Durakken

While measurement did evolve to correlate with seasons to some degree it is also an important aspect for scheduling. While I'm not all that concerned about hours and minutes, I do need days, months, and years, or some equivalent. I also don't see an engineering society just never coming up with some form of keeping time. Even at a basic level a civilized society would need a way to go "you have to guard these days and hours, but these days you get a break" Also it should be noted this world is not "medieval" in the strictest sense of the world. Some places are incredibly modern, but not in the same way. Like one of the major human cities will have a form of internet via magic. And likewise it is a little futuristic in the sense that this same city has flying vehicles that work due to magic, but that being said magic has led to different technological evolutions and resulted in somewhat a surface medieval world where things aren't industrialized and mass produced. booo I was hoping could use it for seasons While I'd prefer to solve it with a natural solution. I don't see any reason not to use it if no other solution can be figured out. Look above. Thinking about it time might be more important to some degree because while it would be "day" all the time it doesn't mean noone ever sleeps and because its day all the time it means that you need people to work at all hours all the time which means you need to know when your shift is. I have ideas for that. While I agree with you in terms of writing, I also don't in terms of what magic actually is which is supernatural manipulation of the natural world. In other words, no rules. ^.^

There are surface dwellers, but the underground civilizations should be self sustaining. There is trade that goes on, but the surface, for most races is very dangerous for a good while that by the time it is "safe" most just don't go up too often due to not caring to do so. Basically same question. Are there any geological happenings that happen at a relatively stable interval that could be used to denote a passage of time...or for that matter, be used by an underground civilization. I'm planning on going with artificial sunlight produced by magical means or something like that. That is true, but I don't think craftsmen that are expert engineers would go 8000 years without establishing a watch lol ^.^ The question is how much of an error would there be, say over a century? Early calenders had like 300 days and had huge errors over short times. I want a relatively accurate calender, but it doesn't have to be 100% accurate. So you are saying there is a seasonal cycle, even underground? They do and don't. One of the mining types can search through the ground without moving rocks so there isn't mining that is wasteful... I have no idea what they do with waste products though. Maybe they try to keep to naturally large caverns and use the mining waste to smooth out the area ad building stuff. There is nothing saying that what they use to make "alcohol" is the same thing we use as they are on a different planet. I'm using beer for the descriptor but i haven't decided how much of earth fauna will be on this planet. Maybe all, maybe little. They could have simply gotten this crop and bred it to work in the habitat they are in. I'll let you two argue about the stalactites as I don't know enough about all that to put forth any argument for or against, and I'll just listen to see if it is useful or not ^.^

The thing with that is that I imagine that they can farm year round since they would have no seasons and have to provide their own heat. Not sure about animals, but I'll be thinking on that.

Assuming I use this method, it would be 18 dwarven hours which would equate to about 36 earth hours. I'm thinking tidal change is 3 meter so there is; high 2 meters 1 meter low 1 meter 2 meter Of course I could make that bigger or smaller based on Imperial style units of measurements. And Still looking for a year measurement. David, i know how to measure time, but time is based on regular events. Such as the sun/moon rising and setting constantly. That is what I'm trying to figure out.

They are likely always by a water source and tend to be under mountains rather than just underground. The water source would differentiate by area I'd assume, some areas having large underground lakes while other having rivers. Given that they could build a machine to do it they could even build something like a horizontal or vertical well. I'm reducing the day to 36 hour cycles now because I can say that since they are in the dark with no light they fall back on their internal clocks and like humans we tend to be 36hour based and not 24 hour based. This also ties into the tides because then there would be 3 tides a day. Although again this really doesn't help with "hours" or "minutes" or "seconds." I mean not unless I want to go with really long hours like "between mid-day and night tide" which would make 6 hours in all with tide to mid tide equally 1 hour but that 1 hour would equal 6 hours in hour clocks and that just seems like too big a time interval

Thanks, still don't have an idea with the hour count but i'm pretty good with the rest ^.^ gator13, WoW is based on generic fantasy which is based on D&D which based on Tolkien which is based on stardard mythology, but it depends how deep you want to draw from in that and differentiate. To a degree it's meant to be reminiscent, but not exact. WoW tries to be pretty much exact to generic fantasy.

I am creating a world for the purposes of doing various things with it. There is a lot of things I want to do with it and so to say it is a book or a game or what not isn't completely accurate. One project is to make a 70ish chapter book somewhat like a bible, Another is a 5 video game saga and yet another is a pen and paper rpg. To explain more about the culture, they have personalities similar to that of the common ones most people think of as dwarves... though this time system is for not just Dwarves, but Dwarves are the main part of the civilization. The civilization is actually made up of... Dwarves as the planners, smiths, miners, and warriors Jotunn (giants more or less) as the rulers and judges of the city Gnomes as mining scouts, miners, and guards Leprechaun as traders between the various cities. Most of the races never go out into the world. Leprechauns are the only ones to do so. Most races never come to the surface due to the danger involved from one of the other races, and when that race backed off attacking them they just traditionally didn't go to the surface much any more There are currently 3 major Dwarven city areas, 2 minor ones in my plans. They are on 1 or 2 continents. Their "rival" civilization also has about the same spread, but again, the surface threat limits contacts between the two civilizations. This civilization formed long before humans existed in this world, around 8000 years before. So this system is not based on anything human related and would be ingrained long before then. The dating system however is the primary system in the world for those 8000 years as the 6 civilizations it has the most contact between the other 5. I was speaking with TechnicusJoe and he brought up the fermentation process and after thinking about it, that seems to work for days, weeks, and months (21 days of 40 earth hour lengths evenly divided into 3 groups of 7 days for a week), but I still have nothing for year, hour, minute, or second. Current candidates are "the time between the ring of an anvil" "the time between hammer strikes upon a blade being smithed" for seconds. For hours I may create something as their mythology (which i haven't worked on yet) but I'm also considering "the time it takes to get a forge up to temp" or "the time it to boil beer at before fermenting it for the perfect brew" Another thing that was brought up that i hadn't thought of before is i might need a measurement system for standardized weights and such. Again those would likely come from a smith culture so likely have something to do with smithing. As far as an day watch I don't see them as doing that. the surface is dangerous and their cities would have to be big so they would have to be deep underground which means far away from entrances. It would likely seem like a wasteful and dangerous job that didn't have to be done and would have no baring on the culture itself since day and night would be the same, lit by whatever source of light they have. I don't see an hourglass as quite right because it seems to me that you need a measurement of time before you decide how to make something like an hourglass. Thanks for all the input thus far. If it seems like I ignored anyone I'm not it's just I haven't got anything to respond with. I don't want to post stuff that is too far removed from smithing so I'm refraining from going into too much detail on my end and trying to post only helpful info.

Hello, I'm not sure if this fits hear well enough or should go int the off topic section, but I figure your mods will move it if it should be moved. The reason I am posting here is because I am creating a book, universe, game, whatever... it's a creative endeavor that is creating a "world" and in that world there are dwarves, who as most people know, are forgers by trade...My conundrum arose when I realized that a civilization that spends its time underground, almost exclusively, wouldn't tell time like we humans tell time, because there is no sun or moon and thus something else had to dictate how they thought of time and I can't make a calender of a civilization that has no measurement of time so... It occurred to me that given these creatures would spend most of their days doing metal work they'd base their time on something about forging or something geological. I can't think of anything geological (but I will be asking a geologist soon) so my primary thought is what is there in forging that has an amount of time that remains relatively even and stable? My thoughts on this were that heating a forge might take about the same time every time its done and perhaps the amount of work it takes to forge an item. I've heard some places that it takes roughly 20 days to forge and put together a sword, but I'm not sure on that. So my question that is probably several question if I knew more about the subject is, "Are there anythings in Blacksmithing that occur at regular intervals that one could use as a way to tell time and ultimately formulate a calender?" Thank you for your answers, and sorry for the intrusion and if this is in the wrong place.