What planet are we on?

[PrimeJunta]

Dividing the day into quarters is "natural" -- sunrise and sunset, noon and midnight. The quarters could be different lengths in different seasons (assuming Eora has an axial tilt), of course. It doesn't split into three with similar "natural" markers. 

 

A twin star could produce that kind of natural division. Another possibility would be that whoever designed the clock was from a dominant culture with a high-latitude capital, where winter solstice would (coincidentally) have daylight for about 1/3 of the cycle (and summer solstice would have 1/3 of night).

 

Seems a bit contrived to be sure, but weirder reasons for scales and measures have happened, like Fahrenheit's 100-point where it is because Mr. Fahrenheit happened to be running a temperature on the day he fixed the scale.

 

If there is an in-lore explanation for the division into 27, I'd be curious to hear it. Even if Josh came up with it ex post facto.

Edited April 15, 2015 by PrimeJunta

[Elerond]

Now when I look Anni Iroccio calendar I find one thing bit strange in how it is represented us in guides and game.

 

As there are 16 months that are 20 days each, which means 320 days addition these there are four mid season times three days long each meaning total 12 days, months and mid seasons are total 332 days, and last two days of the year are reserved for New Year and Mid Year. Because New Year and Mid Year seem to be quite important in this calendar system but there are no Vailian traslations for those days as far as I can see in guides or the game.

 

PrimeJunta you can divide day in three points by using system sunrise, noon and sunset. Midnight is quite arbitrary definition that isn't actually always as easy to spot by observing celestial bodies as those three other points are. Which is why dividing day in three isn't necessary any stranger than dividing it to four parts. Midnight brings symmetry for noon, but need for such symmetry don't necessary exist in every culture. 

[Emperor Pen]

Anyone who has worked manual labor understands that we divide the day into thirds, not halves or quarters. Really, even a traditional job works roughly on a third system with traditional hours taking the middle third. (8 to 4/5 depending on lunch.) Moving that to 9 hour shifts seems reasonable to me.

[Zenicetus]

High fantasy fiction generally takes place in what are called secondary worlds.  I

 

 

True, but there are crossover genres with science fiction, where what looks like high fantasy is either "science so advanced it looks like magic," or some blend between traditional fantasy and sci-fi explanations. And sometimes that takes place on a future Earth.

 

Two examples would be Gene Wolfe's "Book of the New Sun" series, and the more recent Richard K. Morgan "A Land Fit for Heroes" trilogy. Both take place on a radically transformed future Earth with a vaguely Medieval high fantasy culture.

 

The world of Eora in PoE is probably just a typical Tolkien-esque secondary world. But with all the references to old technology, the resemblance to present day Humans and so on, I don't think a future Earth could be completely ruled out, unless the devs make it more explicit. The "two moons" actually remind me of Morgan's idea of a Saturn-like ring around the earth, caused by the fragmentation of the original Moon during an epic war.

[waltc]

 

 

Today we have changed our standard time definition to system that is no longer based on the rotation of the Earth around the Sun, but on atomic time. As a second is defined as: "9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom." and length other standard time units are based on that definition.

 

 

I think it is more like we use 'atomic time' to more accurately measure the time it takes for the earth to revolve around the sun, imo...   So-called 'atomic time' is merely more accurate as opposed to being radically different from other methods of telling time--revolutions around the sun are still 'years' and rotations of the earth on its axis are still 'days', etc.  It isn't exact to the nanosecond, but that is generally accepted to be A-OK.  (We build in Leap Year, etc., to correct for the small inaccuracies that accrue.)  But the astronomical observations are still very much the basis for our calendar.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_year

Edited April 15, 2015 by waltc

[Lmaoboat]

 

http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Eora

 

 

Thanks!

 

 

 

You thought this game took place on Earth?

 

 

A fantasy Earth, in the same way that Tolkein's Shire is intended to be England, even though there are no hobbits in the real England.  Science fiction frequently features other planets, but fantasy usually takes place on a slightly different Earth -- one that has elves and/or dwarves and/or dragons and other creatures not found on the real Earth, one where magic works or where praying to a god or gods gives a priest magic spells. 

 

You must have been reading some fantasy I haven't, because LotR is pretty much the only fantasy setting I can recall that takes place on Earth

[PrimeJunta]

You must have been reading some fantasy I haven't, because LotR is pretty much the only fantasy setting I can recall that takes place on Earth

 

Conan the Barbarian. Which pretty much founded the genre.

 

Robert E. Howard explicitly sets it on Earth during the "Hyborian Age," which is some time not that long after the end of the Ice Age, but before the emergence of the first historical civilizations (Sumerians, Egyptians, Chinese etc). The Cimmerians would eventually become the Celts, the Carinthians the Greeks, the Aquilonians the Romans, the Zingarans the Roma, the Picts the English, the Keshans the Egyptians, the Khitaians the Chinese, and so on and so forth.

 

All based on racist-essentialist ideas current at the time of course. Still good reads though!

Edited April 15, 2015 by PrimeJunta

[Elerond]

 

 

 

Today we have changed our standard time definition to system that is no longer based on the rotation of the Earth around the Sun, but on atomic time. As a second is defined as: "9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom." and length other standard time units are based on that definition.

 

 

I think it is more like we use 'atomic time' to more accurately measure the time it takes for the earth to revolve around the sun, imo...   So-called 'atomic time' is merely more accurate as opposed to being radically different from other methods of telling time--revolutions around the sun are still 'years' and rotations of the earth on its axis are still 'days', etc.  It isn't exact to the nanosecond, but that is generally accepted to be A-OK.  (We build in Leap Year, etc., to correct for the small inaccuracies that accrue.)  But the astronomical observations are still very much the basis for our calendar.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_year

 

 

It is leap second system that keeps us (Universal Time) withing solar time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_second because Earth rotation speed varies, but if you read the article wholly you will see that time keeping currently isn't necessary most straightforward thing.

 

Also Gregorian calendar was invented to keep date of Easter better in place. 

 

Anyway we adjust our time system constantly because of traditions to track time by using astronomical observations, but because those observations aren't accurate enough there is need to adjust our calendars/clocks so that they give us impression that they follow those observations. So do we base our calendar on those observations or do we just keep track on them and from out of convenience towards our traditions make it so that our observations match with our calendar, at least some of them. 

[Amentep]

There's not a mention of how the moons travel (other than both are faster than our moon).  If moonrise and set are at the same time (ie synchronous with the day) with respect to the visible moon, Beläfa, then the day could be split into threes and fives rather easily (sunrise (sunset), moonrise (moonset), (no sun, no moon (Cawldha Dev rise/set)), I'd think.

[Atheosis]

 

High fantasy fiction generally takes place in what are called secondary worlds.  I

 

 

True, but there are crossover genres with science fiction, where what looks like high fantasy is either "science so advanced it looks like magic," or some blend between traditional fantasy and sci-fi explanations. And sometimes that takes place on a future Earth.

 

Two examples would be Gene Wolfe's "Book of the New Sun" series, and the more recent Richard K. Morgan "A Land Fit for Heroes" trilogy. Both take place on a radically transformed future Earth with a vaguely Medieval high fantasy culture.

 

The world of Eora in PoE is probably just a typical Tolkien-esque secondary world. But with all the references to old technology, the resemblance to present day Humans and so on, I don't think a future Earth could be completely ruled out, unless the devs make it more explicit. The "two moons" actually remind me of Morgan's idea of a Saturn-like ring around the earth, caused by the fragmentation of the original Moon during an epic war.

 

 

The Book of the New Sun is not even remotely high fantasy.  And yeah I think it's safe to rule out the idea that Eora is a future Earth.  There is absolutely no reason to think it's anything but a secondary world.

[Tigranes]

 

 

http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Eora

 

 

Thanks!

 

 

 

You thought this game took place on Earth?

 

 

A fantasy Earth, in the same way that Tolkein's Shire is intended to be England, even though there are no hobbits in the real England.  Science fiction frequently features other planets, but fantasy usually takes place on a slightly different Earth -- one that has elves and/or dwarves and/or dragons and other creatures not found on the real Earth, one where magic works or where praying to a god or gods gives a priest magic spells. 

 

You must have been reading some fantasy I haven't, because LotR is pretty much the only fantasy setting I can recall that takes place on Earth

 

 

LOTR world as Earth is also an apocryphal theory. 

[Zenicetus]

The Book of the New Sun is not even remotely high fantasy.  And yeah I think it's safe to rule out the idea that Eora is a future Earth.  There is absolutely no reason to think it's anything but a secondary world.

 

What's your definition of high fantasy? If it means no hint of superior modern-day technology (or something close to it), then that sure doesn't apply to PoE. I just went through a dungeon where the final room involved a big electrical apparatus.

 

I don't recall the Book of the New Sun series as being much different from the way PoE treats a world where a superior high-tech civilization based on science was lost in the distant past, and still has some resonance in the world. I think PoE is dancing very nicely on that line between a pure Tolkien approach and the way contemporary authors have handled a mix of science and magic.

 

BTW, I'm not actually thinking that this is a future Earth. I'm just saying nothing I'm seeing in the game so far, rules it out. 

[PrimeJunta]

LOTR world as Earth is also an apocryphal theory. 

 

Tolkien himself has explicitly stated that Middle-Earth is Earth, but "at a different stage of the imagination:"

 

G: I thought that conceivably Midgard might be Middle-earth or have some connection?

 

T: Oh yes, they're the same word. Most people have made this mistake of thinking Middle-earth is a particular kind of Earth or is another planet of the science fiction sort but it's just an old fashioned word for this world we live in, as imagined surrounded by the Ocean.

 

G: It seemed to me that Middle-earth was in a sense as you say this world we live in but at a different era.

 

T: No ... at a different stage of imagination, yes.

 

Source: http://www.lordotrings.com/interview.asp

 

There's other stuff there too; for example the constellation Valacirca is what we call the Great Bear, and so on.

Edited April 16, 2015 by PrimeJunta

[Tigranes]

Ah, I'm wrong then. So what was all that about LOTR=Earth as apocryphal that I swear I read in dozens of different places, online and print? 

 

I'm pretty sure the England=Shire etc thing was never confirmed by Tolkien, but I suppose that's two different things. Maybe that's what I'm misremembering.

[ibanix]

 

 

A fantasy Earth, in the same way that Tolkein's Shire is intended to be England,

 

 Tolkien himself repeatedly denied this, as well as denying that any of the world wars and the politics or geography had any influence on Middle Earth. (eg: Some people thought Mordor = Germany, because both were to the east of England).

 

For more details, you can read Tolkien's forward to LoTR 2nd Edition: http://www.thetolkienforum.com/index.php?threads/lotr-the-second-edition-foreword-by-tolkien.16713/

[MLMII]

As I recall, in one of the early printings of The Hobbit, China was mentioned as existing and being somewhere one could travel.

[PrimeJunta]

Yeah, Shire/England or Mordor/Germany was never intentional nor supposed to be explicit, and he emphatically denied that the War of the Ring had anything to do with WW1 or 2. (If it had, he said, Aragorn would have taken the Ring and beat Mordor with its own weapons.)

 

He was pretty open about flavors and influences though, in that there was a lot of his idealized rural England in Shire, and he envisioned Gondor as similar to pharaonic Egypt in architecture at least. But no, Shire isn't England in the same way that Arda is Earth "in a different state of imagination."

Edited April 16, 2015 by PrimeJunta