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A:EftP - Night and Day?


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Originally Posted By: The Turtle Moves
What comes to your mind when you hear "night and day"?

What comes to your mind when you hear "day and night"?
In both cases,
. I used to own the movie it's from, too.

Anyway, back to topic: I've often wondered how they keep time in Avernum. Maybe someone was sent down with a clock?
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Originally Posted By: The Mystic
Originally Posted By: The Turtle Moves
What comes to your mind when you hear "night and day"?

What comes to your mind when you hear "day and night"?
In both cases,
. I used to own the movie it's from, too.

Anyway, back to topic: I've often wondered how they keep time in Avernum. Maybe someone was sent down with a clock?


Shroom-dials? tongue

Or maybe the wizards beamed down an hourglass from the surface?
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Originally Posted By: Structualise THIS!
Maybe they just counted, adding 'elephant' between numbers?


I thought it was Mississippi.
...but then, there probably isn't a Mississippi in Sanctuary. Maybe the early Avernites counted 1, Fort Avernum, 2, Fort Avernum...

And yes, I guess candles would work. But where does all the wax come from? And how to standardize the measurement all across the caves?
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Originally Posted By: Rent-an-Ihrno
Originally Posted By: Structualise THIS!
Maybe they just counted, adding 'elephant' between numbers?


I thought it was Mississippi.
...but then, there probably isn't a Mississippi in Sanctuary. Maybe the early Avernites counted 1, Fort Avernum, 2, Fort Avernum...


There probably aren't any elephants, either. Unless that's the new town JV's including. Beta testers?

(Also, it is 'elephants'.)
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Elephants could very well exist on the surface, as we probably haven't seen 100% of the world's fauna in A3/E3. A Mississippi river however, is much less likely since Jeff doesn't use words from our world when describing geography in particular.

 

I realize now that Sanctuary is the name of the mortal realm in the Diablo series. What the heck is the name for the world of Exile?

 

I thought of chitrachs too, but decided that their slime would not make acceptable candle-sticks.

...measurable oil/slime-lamps?...

Still, you could only keep track of temporal stuff in your local vicinity, not compare it to that of far away in another cave, let alone on the surface. Unless Erika far-sighted up there once an hour to check on things. Like the sun. She wouldn't burn if she looked at the sun in a vision, would she?

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I too do not see the real need of a night and day difference in the Avernum games (3rd being excused for obvious reasons).

 

Originally Posted By: RogueGypsy47
Candles, I imagine. >.>

 

Although, I don't put it past Solberg to invent a water clock. tongue

 

So it was you that was pilfering through my notes, was it?

 

*mumbles

 

As if it matters to you (it don't), my design doesn't use water to tell time...it only has water in it. You could hardly begin to comprehend the magnitude of this majestic clock. Now where are my glasses?

 

*spends 45 min looking for his glasses and finds them on top of his bald head!

 

Post #632 cool

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Actually, it occurs to me that during all of the games there's a fairly simple way to tell time.

 

In A1, the Avernites ask the newly exiled. In A2, they ask captured opponents, or their intrepid spies infiltrate the Empire's forts and camps to steal scheduling information. In A3, of course, it's someone's job to go look outside Fort Emergence just a little bit to see how much the light has changed.

 

—Alorael, who imagines things got complicated when the portal in Fort Avernum was shut down before the invasion and after the war but before Fort Emergence was built.

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If Erika really did create the Glowing Fungus, she could have programmed it differently for every cave, so that if you were a day-person, you could just hang out in one of those with longer and brighter day-cycles, or if you were planning an extensive weekend of celebration of some sort, you could do it in one of the party caves where the night never stops wink

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Erika did not create the glowing fungus. This is well-established: the Vahnatai created it. Erika did something to make sure Exile/Avernum had plenty of high-glow fungus. Whether she augmented it or simply encouraged its reproduction is unclear.

 

Regardless, why is a regular day-night cycle necessary anyway? Since the many dangerous denizens of the caves presumably woke and slept at their discretion, it would actually seem a bad idea to have a long period of time where most people were asleep.

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Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S
Regardless, why is a regular day-night cycle necessary anyway? Since the many dangerous denizens of the caves presumably woke and slept at their discretion, it would actually seem a bad idea to have a long period of time where most people were asleep.


Good idea or not, it's canonical that there is such a period of time. Someone in one of the towns in one of the Exiles (I want to say Blosk in E2?) mentions somebody sneaking into a house to steal items during "the period of sleep".
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A day-night cycle is probably necessary because people would feel weird without it and because it's convenient to have everyone on the same hours. You want to know when the shops are open, when the farmers are in town selling their mushrooms, and when your boss expects you at work.

 

Of course, how everyone tells time is still something of a mystery. A wizard could tell you, possibly, but you can't carry around your own pocket wizard.

 

—Alorael, who can't even see candle clocks being the solution for everyone. Candles are expensive, especially for wax-poor Avernum. Everyone's not going to keep candles burning constantly.

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I always imagined that the candles (and the oil that the lamps and torches used as well, for that matter) were made from some kind of rendered lizard tallow. It was the only way I could justify them being so inexpensive.

 

In my imagination, they also smelled really, really awful. And were used to keep the time.

 

 

 

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Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S
How would the Sliths know what time it was in the first place, and why would they be so stupid as to raid at a consistent and predictable time?


As cave denizens, they're more likely to have a sense of time that's attuned to the caves than freshly Exiled humans.

As for them being so stupid, Sss-Thsss never struck me as the most brilliant of leaders.
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"attuned to the caves"???

 

Sss-Thsss wasn't brilliant. But he was an effective enough military leader to avoid being defeated by brilliant wizards and successful generals on the other side. And Sliths in general are supposed to be very smart: remember that +2 Intelligence bonus?

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The sliths are very likely to have some system of telling time, because it's hard to organize a society without schedules. But they may well rely on magic, or priests. Or some innate lizard time-sense.

 

—Alorael, who now wonders if the Avernites don't rely on animals. Bats have a fairly good innate sense of time. Maybe days are counted by bat activity cycles. Maybe bats do distinctive things in convenient hour increments.

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To be a volcano, it has to make it to the surface, not Avernum. There also doesn't seem to be a lot of activity, just lava floating around. But maybe there are regular lava geysers.

 

—Alorael, who again thinks that might be fine locally, but not as a general system of knowing what time it is or when to come in from the mushroom fields and have dinner.

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Why is it actually necessary to tell time? Obviously it's useful, but I think society could be organized and functional without it -- particularly if we are talking about a sparse, low population, early neolithic society, as Exile was described as in E/A 1. A family or group of farmers would presumably sleep and wake at similar times even if they don't follow the exact rhythm of a 24-hour day. Why does it matter exactly when that stuff happens? If they go to a settlement to sell crops, somebody will likely be awake. Neolithic means people do not have appointments, secretaries, or fast communications. Why does everyone have to sleep and work at the same time? Why must meals be synchronized? Who is in such a hurry to do stuff, anyway?

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Except E/A1 isn't really neolithic at all. The population has plenty of farmers, but it's organized around walled urban centers. The population has many craftsman, mages, and priests in those cities. Even those farmers aren't all at a subsistence level; plenty have produce to sell to passing adventurers. There are many shops and markets. There is a dedicated ruling/political group with bureaucracy.

 

Why synchronize? Because if you're making a trip into town to buy something, you don't want to have to weight eight hours for the shopkeeper to arrive. If you're selling your produce, it's good for everyone to have some idea of when you'll be there. Mayors probably do have schedules with appointments, and they need to be able to communicate with the Castle with some degree of speed, and they need to know when to meet as a council.

 

—Alorael, who thinks the biggest problem is that Avernites are all from the surface. They're used to schedules, and they're likely to try to maintain them. They might be forced to give them up, but they'd do so grudgingly.

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