Underworld creatures -- world concepts

[Quasqueton]

How do creatures that live their entire existance underground speak of time, and direction, and their world in general?

For instance, how would an underworld creature say it takes 3 days to travel east, to a cavern 500 feet below ground?

Quasqueton

 

[thullgrim]

I tend to think that one of the major underworld races developed a timekeeping system that measures an hour. Whether it was the drow (knowing about hours and days before their banishment, or dwarves who work both above and below the gound) or someone else. In my game dwarves measure hours by thr tolling of massive bells throughout their halls. The bells toll every hour. Simple enough for another race to use the same interval with a different delivery system.

An hourglass is also a possible solution, where time is measured in glasses, and a certain number of turns of the glass equals 1 day. I Think the timekeeping aspects of day and night have to have been brought into the underworld by another race.

Thullgrim

 

[Tinker Gnome]

Are you going to make an underground area for the world you are playing in? If so, that sounds really cool, I always loved underground places.

Errrrrrr, sorry I can not be any of real help.

 

[Nifft]

1) There is directionality: you know "down", and maybe "north".

2) Tides happen anywhere water can move around a lot. If you've got an Underdark, you've probably got a lot of water down there. Use the tides as "long days".

3) Gysers have been known to be quite regular. I'd imagine that someone would use a regular geothermal effect of some kind to stat out their days.

-- N

 

[jester47]

Keep in mind that before clocks, the smallest sure increment of time was the day. Basicly you did things based on parts of the day. Like morning, noon (which we now call noonish), afternoon, evening, night etc.

So really you don't need to worry about hours but rather a method to determine what part of the day it is. But then in the underdark there is no day. There is just time. So you would count probably using natural means. In caves this is probably with the movements of water. Drips from a stalagtite, undertides, and the like. Another way is with vegetation. Perhaps there is some plant of fungus that changes colors at a regular interval. If I were using this, I would make all the time measurements arbitrary. So it becomes difficult to tell how long someone has been in a place by just asking them. Five drips from the local stalagtite could be five hours, five days, or even five years.

Aaron.

 

[Richards]

If I remember correctly, the cavemen in Edgar Rice Burroughs' "Pellucidar" novels (Pellucidar being the Earth's hollow interior, with the core of the planet being an eternal sun - which means that Pellucidarans have the opposite problem of Underdark dwellers: eternal sunlight instead of eternal darkness) use the term "sleep" as a time measurement. A four-day journey would be said to take "three sleeps" - that is, you'd be tired and sleep three times before you arrived at your destination. I could see Underdark dwellers using a similar concept.

In the Forgotten Realms, there's a subterranean energy called (I hope I'm spelling this correctly) faerzress that many Underdark races could probably detect, at least slightly. As faerzress is more powerful the deeper underground you go, they might have developed words describing how powerful the faerzress emanations are at a given level to denote "feet underground" or the equivalent.

Johnathan

 

[Ranes]

Perhaps there is some plant of fungus that changes colors at a regular interval. If I were using this, I would make all the time measurements arbitrary.

That's what I do. My campaigns invariably feature a variety of lichen which glows more intensely the higher the moon is in the sky. The luminosity is affected only by the azimuth of the moon, so eclipses and visibility have no bearing on the effect. The effect provides insufficient luminosity to act as a light source. The property is an extraordinary effect.

The lichen is extremely hardy and grows in the deepest and most inhospitable places. Moonless nights make some days longer than others but intelligent underground dwellers with a level in expert and skill in profession (horologist) can predict and account for these times, thereby measuring day-like periods.

 

[Nightfall]

Keeping track of time is essential. No matter what you are, if you're mortal you want to know something about the whole progression of linear time. So I'd imagine some kind of time keeping system would be in place for most sentient races.