment, as well as a sort of insight into my thought processes when it comes to things like this. I look forward to sharing more of this stuff soon!

Ian.

Age: 2c. 1