[Dragaera] A Teckla thought

[Mark Mandel]

http://www.CracksandShards.com/time.html#Clock :

> And the Dragaeran year (see below<http://www.speakeasy.org/~mamandel/Cracks-and-Shards/time.html#calendar>)
> has 17*17*30 = 8670 hours, while our Terran year has about 365*24=8760
> hours, a difference of just over 1 percent.

 Brust has Dragaera so carefully and consistently laid out that I wouldn't
> be surprised if he chose the 30-hour day specifically to make the hours and
> the 172-day years both come out about equal to ours, so he could use them
> without confusing his readers. Otherwise, why not use the ubiquitous mystical
> number<http://www.speakeasy.org/~mamandel/Cracks-and-Shards/seventeen.html> and
> give the day 17 or 34 hours? It's easy for Brust to bring out the difference
> between the Dragaeran week and ours: just make the Eastern week the same as
> ours, seven days, and have Vlad remark on it [Yen 18]. But the lengths of
> the day and year are the same on both sides of the mountains, and how would
> Vlad know about our world at all to express the contrast?


mam

On Sun, Feb 6, 2011 at 10:15 AM, Alexx Kay <alexx at panix.com> wrote:

> With slightly more complex analysis, if not direct comparisons:
> * _Athyra_ shows various levels of responsibility and cognitive
> development for Dragaerans at various ages, especially Savn and Polyi.
> * _Teckla_, with its history of Paresh's early life, has similar data.
> In both cases, one should remember that these are peasant farmers,
> operating at a pretty low tech level, so young people would be given more
> responsibilities earlier in life than seems appropriate to our current
> culture.
>
> > Doing very occasional catch-up:
> >
> > What I _haven't_ seen in this thread is ... well, anything like this list
> > of
> > textev age comparisons that is in my "to be developed and posted on
> Cracks
> > and Shards" file: mentions of the age of a Dragaeran that occur with
> > either
> >  - a verbal evaluation of that age
> >  - or an equivalent age for an Easterner:
> >
> > (modified 2002-12-10)
> >
> >    - 100 ~ = "tender age" Yen64
>
> Having just cross-referenced this one, I note that Vlad is completely
> mistaken about Zerika's actual age here.
>
> >    - 200 = young  FHYA86
> >    - 300 ~ "young kid" (yg ad) Yen54
> >    - 300 -400= mid-20's Yen63
> >    - 400 = "young" FHYA3
> >    - 800 -1000 = 35-40 Jrg30
> >    - 1000 ~ = middle age Yen29
> >    - 1500 - , "pushing 1500" = "a bit old" Tek2
> >    - 2000 + "old" Drg48
> >    - 2000 - 3000 lifespan  Jrg 53
> >    - 2000 - 3000 lifespan = 50-68 Yen6
> >    - 3000 - "getting close to 3k" = "old" Drg127
> >
> > Page numbers refer to the editions specified under A note on page
> > numbers<http://www.Cracksandshards.com/books.html#page_numbers>
> > .
> >
> > The date tells us that I compiled this list before *Dzur*, *Jhegaala*,
> > *Lord
> > of Castle Black*, and *Sethra Lavode* were published, so it doesn't
> > include
> > any data points they may offer; and that was the month when *The Paths of
> > the Dead* came out, so I may or may not have checked it. But I may have
> > only
> > looked in the four books actually cited here: *Jhereg, Yendi, Five
> Hundred
> > Years After, *and *Dragon.*
> >
> > Anecdotes and statistics about people reaching 80 or 90 or 101 (like my
> > wife's great-grandmother) *in our world* are not relevant to Vlad's, or
> > any
> > other Easterner's or Dragaeran's, sense of "how old" an Easterner or
> > Dragaeran is at any particular age, beyond Easterner childhood. We are
> > told
> > that Noish-pa's 70 years is "a *very* impressive age" for an Easterner
> > [*Yen
> > * 206]; remember that most Easterners in the Empire live in poverty,
> which
> > shortens lifespan (Cracks and Shards : Time : The
> > Clock<http://www.cracksandshards.com/time.html#clock>,
> > para. 6). So it seems not unreasonable to infer that Easterners generally
> > have a maximum expected lifespan of 80 years, though few may reach it and
> > a
> > very few surpass it.
> >
> > On Cracks and Shards, under differences between Dragaerans and
> > Easterners<http://www.cracksandshards.com/peoples.html#DvsE>,
> > I state without a reference that Dragaerans live 50 times as long as
> > Easterners. I don't remember where I found it, but that's the proportion
> > between Dragaeran 4000 and Easterner 80.
> >
> > (WRT 1776: It would be very like Steve to throw in that kind of an Easter
> > egg.)
> >
> > Mark A. Mandel, proprietor, Cracks and Shards
> > http://www.cracksandshards.com
> > a Steven Brust fan website
> >
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Sep 13, 2010 at 1:51 PM, Alexx Kay <alexx at panix.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Dragaeran life expectancy seems to be about 4,000 years, though many die
> >> younger due to accident or illness.  Teckla probably are more subject to
> >> accident and illness than the other houses, but there's no reason to
> >> think
> >> they can't live as long if they avoid these problems.  In a city the
> >> size
> >> of Adrilankha, one would expect to find more than a few individual
> >> Teckla
> >> who had survived past 2,500 years.
> >>
> >> In recent Timeline work, my best guess for the concluding date of the
> >> most
> >> recent Teckla Republic is 1775* years before the Interregnum, which is
> >> itself about 500 years before the "present" of the Vlad books.  This
> >> implies that there are still some living Teckla who remember life in the
> >> Republic.  There might even be a few surviving Teckla old enough to
> >> remember the beginning of that Republic.  I wonder what they think of
> >> groups like Kelly's?
> >>
> >> * Did they sign a declaration of independence in 1776?  :-)  [Yes, I
> >> know
> >> they wouldn't have referred to the date in those terms; I was just
> >> struck
> >> by the synchronicity.]
> >>
> >> Alexx
> >>
> >>
> >
> > --
> > Mark A. Mandel, proprietor, Cracks and Shards
> > http://www.cracksandshards.com
> > a Steven Brust fan website
> >
>
>
>