Re: Subterranea

Geoff wrote:
<<
Specifically Time.
What natural cyclical phenomena are there that operate detectably in an
underground environment?
 >>

I certainly can't say a thing about biology, but I have a few ideas
for this.

First, even though they can't see the sun or perceive its motion,
they do sleep, right?  (A genuine question: I don't know if orcs
need sleep.)  If they do, then a "day" would simply be from the
time they wake up to the time they go to sleep.  Of course, not
everyone will do this at the same time, so perhaps it can be set
to a chief or king's sleep pattern.  And, indeed, it might change
with every new chief or king.

Another thing that happens with time is hunger.  If orcs eat,
they'll invariably get hungry after a certain period of time after
they've eaten.  And if they have big meals, then perhaps time
could be based on meal times--especially if they involve large
gatherings.

And another way to perceive time is through age.  Of course,
age happens gradually, and you can't perceive it the way you
can the passage of the sun, but say there were an orcish philosopher
who decided to write an anatomy of aging (like that old book
The Anatomy of Melancholy).  He might reason that even
after a week's time, specific signs of aging will take place.  Of
course, he won't have the concept of "week" at his disposal,
so he'll have to come up with his own term, which might be
based on the type of change that takes place after a set period
of time.  So even if they don't have time measures, they will
have real measures.  So say that after a week an orc nail is
said to grow a tenth of a centimeter--called a blick, or whatever
in the orcish language.  Then a week would be a blicksgrowth,
and a day would be a seventh of a blicksgrowth (or however
he decided to divide it).  This could be the basic unit, or one
might say, for a month, that an untended nail will grow 4/10
of a centimeter, or a blork.  Now you have a period of a
blorksgrowth.  And so on.

Anyway, those are some ideas.  Having never thought
seriously enough about how to lexicalize the passage of
time (and, as a language creator, by all rights I should
have), I'm not sure if these make sense, or could work.
What do you think?

-David
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"sunly eleSkarez ygralleryf ydZZixelje je ox2mejze."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."

-Jim Morrison

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