Known World Measurements
The measurements on Arth center around The Emperor and the Imperium. The Imperium imposes certain standards upon its subjects to make communication and trade between areas easier. Some of the most important was how much each coin was worth (and its basic size), the common language (imperial-low and high), and a system of measures.
The measurements on Arth center around The Emperor and the Imperium. The Imperium imposes certain standards upon its subjects to make communication and trade between areas easier. Some of the most important was how much each coin was worth (and its basic size), the common language (imperial-low and high), and a system of measures.
Since the Emperor is immortal, his body is used as the standard for measurements. In each Regions city center, there is a hall of standards, where you can receive a true measurement of something.
An Imperial
Stride
(1 Meter or a fraction less, a Yard and a bit more).
An Imperial
Span
is the most common width for a public hallway, being two strides wide.
An Imperial
Foot
(less than 1/3 of a Meter or more than a foot). Since the two do not conviently line up, most people measure larger things in Strides.
An Imperial
Walk
(50 Miles or 80 KM). The distance the Emperor can conviently walk in a day. It is also the distance the Imperial Army expects its forces to cover in a day.
An Imperial
Weight
, called A weight, is approximately one pound. Some areas call it a stone, as each weight stone weighs one pound.
Elventi have an innate sense for time linked to their longevity, so they never developed a system fo measuring time. They adopted a Humanti system and made it the standard.
Each 24 hour day is divided into two cycles of the six elements, one for day, one for night. Dawn (6 am) starts the first cycle. It usually ends at approximately sunset (6pm). Noon occurs at the begining of the 4th cycle. Most people call each part of the cycle either a candlemark, or one hour (which is two Modern/ European hours).
So by local reckoning, Noon is not 12'oclock, but 4th Hour or Fire Hour.
Each Hour is broken down into six Sets (2o minutes each).
The next smallest unit is a mark (approximaley 12 seconds), with 100 marks to a Set. This unit was created by magic users, based upon the flow of magic and the duration of magical knots. A fivemark is a commonly used unit of measure.
In Antioch, the archaic unit of beat is also used. There are 12 beats to a mark. It is said that each imperial heartbeat is one beat long. But in actuallity, it is an Elventi magical tool, as one beat is one increment of action. The fighting arts still use this measure to be fancy. It is coming back into vogue is because certain impressor tools need consistant percision and the beat is a good measure for timing.
So to sum up
1 Day is 12 Hours (two sets of six) or 72 sets or 7200 Marks (1440 FiveMarks), or 86400 beats.
Light, Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Darkness, is the elemental day cycle
Darkness, Water, Earth, Air, Fire, Light, is the elemental night cycle.
The measurement of days, weeks, and months were also adopted from Humanti ideas and have become the standards. So there are 216 days in the Imperial (and real) year. There are six months, with six, six day weeks each month.
One Moon cycle on Arth is normally 36 days, but that can change from biome to biome.
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? Responses (7)
Interesting. It is hard for me to comment or vote on this.
It is definately inspirational to fix my time system to more of a defined setup like this. It is nice and defined, but not worth 5/5. It is nice information to have however, even though the day time thing took me a few trys to completely understand it.
Good job once again though Moonhunter. As always top notch.
Its nice to see a measurement system laid out like this, nice and clear and I realise its not that simple because I've been trying it myself and you want to make it a little differant from what already exists now.
I like the day/time measurements, and they can look confusing, just look at any 'real' equivilents on history sites.
It is close to the Japanese system of time keeping.
I view messing with time measurements a somewhat low-reward activity - you may add flavor, but you put a new layer of translation between how we are used to reckoning time, and the game world. Worse still since the game rules themselves, unless you are using a home-brew, will also use real-world time.
I see Dates as much more flexible on that front, but messing around with hours or smaller strikes me as somewhat masochistic. I'd need a really good reason for that :)
I like it and it's cool detail, but I don't see ever using it in actual play. I've run historical games using different systems of weights and measure, and they tend to just confuse players. Or maybe that was just my players.
The one day being composed of 12 'hours' is really an ancient Chinese thing, I don't know abt Jap since a lot of things were adopted from ancient China by Jap and Korea in those days. Anyway, I agree with Val on this but still the sub itself provides solid info. about a point of differentiation of the Arth world, so a 3.
Another footnote, these write up are more fun when tied to directly to an in game or in story problem. Or when they are shorter.