In a message dated Sun, 23 Jun 2002 4:47:43 PM Eastern Standard Time, Thomas Yan <tyan at twcny.rr.com> writes: > Gaertk at aol.com writes: >> [page ix] >> >> Neat way of expressing the dates, too bad they're wrong. > > I'm too lazy to work it out, but I'd be interested in > seeing your calculations. Okay, first we have Years, which are exactly that (more so than you might expect [1]), then Turns (which Paarfi consistently omits in this book) which equal 17 years, then Phases which equal 17 Turns. From Vlad's comments in another book, we know that the minimum time a House can hold the Orb is 17*17 years, and the maximum is 17*17*17. This means that the Orb can't change Houses until the Phase of the Phoenix is completed, and has the change by the time the Phase of the Athyra ends. The Reign is simply set to whatever House holds the Orb, 17 Reigns equals a Cycle, 17 Cycles equals a Great Cycle. So if you have a base 17 number system, you can express the date in 6 digits. Take the list of Houses given in _Jhereg_ and number them. Now go back and number them again, this time starting with zero. Now the date we're dealing with is 309 PI, but Dragaerans start counting at 1 instead of 0 [2], so subtract one to get 308. Now convert to base 17 and you get 1,1,2. Add on the values for the current reign and it becomes 1,0,0,1,1,2. Now add 1 to each value (this is why I said Dragaerans hadn't invented the zero) and then drop the Turn and Reign values (already noticed missing on the title page) and you get 2,1,2,3; the date at the end of the Preface. [1] See Mark's Cracks and Shards, the last two paragraphs: http://world.std.com/~mam/Cracks-and-Shards/time.html#clock [2] Making the beginning of a reign year zero when it starts in the middle of the year (likely most of the time) makes it much easier to do complex date calculations, like figuring out how old Khaavren is when Vlad meets him. >> [page xiv] >> >> The lines quoted from the poem seem to contradict comments >> made later by Sethra. > > How so? My interpretation of the poem is that its taking place after Adron's Disaster and that Tazendra was a Lavode then, but Sethra says (in _Issola_) that the Lavodes were disbanded before the Interregnum. It just occurred to me that Adron's Disaster may not mark the "official" beginning of the Interregnum. >> [page 19] >> >> Rovers? > > I agree: huh, what? I was wondering if anyone would comment (or better yet, speculate) on that. --KG