Underground Calendars?

[Ace32]

In establishing background for my homebrew (actually a joint homebrew created by players acting as deities over the course of 6 months), I decided it would be beneficial to come up with calendars used by various races. Considering that the world is young, I figured there could still be multiple calendars. Building solar and lunar calendars was easy, but then I ran into a problem...

One of the world's races was created undergroud to live in the darkness. They have light sensitivity and a proficiency for shadow magic. They also live deep below ground. Under the ocean (though not in water).

How the hell would these people tell time? Considering they have roughly bronze age technology, I cannot imagine them building complex gears for clocks or even necessary coming up with the pendulum. At the same time, they did not meet other races until later in their development and have never really seen the sky (its a long walk to the nearest surface access).

So that leaves a few questions:

What would a 'day' be to a person who does not have a sun to judge time by?
What would a year be to somebody that does not mark time by the rotation of the sun, changing seasons, or even lunar phases? They may not even have years at all...

Additionally, what clever ways could they have come up with to keep a consistent track of time?

 

[noffham]

Assuming there is water within their cave systems, they might track time by the drips falling from some main stalactite.

Do things like bats live there? The "daily" trek for food by such things might mark the passage of days.

Years might be marked by the season of new births amongst the people. Longer term dating by the generations of their leaders (kings, heroes, whatever).

That's what I can pull quickly off the top of me head.

Cheers!
Noffham

 

[ScardPtori]

I like this concept. Something I hadn't ever thought of, but it got me thinking. How would they tell time and how much would it matter? Based on your description of it being a "bronze age technology" it sounds like this is a civilization as in it is a relatively large and organized population with organized cities/villages? If this is the case, then they would need some sort of method to get everyone on the same page. So you'd logically have a normal time when most people are awake, doing business with each other and then a normal time when everyone is asleep.

So here is my thinking: back when this civilization was in a tribal organization pattern, you'd probably have had an alpha male leading the tribe (wouldn't necessarily have to be male, just the accepted leader of the "pack"). When the alpha male was awake, the pack would be awake. When the alpha male was tired, then that would be time for the pack to sleep. As the tribe grew, these normal periods of the activity and rest would probably stay in a relatively similar pattern, maybe slight variations as different leaders took over. So once the tribe became large enough to be a village and not everyone always did what the one leader did, it would be necessary to create a way of keeping everyone on the same schedule. So maybe at one point it was a guard on a tower ringing a bell when it was time to wake and time to sleep. Once the civilization got into more technology, the idea of the water dripping or a sand falling hour glass was developed. And this is where I would have the current technology at. Perhaps there is a 12 or 14 hour "awake" period and an 8 or 10 hour "rest period. There is an "official" hour glass for each of these two periods and you have a guard in a watch tower who flips over the appropriate hour glass, and when it runs out, he rings a bell and then flips over the other hour glass. With this method you could stick with a 24 hour day cycle for convenience or go with a 20 hour day for something different. Or even go completely different with 6 hours awake, 4 hours of rest and just cycle between those for a completely different feel.

Just some thoughts that came to me, but if you don't like them, blame it on the fact I only had one cup of coffee so far. 8P

 

[der_kluge]

Studies have shown that women who live in isolation underground basically cease their menstration cycle. Essentialy, the body loses all concept of "time". Without any reference to a day, you could sleep for 12 hours, and then stay away for 36 hours one day, and then sleep for 4, and then stay awake for 12 the next.

I imagine that most underground cultures would probably just more or less having a waking day around the clock. There would basically be absolutely no concept of time whatsoever.


I had my players meet a group of lizardfolk who lived in a pocket dimension. In that dimension, there was no concept of "direction". If you wanted to get somewhere, you envisioned it, walked a bit in a random direction, and ended up there.

They took them all back to the prime (they were trapped there) and tried to tell them how to get to their original home. The idea of a direction was completely and utterly lost on them.

 

[phindar]

This is a minor point of annoyance for me in my current underdark game. Almost everything in D&D relates to "days" (spells, healing, certain abilities) but for creatures who live far below the surface, that seems like a meaningless concept. Instead, everything ends up being based around cycles of rest, and I wish there was a better term for it than "days". It seems like that detail would have been covered somewhere (which is not to say it hasn't, only I'm not aware of it.)

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

As d-k's post hints, it would depend at least partially upon how much contact with the surface the race had. With a little exposure to the surface world, the race would essentially have a "reset," but without it...

Also, since fantasy caves are more active than RW ones, one could surmise that they might delineate seasons based upon the migrations and life cycles of the flora & fauna around them, or on the changing flow (and temperatures) of sources like meltwater from surface glaciers...and the differences in whatever gets dragged below in the water flow.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

There is an "official" hour glass for each of these two periods and you have a guard in a watch tower who flips over the appropriate hour glass, and when it runs out, he rings a bell and then flips over the other hour glass. With this method you could stick with a 24 hour day cycle for convenience or go with a 20 hour day for something different. Or even go completely different with 6 hours awake, 4 hours of rest and just cycle between those for a completely different feel.

I would agree on considering a non 24 hour sleep wake cycle. for group time keeping, rather than a constructed hourglass, maybe a cup catching water dripping from a particular stalagtite. when the cup is filled, the village awakens, and it is symbolicly drained by spiritual leaders. The two spiritual heads of the village are "Of the waking cup" and "Of the sleeping cup", Waking Cup having spiritual duties related to birth and beginnings, and Sleeping Cup releted to death and endings.

As for long term marking of years and such... maybe they just don't? Look at their lifestyle and decide if they actually need to or not.

 

[Stormborn]

Races that developed underground might have other senses that would orient them to "time" - an electromagnetic sense, for example, might respond to the "tides". Thus, even though they could not see the moon they could be affected by it. In a fantas setting that could just as easily be a sensativity to magical cycles. The race might not be concsiously aware of the cause of their biological patterns but would follow them and then mark time based on their biological habits to create "days" then use social factors to create "Seasons"


Thus you might have " First watch, 32nd time of rest since the begining of the Mushroom season, during the reign of Ran-gill the Black."

 

[Merkuri]

Unless they have some obvious thing that provides them with a concept of time (patterns of water - not dripping, but tide-type flows - or the time-pillar thing from the drow city in the Forgotten Realms), I think I'd go with the idea that they do not have a sense of time. It would make them more alien (and harder to roleplay, but more interesting at the same time, IMO).

Like der_kluge said, individuals would probably just sleep when they were tired and everyone would just sorta do their own thing whenever they wanted. They'd probably have a very simple hunter-gatherer culture that doesn't require coordinating times or anything like that, and they'd probably be a very relaxed people because they have no concept of rushing to get things done on time (or similar stress-producing ideas).

If you don't want them to be that alien or want them to have a sense of time for some other reason then you'd have to introduce something that provides them with a time period. You could have it be something magical, like a rock that heats up during the day and cools down at night, or something natural, like the cycles of animals or maybe a pool that fills up during the night and drains during the day.

If you want to go that way, it might be easier to come up with a calendar first, then arrange natural or magical phenomena for them to base that calendar off of.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

A sophisticated race driven from the surface might have some kind of clockwork calendar and a guild assigned to keep it running- it might even be a magical construct.

If they've been below for a looooooooooong time, they might not even realize why they do what they do to maintain the apparatus.

If they devolve long enough, they may even worship the apparatus that tells them what to do and when to do it, perhaps even giving it sacrifices of rendered body fat to feed it (keep it well oiled).

And because this is a fantasy world...that may be just enough to give the thing a malevolent sentience and a modicum of divine power so that it can grant spells to its "priests."