Explaining the Zalanthanian day

[Salt Merchant]

There's been some discussion in the Reborn forum about the Zalanthanian day, which consists of seven hours of daylight and only two of night. Here is my personal explanation for this.

Think about summers on Earth. Because of the tilt to the Earth's rotational axis relative to the plane of orbit, the days are longer than the nights. The closer you are to the Arctic circle, the longer the sun is up. (If you go above the Arctic circle, the sun never sets for part of the year!) However, this is only a temporary situation; the nights grow longer as the season moves into fall. It takes a year to swing through a full cycle.

Now imagine that the Known World on Zalanthas is near the "Arctic circle". Okay, that would explain the long days some of the time. But it stays the same throughout of the entire Zalanthanian year.

My explanation is that Zalanthas as a planet does not pass around its red giant sun in one year. The year is an artifact of the calendar in this case and has more to do with the moons. Instead, Zalanthas takes at least several thousand "years" to travel one complete orbit around Suk-krath. This is why the Known World seems to be frozen in a summer daylight pattern. Ten thousand "years" later, it could be well into a winter pattern, with two hours of daylight and seven of night.

In fact, this could explain the increasing absence of water in the Known World... it's all freezing and accumulating on the opposite pole of Zalanthas, which has been in perpetual darkness for at least hundreds of years!

[Cale_Knight]

I've always just figured that a single "time frame" on Zalanthas is closer to two earth hours. That would mean that dawn through late afternoon is 12 hours and dusk through before dawn is eight hours. 20 hours is very reasonable for a day.

Just because Zalanthans say "hours" doesn't mean it's 60 minutes of our time.

[Salt Merchant]

Just because Zalanthans say "hours" doesn't mean it's 60 minutes of our time.

It's irrelevant how long the hour is. So long as an hour of night is the same length as an hour of day, there's a lot more daylight than night in the Known World. I was trying to explain what astronomy makes this possible.

[Marc]

The problem with that, Salt Merchant, is that it doesn't really apply.

Zalanthas doesn't have an "orbit" or "caps" or any of your crazy gypsy/Tuluki/tribal/skinny/roundear talk.  It's a giant bowl of silt that sits on the back of a huge bahamet who is carried by a giant..  The stars (*meekly* if we can have them Ness) are just irrig beatles caught by Drov ahead while the sun is Suk Krath behind, chasing Drov and in turn, the giant carrying the bahamet carrying the bowl that is Zalanthas.  The day is longer because the giant is running uphill(slower) when the bowl is tilted backwards and you see Suk Krath, while at night the giant is running downhill(faster) and you see Drov.

Duh

(PS In Allanak, it is light or dark because Tektolnes decides it is light or dark.  Be happy he cares enough about you to even bother!)

[Salt Merchant]

The problem with that, Salt Merchant, is that it doesn't really apply.

Zalanthas doesn't have an "orbit" or "caps" or any of your crazy gypsy/Tuluki/tribal/skinny/roundear talk.  It's a giant bowl of silt that sits on the back of a huge bahamet who is carried by a giant..  The stars (*meekly* if we can have them Ness) are just irrig beatles caught by Drov ahead while the sun is Suk Krath behind, chasing Drov and in turn, the giant carrying the bahamet carrying the bowl that is Zalanthas.  The day is longer because the giant is running uphill(slower) when the bowl is tilted backwards and you see Suk Krath, while at night the giant is running downhill(faster) and you see Drov.

Duh

(PS In Allanak, it is light or dark because Tektolnes decides it is light or dark.  Be happy he cares enough about you to even bother!)

I realize that you're making a joke here. Nevertheless, it's still interesting to think about OOCly and the discussion actually started in Reborn forum. I moved it here because it isn't topical there.

[Rindan]

I can think if a simpler explanation.  Imagine that Zalanthas is tilted similar to how Earth is.   Now, imagine that in addition to spinning on its axis, it is also very slowly spinning in about an axis that is perpendicular to the plan of the sun.

So, imagine if Zalanthas is just like Earth and our little chunk of it is located in Canada.  Imagine though that in addition to the normal spin of the earth about its tilted axis, it is also spinning very slowly such that the north poll is also always facing roughly towards the sun.  The result would be that it is always summer on one side of the planet, and always winter on the other side.

[Kennath]

I would also like to note that a Zalanthan day may be shorter.

No human in Zalanthas eats three times a day or sleeps every night.

[Djarjak]

Personally, I really like Marc's explanation.

Spending too much time on "logical" elements can often detract from the entertainment value of a fantasy setting.

A great example is wound code. How realistic is it that you can get beaten to "near death" and then get up and spend the next day walking home? But sitting in bedrest for real life days to make up for the in-character weeks that encompasses isn't a whole lot of fun.

If you want to play amateur astrophysicist and come up with a reason and a time scheme that matches with real life time windows and is still playable, I don't think anyone wants to stop you. But keep in mind that not everything should require an explanation, and sometimes, even one like Marc's is all you really need.

(This opinion is not necessarily a staff-wide opinion. It reflects only the views of the poster unless otherwise noted.)

[Jherlen]

derail: Believe it's Zalanthan, not "Zalanthanian"

If Zalanthas wasn't making a full orbit, I think astronomers would notice its position in the sky wasn't returning to the same place year to year as it seems to be recognised to do. The month names "Ascending Sun, Descending Sun, Low Sun" sure sound like they're named after what the sun is doing, a process that seems to repeat every 630-odd days.

Who knows why the hours of the day/night are the way they are. I like Marc's explinations.

[Tisiphone]

We could do it with Ptolomy!

[joyofdiscord]

Personally, I like -all- of the suggestions, from the back of a bahamet carried by a giant, to the orbital idiosyncracies.  They all have the potential to be interesting and "realistic," in the fantasy sense of the world.  I happen to find the concept of Zalanthas being in a many-thousand-year-long summer to be quite the thought-provoking concept (although the Low/Ascending/Descending Sun does tend to rule it out).  It gives you a whole different angle to imagine the frosty-Zalanthas setting many of us have envisioned.  The bahamet and the giant are also pretty neat.  The Dragon might have flown away and perched on the giant's shoulders, and when the giant sneezes, the bahamet stirs, causing an earthquake.  Still perfectly conceivable, disbelief equally suspended, as far as I'm concerned.

For me, this kind of stuff puts a lot of fun into the fantasy setting.  Roleplaying is an adult version of playing with dolls and this sort of speculation is just another way of playing with these cool toys.  I don't think it spoils anything.

[Tlaloc]

I'm a fan of the giant/bahamet idea, as well, at least in terms of IC justifications. Personally, my own theories were that 1 Zalanthan "hour" was equal to three earth 'hours' (making a Zalanthan day just a few hours shorter than an earth day). To explain Zalanthan aging, I chalk it up to Zalanthans simply aging slower than earth-types, and to explain how my PC can stay up for days at a time...I simply chalk it up to it being a game, heh.

[Tarx]

I really liked all of the explanations, from the IC explanations to the out-of-game, scientific perspective explanations.  Thanks for making this thread.  Makes me happy.

[Spud]

i think it's a game and why does it matter?

[Vesperas]

i think it's a game and why does it matter?

Because some of us like to know the rules of the game.

[Rhyden]

i think it's a game and why does it matter?

Because some of us like to know the rules of the game.

http://www.armageddon.org/general/rules.html

[spawnloser]

Okay, Rhyden (or should I say smart ass), the point was that some people like to understand the fundamental rules of 'how the world works' and not the fundamental rules of 'how you play the game.'

[Spud]

unfortunately, alot of the aspects of the game are very easy for different interpretation. people often never really know how something works. i think the only way you can learn the fundamental rules of 'how the world works' is to play.

[joyofdiscord]

unfortunately, alot of the aspects of the game are very easy for different interpretation.

This is correct, though I wouldn't call it unfortunate.  This is why this neat-o thread can exist!

i think the only way you can learn the fundamental rules of 'how the world works' is to play.

Well, that's true enough, so I guess we should abstain from discussing the world of Zalanthas in the World Discussion Forum.

Why do we play Armageddon?  Because we find it fun and interesting.

Why do some people have discussions like this one?  Because they find it fun and interesting, as evidenced by the existence of this thread and its participants.

I don't quite understand the hate-on that invariably surfaces whenever someone wants to have a speculative discussion about mechanics.  Is it just that some people are just nagged by the sense that someone, somewhere, might be having fun in a slightly different way than they do?

If you find this kind of discussion stupid or silly, or it somehow spoils the magic of the game for you, no one says you have to participate or even read the thread.  This discussion might ultimately be pointless, but trying to stifle it somehow seems even more so.

[spawnloser]

joyofdiscord, the reason some people have a negative reaction to discussions like this is because knowing how it works has no bearing on how you will play the game, and thus they find topics like this pointless.

Oh, and as I've said before and will doubtless have to say again, describing someone's reaction with a phrase loaded with negative conotation doesn't make your position stronger with those that can see through such rhetoric.

[joyofdiscord]

I don't really see how this is even something worth having a "position" about.  I'm advocating "don't try to shut down people's fun if they're following the rules" which I see as common courtesy, not a "position."   Will it change how we play the game to turn other people's threads into meta-discussions about which topics are acceptable?  This isn't sensitive IC information.  It's on-topic discussion which is germaine to the forum it's in and interesting to plenty of people.  (It's also a dead topic ever since people decided they would start demanding justification of its existence.)  

I mean, maybe Armageddon is such serious business that we should apply a relevancy test to all topics on the GDB to make sure we only discuss things that can be immediately put into play.  I tend to agree that it's just a game so perhaps it shouldn't be a tragedy if people discuss things you aren't interested in.  This so-called "negative response" is forum cop behaviour and I think it borders on trolling.  It's the equivalent of a non-player coming onto the board and saying that we shouldn't play the game at all because it's unrelated to real life (It is, but that's missing the point.).

[spawnloser]

Um, you don't have to get so defensive and then aggressive.  I'm just explaining why some may have a reaction to a topic such as this...which you did ask about.  I also told you that you may not want to belittle someone just to make your position seem stronger.  Take it at face value, hmm?

Oh, and 'position' is used as a generic term to describe how different people describe/represent something.

[manonfire]

[manonfire]

Couldn't resist.

[ScionReaver]

Bravo