Time for underground races

[Sampi]

I'm currently running a campaign which will delve ever deeper underground. As I think more and more about it, years make no sense for someone who spends no time under the sun and therefore the seasons. In fact, there is no yearly cycle which I can think of that any deep underground race could adopt, and therefore base a calendar of. Indeed, even days have no meaning with no sun in sight.

So my question is: how do the deep underground races measure time? Do they measure it at all, or only relatively; eg. by generation. If so, would a society that spans more than one settlement be possible? Do we actually need years and days to function as a society, or is it just a contrivance of the environment we live in?

Mechanical timekeeping devices would of course be possible, and their calibration and maintenance would be very important to any such society. But again, to make such a device, one must have a basic concept of measurable time - and in an underground environment with no cycles this would be hard. A person who thought up the first clock could be a cultural hero.

Thoughts, and used solutions for this would be appreciated. I will run into this problem sooner or later...

[hamishspence]

In Forgotten Realms, the drow have a city clock- Narbondel- which heats up and cools down over a 12 hour period- with the "hot zone" on the pillar rising to the roof (noon) and settling to the floor- the point of no heat visible on the pillar corresponds to midnight for them.

[Sampi]

Yes, a mechanism. But good of you to remember, I had forgotten Salvatore's solution to this, in Menzoberranzan.

[Cealocanth]

I thought through this and have reached a sort of conclusion.

For races on the surface, a calendar is absolutely necessary. When a society first settles and moves from hunter gatherers to subsistence farmers, the calendar is required to tell the surface lying races when to reap and when to sow. This makes food production dependent on the changing of the seasons, in order to produce enough food to feed your society you need to know what the weather is like at what time of year.

Taking this concept into account, what about a society that has no conception of day/night cycles, or even the seasons. All crops or livestock would appear to grow and die in a repetitive cycle if the farmers stay on top of the breeding and the growth. In this way, the sense of years and time could be based around the life cycle of a single crop, let's call this the staple mushroom.

A year is the amount of time it takes the staple mushroom to go from a spore to reach full maturity. When the mushroom is harvested, the year ends, and the group is likely to undergo some sort of religious ceremony for the harvesting of the mushroom. Then the farmers will sow the spores of the mushroom once again, thus beginning a new year. As the society develops, you can now use this growth period to base your calendar off of. For a 10 fingered creature, one staple mushroom growth period, or year, will likely be divided into 10 "month" segments, of which are divided into 10 "day" segments, of which are divided into 10 "hour" segments and so on. Using water timers the primitive society is capable of keeping track of how much time has passed throughout the day.

So in the event of a hypothetical underground subsistence farming society, a system for time can be developed in order to keep track of the natural cycles of the body and of the staple food source. It will be very different from the timing system on the surface, however.

[Synovia]

For races on the surface, a calendar is absolutely necessary. When a society first settles and moves from hunter gatherers to subsistence farmers, the calendar is required to tell the surface lying races when to reap and when to sow. This makes food production dependent on the changing of the seasons, in order to produce enough food to feed your society you need to know what the weather is like at what time of year.

Taking this concept into account, what about a society that has no conception of day/night cycles, or even the seasons. All crops or livestock would appear to grow and die in a repetitive cycle if the farmers stay on top of the breeding and the growth. In this way, the sense of years and time could be based around the life cycle of a single crop, let's call this the staple mushroom.

Why would a subterannean crop be an annual though? Typically annual plants/plants with annual flowering cycles do so in sync with the seasons. Some tropical plants will essentially bloom all year when you take them inside.

So I don't really see any reason why a mushroom would have a cycle like that.


Its definitely an interesting question... maybe something to do with water availability? The spring floods above ground would trickle down to them, and fill the underground lakes....

[hamishspence]

Yes, a mechanism. But good of you to remember, I had forgotten Salvatore's solution to this, in Menzoberranzan.

Actually a wizard does it- every midnight he casts the heat spell on the pillar.

[Kornaki]

Why would a subterannean crop be an annual though? Typically annual plants/plants with annual flowering cycles do so in sync with the seasons. Some tropical plants will essentially bloom all year when you take them inside.

It doesn't have to take a real year.... maybe the mushroom takes 3 months and so their longest time cycle is a 3-month "year", with 10 9-day "weeks" during the "year"

Its definitely an interesting question... maybe something to do with water availability? The spring floods above ground would trickle down to them, and fill the underground lakes....

This could definitely work if you want their year to be the same as the surface year. Or monsoon season might cause lots of flooding so they have a yearly cycle based on the month of floods, when they sandbag every entrance to the cave their city is in.

This pdf
http://british-caving.org.uk/publica...on/Weather.pdf

has a ton more information than you need about the mechanics of caves flooding (the actual cave flooding stuff is at the bottom). The moral is that raining can flood caves, and consecutive rains can flood caves a lot more, so rainy season in principle could cause problems to the underdark

They could just have no real concept of a year... a day is how long it takes before you get tired on average, made precise through magical or mechanical means (and they average this, so a day could be 20 hours or 28 hours of our time, or some other completely random amount because their bodies aren't regulated by sunlight), and a year is just arbitrarily defined as 100 days

[Thialfi]

I would imagine most species have an internal body clock. Every species would have the need for a period of rest for roughly the same amount of time. It might be out of sync with the world above, but a day could be measured as time between rest periods.

Since the most well known subterranean race is dominated by females, I imagine it would not be too hard to measure a period of time that approximates a month. Time between cycles would be a month and maybe the typical gestation period would comprise your year. What you call those might be tricky.

Underground races are just as sofisticated as above ground races. They would most certainly see the value in tracking time between events.

[Frathe]

Circadian rhythms. The natural adult human daily clock is around 24 hours and 11 minutes.

[Jay R]

The question is this: what natural cycles affect them?

Underground floods might be one such. Personal reproductive cycles another, sleep rhythms a third.

Any raiding society that ever goes outside need to track such things for raiding purposes. Don't raid the barns in early spring, for instance.

If I had such a race, I might include a single spot in their caves where there is a crack up to the surface, down which the sun only shines on noon on June 21. It would be crucial to their religion, and an unexplained wonder.

One other thought. The only way to assume a race unconnected to the seasons is for them to have no contact with anybody who ever sees the outer world. But in D&D, the gods are real, and really interact with people. The cave people might have no idea why their gods require them to observe the 24 hour day.

[Surfnerd]

Large bodies of water might have tidal effects. every 4 hrs the tide changes x feet or something similar. That would be a local way of telling time. In reference to internal clocks, certain subterranean species perhaps the equivalent of an underdark sparrow could have annual blooms in population which being a foundation species for several other predatory species may result in a spring. Perhaps this internal mechanism was brought from the surface and could possible reflect the natural seasons as they are observed on the surface.

Well technically this would mark a spring and no other season. And temperature underground shouldn't vary so there shouldn't be a temperature change that could be used to detect the passage of time.

Maybe this explains all the insanity popular to underground races.

Also another local only suggestion comes from the Sailing stones. Perhaps there is a region that gets high winds during some time of the year and creates the appearance of these stones moving.

Also in reference to cave flooding it could be considered the "rainy" season underground as water drips in greater saturation levels during this time, causing flooding, fungal blooms and go in line with a subterranean spring theory.

I think with races that migrated from the surface they would probably bring some way to track time as that would be a comfort issue to the culture.

[FreakyCheeseMan]

It'll be interesting to see what you come up with.

I'm working on a space-based fantasy setting, and trying to figure out how to do the calendars. Human societies sprung up on dozens of different worlds with different cycles, and the culture that established the trade routes and lingua franca did so aboard an enchanted rogue moon with no sun at all.

[SowZ]

For the mushroom thing, why plant them all at once? If it is a four month cycle, why not stagger your mushroom planting every ten days. That way, you can have a little mini harvest every ten days and have a consistent source of food. You don't need to stockpile for the winter.

[Yora]

In Forgotten Realms, the drow have a city clock- Narbondel- which heats up and cools down over a 12 hour period- with the "hot zone" on the pillar rising to the roof (noon) and settling to the floor- the point of no heat visible on the pillar corresponds to midnight for them.

The problem is that the drow migrated underground as an already highly advanced civilization.

Grimlocks, derro, or goblins wouldn't be capable of things like that.

[Jay R]

Large bodies of water might have tidal effects. every 4 hrs the tide changes x feet or something similar.

It would take an awfully big underwater lake. Even Lake Superior's tides are only 1 to 4 cm.

Earth tides exist on the rock itself, but weren't measurable until the 20th century.

[Slipperychicken]

Wouldn't the underground still heat up and cool down according to seasons?

[SowZ]

Wouldn't the underground still heat up and cool down according to seasons?

The deeper you go underground, the temperature ends up being fairly consistent.

[tbok1992]

Funny thing, given that my setting is pretty much entirely underground, I've given this topic some thought.

My take on it is taht there are many mini-suns that brighten and dim to provide energy to Dungeonworld, and people mostly measure "Days" in terms of one's circadian rythm, which happens to be relatively similar in-setting. And as for measurements like months or years, they're measured in the amount of days until the next occurrence of certain holidays.

These each get their own individual clock, which can get tricky, so Koboldish clocksmiths are highly prized in-universe for their work.