Suns and moons

[Alyssa El'anir]

I have a few questions in regards to the sky in illarion.

When does the sun set? Does it at all depend on the time of year or is the script set to a certain time?
And when does it rise?

Also I heard talk of Illarion having several moons, but I find no lore about it. How many moons does Illarion have, are they always visible, are they white, is one bigger than the others, do we also have visible stars and many of them and are there any other visible planets?

Is Illarion round or flat?

[Jupiter]

Wether the world is flat or round has never been decided. But you can pretty sure that a normal char won't reach any end any way (dangerous mountains and stuff like that).

There are two moons. One rises and then, some time later the second moon follows. There is a lore about it, a story of two brothers, the one chasing the other ore something like this. Dunno where the text is now.

And there are starts as well. There is no sophisticated lore about them (yet).

As far as I know, there are no other planets visible.

One the sun, dunno. Look at the IG time clock when the sun gets up IG I think Nitram plans to implement a more sophisticated sun light system one day with different rising times depending on the season etc.

[Q-wert]

The mass and well as the orbit of Illarion are almost equal to Earth. Illarions sun is also about equal to our Sol in brightness and colour. As there are seasons and the climate changes in accorance of latitude Illarion is most propably a round planet with a tilted rotation, similar to Earth.

I think the new lighting system for day and night cycles is already in place. Naturally the shortest days (and darkest nights) are during Mas.

[rakust dorenstkzul]

If we have 3 illa years to one real year

does this mean that people in illa land live to be 240?

[Jupiter]

As there are seasons and the climate changes in accorance of latitude Illarion is most propably a round planet with a tilted rotation, similar to Earth.

I don't share that reasoning. We have seasons because the staff thought it would be nice to have them, perhaps that it would add a lovely detail to the game. We don't have them because the game world is a round planet. That's like saying: "Since we have water in the game, we probably have hydrogen."
I think it is fundamentally flawed to jump to such big conclusions based on so few information in a fantasy game.

does this mean that people in illa land live to be 240?

No.

[Q-wert]

I don't share that reasoning. We have seasons because the staff thought it would be nice to have them, perhaps that it would add a lovely detail to the game. We don't have them because the game world is a round planet. That's like saying: "Since we have water in the game, we probably have hydrogen."
I think it is fundamentally flawed to jump to such big conclusions based on so few information in a fantasy game.

The general assumption in fantasy games is: "Everything not described different from what we know, is how we know it." General concepts such as fundamental physics, weather, how plants and animals live, human mortality and even social structures are as they would be in a 'real' world, given the exceptions explicitly given by the game world.

The game lore does not mention how trees function. It does not really mention what kind of animals wolves or cows are and what the do. Or that prolonged exposure to the sun causes burns. It does that, because of that general assumption: Unless it is told to be different, it is as we know it from real life. And with having water in the game (which is described to behave very much like 'real' water) I'd bet it to be safe to say there to be hydrogen. If there was none, what would look like water would do things vastly different from what we'd expect and such 'would' be mentioned.

[Jupiter]

The general assumption in fantasy games is: "Everything not described different from what we know, is how we know it."

I do not challenge that assumption, I challenge the range of question to which it can be soundly applied. There is a big difference between "Will my character die if their head is cut off?" and "Is the world round?".

[Q-wert]

"How far out can I see a four men tall ship on the sea at clear weather?" - Something quite important to any coastal settlement and sailors.
"Does a long water line work if we build it on the assumption that the worlds surface is flat? " - Something the Romans encountered. It did not.

[Nitram]

Something your character could actually observe is that Illarion has a single sun and two moons.

The stellar object we are playing on (no matter if it is a sphere, a ellipsoid, a cube or a disk) orbits the sun in 365.08 in game days. And so every twelfth year in the game is one day longer to compensate the offset and to avoid any havoc with the calculation due to real life leap years. Now the 182nd day in the year of Illarion (14th of Eldas) is the longest day in the Illarion year. The two shortest days are the 4th and the 5th of Mas. Now the mean of the daylight is 12 hours per day. The variation is 3 hours, 50 minutes and 24 seconds. So the 14th of Eldas has a daylight time of nearly 16 hours. The zenith of the sun is always 12th o'clock. Also the transition times of the sun change due to the inclination of the surface area we are playing on to the sun. It is around a hour at the longest day, three hours at the shortest days. The middle of the transition is the point where to sun is considered to be down.

So put this into some real numbers:
At the 14th of Elas, the sun begins to rise at 3:34am and is fully visible at 4:34am. It starts going down at 7:25pm and is down at 8:25pm.

All that is implemented in the client currently. So the times and the transitions of the sunlight on the game will follow those rules precisely.

The two moons are also defined, but currently not considered during the light calculation.
The first moon is rather close to the world. It orbits in 22.8125 days. It as a bright grey colour and reflects an grey, sometimes a slightly yellow colour.
The second moon is farther away and rather small. It is visible, but it appears rather rarely. It orbits the planet in 121.6 days and is visible during Zhas, Eldas and Adras. But only for a couple of days. The moon also has mostly grey colour but with a distinct hint of red.

So that is basically what your characters are able to see if they look up.
Also there are stars. Somebody else may define those.

Nitram

[Estralis Seborian]

Nitram, did I ever tell you how awesome you are?

I guess it's fair to say that there is a sun, two moons and stars, representing signs of the zodiac. There are seasons but there is no daylight saving time .

The rest is up to your and your characters' imagination!

[rakust dorenstkzul]

Can we put Nitram's post on the website somewhere? It seems pretty definitive

[Kamilar]

We need a second moon festival. I'd totally throw a party for that.

[Lord Arcia]

Lets not give Kamilar any more reasons to have parties.

[Alyssa El'anir]

Lets not give Kamilar any more reasons to have parties.

Let's throw a party for not giving Kamilar more reasons to have parties!
Any volunteers for hosting it? Kamilar?

[Banduk]

Amazing science, now my chars have a chance to adjust their sand clock day by day.

If anybody want you could take Nitrams boundaries and write a IG book around and send me. Something like "Sky Observation" by Marentir S. Tars.

Or I'll try it.

If anybody has the story of the 2 brothers, Jupiter is referring to, please send me.

Banduk

[Jupiter]

Sorry, but I don't think that characters can establish that it is the their world that is moving and not the sun.

If I am not mistaken, the problem with the geocentric model became only apparent when taking observations of other planets into consideration. It was basically like this: If you assume that the earth is the fix point, the movements of other plants become puzzling and not satisfactorily explainable (Their orbits seem then not really elliptical, but with strange loops etc. You have to assume that there are other planets which you cannot see and which, by gravitational force, influence the orbit of those planets you see. However, you will need more and more assumptions of random planets and the whole system becomes less and less plausible). Assuming the earth as the fix point solves those issues.
So without looking at other plants, one cannot say that it is the world we live on that is moving. All the numbers Nitram gave can also be correct when assuming that it is the sun that is moving. As far as I know, our characters can see starts in the night sky but not other planets (It has never been decided what the stars are. And quite frankly, it never should. Let the characters have some room for own ideas. Lizards may see it as a big black scary sea, elves may see it as a looking glass into the past, whatever. It also has never been explained anyway if the stars seem to move or if they are fixed. This last fact should be decided, though )

[Kamilar]

Does the main Illarion moon wax and wane in phases like our moon?

[Nitram]

It does.

9th of Elos: Full moon
20th of Elos: New moon
8th of Tanos: Full moon
19th of Tanos: New moon
7th of Zhas: Full moon
18th of Zhas: New moon
5th of Ushos: Full moon
17th of Ushos: New moon
4th of Siros: Full moon
16th of Siros: New moon
3rd of Ronas: Full moon
14th of Ronas: New moon
2nd of Bras: Full moon
13nd of Bras: New moon
1st of Eldas: Full moon
12th of Eldas: New moon
24th of Eldas: Full moon
11th of Irmas: New moon
22nd of Irmas: Full moon
10th of Malas: New moon
21st of Malas: Full moon
9th of Findos: New moon
20th of Findos: Full moon
7th of Olos: New moon
19th of Olos: Full moon
6th of Adras: New moon
18th of Adras: Full moon
5th of Malas: New moon
16th of Malas: Full moon
4th of Chos: New moon
15th of Chos: Full moon
3rd of Mas: New moon

[Banduk]

The stellar object we are playing on (no matter if it is a sphere, a ellipsoid, a cube or a disk) orbits the sun in 365.08 in game days. And so every twelfth year in the game is one day longer to compensate the offset and to avoid any havoc with the calculation due to real life leap years.

Just to make it clear for me.
I read this in a way that this year (48) will be the 4th time in Illarions history, the Mas has 6 days.
Am I right?

[Nitram]

When reading this you would be write. But what I wrote was wrong.

I checked again. The time calculation bases on the time passed since a specific day, not accounting for leap years. This means that the illarion time in relation to the real time shifts every 4 rl years by 3 ig days.

Today it is the 20th of Eldas. 4 years ago today it was the 17th of Eldas. 8 years ago today was the 14th of Eldas.

Sorry for the confusion.

Best regards,
Nitra