with clocks made by master clocksmiths out of pointlessly valuable materials

>>35084915
I think the first calendars were based of events, right?
Like the egyptians calculated time based on when the nile would overflow.
So they could base their calendars on events that would happen underground, I guess.

>>35084915
Heartbeats.
Naturally, time varies by dwarf but not hugely, and the more personal nature of timekeeping can be a bonus. A really energetic dwarf has a faster heartbeat so his 1000 beats is less than the stolid greybeard, but it feels just as long to him.

>>35084977
The annual flooding of giant spiders out of the deep.

>>35085062
>the annual flooding of spiders out of the low king's drow mistress

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>>35085062
>>35085096

>>35085031
Since heartbeats vary a lot individually, and also according to mood, they'd look for a being that has as slow and steady a heartbeat as possible. This could be a stoic dwarven sage, noted for his patience, or even a sleeping dragon.
Alternatively, there are geysers that erupt on a remarkably regular schedule. Since they are based on geothermal heating, it stands to reason that similar systems can be used underground for timekeeping.

>>35084915
Beard length, assuming the growth of a beard is fairly stable.
They weave an object into the base of their beard to mark a significant event.
There are whole clans who grow exceptionally fine beards who weave the history of the hold right onto their faces.

>>35084915
The easiest explanation if you insist on some scientific plausability is that they use a lunar calendar based off the tides of underground lakes.

Alternatively, an (effectively) solar calendar based off subeterranean rivers flooding in spring.

>>35085133
Dwarvenish way to count time.

>>35085126
Historical measurements of most things were based on personal variables.
Pace, span, cubit, even the inch was based on grains of corn.
For most measurements, a degree of inexactitude wouldn't be a disaster.

Heartbeats going up under exertion or stress could even be a feature, signifying a particularly exciting or dangerous service. A year on duty where nothing happens is much less prestigious than one where you're always having to fight off invaders.

Long time would still be measured in terms of kings for most of the time, or even geysers as you suggest.
Each holding would still have variable Greatbeats, those in more dangerous areas (perhaps a yearly flood) count more beats than those with a volcano which goes off every century or so, to represent the greater overall danger of a yearly cataclysm.

Maybe the dwarves have a system where a dwarf tirelessly and steadily turns a wheel without pause for timekeeping. It's dull work and incredibly tiresome, but holy and honored as well for its importance to their society.
It also wreaks havoc when their time dwarf drops dead.

>>35084915
Use waterclocks?

Some fantasy and sci-fi stories that I have read have used a glow/dim cycle that bioluminescent underground fungi or lake algae in the place of a standard day/night.

What about candles?
Big fucking slow burning candles.
Every season/year/generation, the time keepers make a generation candle and ignites it on the remains of the last. This could tie into a creation myth or something, dwarven god made the first dwarfs out of the fire on the center of the earth.

>>35085256
I actually really like this idea for some reason. Imam imagining a whole society of dwarves with a Buddhist monkish culture involving a lot of wood and metal devices that are both mundane and holy in nature, like industrial prayer wheels.

>>35085274
But to what are the clocks calibrated?
All human time ultimately comes from the Earth turning on its axis, the moon's orbit or the Earth going around the sun.
Hours and minutes are just breaking the rotation down, weeks are just adding them up. Decades and centuries are just lots of solar orbits.
Even our atomic clocks aim to match the stellar clock, and designers add mechanisms so the partial seconds and days the true cycle has don't mess with our artificial one.

>>35085256
There could be a small timekeeping caste who work in shifts and are trained from a young age to keep their speed steady. Runners are sent out every great turn of the wheel to announce the beginning of a new day.
The system is a bit silly, but has lots of flavour and fits a society that honors tradition above all else.

>>35084915
The length of time it takes to grow a given amount of beard.

>>35085310
Actually that ought to be metal and stone, now that I think about it, but I'm still going to try and suss this idea out.

>>35085133
I also support beards as timekeepers but consider that a 'foot' used to be the actual length of the present king's foot. Now with beards as a timekeeper it could be broken down into timeframes based on the latest king's beard growth. Given how fucking fast a Dwarf grows his beard this would give you hours (stubbles), days (itches), weeks (curlies), etc.

>>35085376
>Where the hell have you been? It's been three beard-centimeters since I've seen you!

I could see it happening.

I imagine that dwarven beards grow very slowly, so they're generally better at keeping track of long times than short ones. This means that days blend together for them, and they won't pay attention to much more than, say, a week at a time. And even that feels like it's rushing things.

Plus they can mark off things like >>35085133 , so dwarves can measure each other up by beard length and ornament, if they so choose.

Humans, for the longest time, only kept time as a way to remember important things, basic things. Calendars to remember seasons and when things flood, like we have said before. Using small time, such as on a watch, didn't really become a thing until around the 19th century, when train schedules would run on time.
So your dwarves would have a system of time for what they needed. But, if they're merchant dwarves, they would most certainly know, and perhaps even use, surface clocks and calendars, Simply because it's bad for trade to show up middle of night in the dead of winter with some rocks because they asked for rocks, but expected you in summer, but now they need food and furs, but the next time you might arrive, you will have food and furs in the middle of summer.

>>35085355
What about a giant pendulum?

>>35085374
This could also mean that a dwarven day may be of a completely different length than a solar day. A dwarf may work for 30 hours, then sleep for 12, and a single day has passed. Another reason why they dislike the surface - can't adapt to their time, even on a biological level.

>>35085423
A beard-second is an actual measurement of speed.

>>35084915
Days would be based on biological day cycle and weeks/months on important events such as tournaments tax collection etc. Maybe they'd even build a huge hourglass.

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>>35085446
Well, shit.

I didn't know that.

>>35085446
>beard-second
Length, not speed.

The menstruation cycle of the queen(s).

half lives of various isotopes

Wait, this is assuming that dwarven women also have beards, and they grow as fasts as the males'.
What if they don't? How would the dwarven equivalent of the Amazons keep time?

>>35085374
I want to say a European country wasn't allowed to map its colony (maybe Britain in India?). Their solution was to train people to walk with a fixed length pace so they wouldn't have to bring in surveyors. So that's actually not too far off.

>>35084977
The whole thread answer is in the second post.

We didnt keep time because we had sun and moon and so on. Even today, we count it from when Jesus was born. And every single culture before also tracked time from events.

Making clocks shouldnt have anything to do with the sun or moon. Clock simply measures time but he doesnt have to be related to the sun or moon. Clocks tick as fast as we make them to tick, have as many pointers as we put in them.

Nothing to do with the sun or moon.

>>35085430
Still needs to have the swing calibrated to something, unless it's a natural formation and is the source of time itself.
Then you just need to protect it from Anarchists adding or removing mass to shift the length of the arm.

>>35085501
Second beards. The ones in their armpits

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>>35085470
Crap. You're right. I was confused because of weird science with my friends.

>>35085460
This picture is innacurate. Real dwarves are born with full lush beards.

>>35085555
Hence the bullying.

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>>35085391
>>35085374
>>35085275
>>35085256

You've put into my head the idea of something like the central portion of the great spiral clock here, from the Dinotopia series: a gigantic spiral column built at the very center of the Dwarven capital, driven either by the labor of hundreds of timekeepers turning it like a windlass or by a system of waterwheels. The clock itself looks like a stalagmite, and both dwarf and water powered options would fit into the cultural ideals of a people who prized tireless industry and constant effort.

>>35085600
I've never heard of this. Feel like sharing more?

>>35085600
Oh, is THAT where I stole this idea from?

>ctrl+f quartz
>0 results

I feel like if anyone was going to figure out that quartz can be made to vibrate in a consistent manner that allows it to make an accurate timekeeper, dwarves would. Especially with dwarven stone magics and whatnot, they probably just made a timekeeper device that spins one or more hands around a clock, and made up the hour, minute and second based on that.

The reason there are ~24 hours in a day isn't because dwarves made their timepieces measure a day. It's because when the system became used by outsiders, they had versions made to fit their day/night cycle. For a dwarf, the traditional "day" is 60 hours long, much as an hour is 6 minutes and a minute is 60 seconds.

>>35085654
An hour is 60 minutes, sorry. The dwarf under my 0 key is lazy and doesn't do his job sometimes.

>>35085600
Or, you know, if they wanted to be that precise, keep time by water drops falling down stalactites.

>>35085600
I'm thinking of a giant hall with an imposing contraption of gears and wheels akin to a giant mill in the center, all impressively decorated with the finest craftsmanship, turned slowly and steadily by dozens of dwarves. Ceremonially garbed dwarves are seated at the walls, slowly beating giant drums and filling the hall with ancient chants. The timekeepers turning the great wheel wear veils to block all other sensory input. For them, there is nothing but the beat of the giant drums, the feel of the cold wheel handles and the dutiful rhythm of the steps of time. All thought is a distraction from their holy duty. It is as much a religious experience as an upholding of the order of society.

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>>35085629
The Dinotopia series of picture books, written and illustrated by James Gurney, are great bits of lighthearted world building featuring a lost continent of dinosaurs and humans living together in harmony. In one of the books, the main character visits the great spiral clock, pictured above, which does all the timekeeping for the continent. The idea was that it keeps track of all the events happening daily, weekly, monthly, yearly etc, by means of the device that rides up and down the spiral reading the markings carved into the column. Time travels in a line ever into the future, but time is also cyclical as well, and a line plus a circle makes a spiral. I find the idea hunky adaptable to our current conversation.

Here is a pocket timepiece from the same book.

>>35085096
How many spiders could a drow keep in her vagina again?

>>35085126
I like the idea of using a sleeping dragon as clock.

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>>35085748
>>35085739
>>35085600

I would put the column inside a giant pagoda/belltower with hundreds and thousands of different bells that the device rings automatically on its way up. A different set of bells and carrillons with a different set of chimes and a different song for every occasion.

>>35085853
Pity the timekeeper who has to count the beast's heartbeats.

>>35084915
Assuming Dwarves aren't magical, they'll still need to sleep. The simplest answer is that they would measure days based on this rhythm, but that doesn't tell you anything else.

If they're scientifically advanced, or just lucky, they might notice the utility of periodic motion and cycles, leading to a time keeping system similar to one we use.

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>>35085126
I was actually going to suggest something like tectonic shifting or the like. But that's too slow, and would either require very sensitive instruments or living in a hotzone.

What about fall speed? Dwarves have units of length, they can measure based on the amount of time it takes a rock to fall from four feet in height.

>Great Capitol Spiral Clock
>Monastic Manual Clock
>Beard growth
>Heartbeats
>Waterclocks
>Dragon Breaths

It seems like one of the greatest divides between the various Dwarven cultures in this "setting" is how to properly keep time and therefore, properly express their Dwarven industry and honor.

>In the capital and all caverns within earshot of the great belltower, Dwarven Capital Time is the standard. The great spiral clock by which this time is told was designed as an expression of and improvement on the traditional means of measuring time practiced by the Dwarven monastic caste, who use the same spiral calander that the capital clock does, but whose own great clock is much older, and is turned not by waterwheels and clockwork but by Dwarven muscle and ceremony. Occasionally there is friction between the two, but this is usually worked out quickly or languishes in intellectual and clerical debates that leave no lasting impact on Dwarven society at large.

>In the remote caverns and still waters at the edges of the Dwarven underground, however, older and more folksy means of telling time have persisted, and steadfastly refuse to yield to Capitalmor Holy time or be standardized.

>>35085654

That's not a bad idea, especially if you're going for high-tech or high-magic Dorfs.

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>>35084915
Dwarven time/speed would be based on the dripping of water from Stalactites. Being dwarves, they would measure this with precise instruments. The amount of time it takes one droplet of water to travel down an aluminum rod of a specific width and length then fall and hit a pan would be their 'second', the plop of each droplet being a second.

Being autistic they would likely also be metric as fuck, so they'd use base 10's for everything. 100 drops is a Dram (aka shotglass, aka 1 minute dwarf time), 100 Drams is a Cup, aka 100th of an hour. 100 cups is a Mug, aka an hour.100 mugs is a flagon, AKA a 10th of the day. 100 Flagons is a Barrel, aka 1 complete
Keep in mind these are units of time relating to the amount of time it takes a drop of water to fall from a 1 meter long 1 mm thick aluminum rod down 10 meters until it terminates at the bottom.

According to the Encylopedia Brittanica:

"Large raindrops, up to six millimeters in diameter, have terminal velocities of about 10 metres per second and so may cause considerable compaction and erosion of the soil by their force of impact."

This is ~avg velocity for other rain drops as well, so we're given whats roughly 10 m/s. So each drop travels in about 1 second as we understand it.

This means 1 drop ~= 1 second. If 100 drops 1 cup, that means 100 seconds = 1 dwarven minute. 100 minutes in a dwarven hour. 100 dwarven hours in a dwarven day.

As a result dwarven second are roughly 1.6 the length of a modern second. Their minutes are roughly 2.6 longer, their hours 3.6 longer, and their days 4.6 longer. This makes a dwarven day 110.4 hours, aka 4.6 human days. Tireless dwarves indeed.

>>35086363
Why base10? Why not base8?
10 is only special because it's our base, a culture with base 8 would consider 56 a nice round number.

>>35086363
They might not be base 10. Could go for base 12 because of how nicely you can divide it and it's multiples.
Dwarves are mechanically minded, and may well appreciate a nice number like that. Then again, they could be more binary focussed and like 8.

Also with days like that, they might have a "siesta" period halfway through. Where it's just agreed everything winds down and naps are taken.

>>35086363
Now part of the reason dwarves can do this is their legendary stamina. Their bodies are built for this kind of long term endurance. They aren't active for an entire barrel, mind you - they often will sleep standing up or while working, after being active for 20 or so hours.

1 Barrel is roughly equivalent to much much Dwarven Mead - whose nutritional value and sugar content contributes to their ability to function for so long. Thus 1 dwarf will consume 1 barrel, on their own, in 4.6 days. A barrel as we understand it is 36 imperial gallons (160 L; 43 US gal). This means a dwarf will drink in excess of 43 gallons of mead, whisky, or ale in a ~5 day period. This is often cited as the reason dwarves outside their clanhomes are so surely, not enough boozed.

>>35086399
Go home Hexadecimal your drunk

>>35086363
What's the rod got to do with it? Why not just count the fall?
And terminal velocity is not the same as average velocity, at all.

>>35086399
I thought base 10 came about partially because humans have 10 fingers, which presumably dwarfs do as well.

Although wikipedia tells me some interesting stuff, like the Mayans used base 20 (all fingers + toes) and some native american cultures used base 8 (spaces between fingers)

>>35086429
Dwarf siesta's every quarter of a Barrel, aka 1.15 days. Which is why they think humans are lame and weak, because Dwarven periods between rest are every 27.6 hours, not every 24 like humans. So in HUMAN terms a dwarven day is 27 and a half hours. But they consider that just rest periods.

>>35086432
Hexadecimal is base 16, and wouldn't arise in a being with hands like ours.
8 is how many things you can hold
10 is how many things you can touch
12 is how many dinger joints your thumb can touch.
60 is dinger joints*fingers on other hand.
Even 144 could happen with using donger joints and thumbs in both hands, but Hexa only comes as a binary derivative.

Dwarves skip the whole daylight/season pedantry and go right to measuring time through the decay of cesium atoms.

>>35086683
I'm guessing they'd pick a different number of oscillations than 9,192,631,770 though.

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>>35085519
Assuming they're still on a rotating planet, and not on a flat magical plane, a big pendulum would still precess once a day. Look up a Foucault pendulum.

>>35086363
I just wanted you to know I'm stealing this. Not sure my players will ever know/care about how Dwarves keep track of time, but I really like this system.

>>35086772
Ah, that kind of pendulum would work.
I was thinking they measured the period, which is entirely dependent on the length of the rope and meaningless without an external metric.

>>35085957
It's just the original standard of time: They would still have clocks and calendars, just calibrated to dragonheart-time. Sort of like how our second is officially defined in terms of radioactive decay, but no one actually has to constantly observe the atoms in question.

>>35086816
Radioactive decay is universal, a dragon's heartrate will go up if it's having an exciting dream.
And NOW seconds are defined by decay, but they didn't used to be.

Interesting stuff. Definitely going to use some of it.

>>35085654
The problem here is that your dwarfs would either have to have basic electronic computers, or magic to count the vibrations of the crystal in order to count time. A quartz crystal, when exposed to a very low voltage, will vibrate 32,768 times in one second. There is no way that they would be able to measure that accurately enough to do anything with it.

>>35086363
This is it, guys.
> so, how old are you, Krognarg?
> I'm old, bob. About 7 lakes old. I've seen the caves shift, i've seen the gems grow on the earth, kings and nations die, i've seen both light and darkness win their wars... yet, i counted every single drop, every single cup, and fullfiled my duty. Thus is the story of a timekeeper.

>>35087027
You'd have to handwave some sort of magic crystal that jitters at a much more perceptible rate.

>>35086116
Reaction times alone would seriously distort the results. Better make it fall into some chasm and wait for the thud.

>>35086838
They'd just do it like in our old days - select approximately optimal conditions and go from there. For example. they might sneak up on their gauge dragon and waft some soothing, sedating substance in his nose, make sure he is comfy and adjust the cave temperature and so forth, and then measure the heartrate. This process would have to be repeated every couple of years to correct deviations.

I like the idea of dwarves being sufficiently homogeneous that they can use the Dwarf as a catch-all form of measurement. A proper dwarf is one Dwarf tall (5 feet) and moves at the speed of Dwarf (30 feet per combat round).

By this logic, a dwarf lives for about a Dwarf, where a Dwarf is the average lifespan of a dwarf (which varies by setting but I like to put down as about 300 years). This doesn't have a lot of practical use in terms of measuring the seconds and the hours and the days, but a long-lived human empire might be said to have lasted for one and a half Dwarves, and an elderly dwarf might be refered to as being "almost as old as a Dwarf" with the phrase "older than a Dwarf" being used to refer to especially long lived members of the species.

>>35087273
This definitely has a certain charm to it.

>>35087273
I kind of like it.

>How long will that sword take, Bruingil?
>A while. Be patient.

And then Dwarves have a hard time understanding other races' needs to measure the specific time something's going to take. Things take as long as they will and naming the length doesn't help any. Just relax, says the Dwarf. The thing will take as long as it needs.

>>35084915

Growth of stalactites is a very consistent and precise thing to measure.

Drops of water from a stalactite depend on water that has been seeping through stone layers for the last 250,000 years and if the cavern is sealed off from air drafts and changes in humidity can be more precise then any mechanical clock. Down to the milliseconds.

Years could be counted by the number of times a certain cavern overflows as the mountain snows melt in the spring.

The years would be numbered by the reign of kings and high priests.

> In the 67th year of High Priest Thralldin, Togar Silverhelm son of Darin Silverhelm became King of the Obsidian Halls.

> In the 212th year of Togar's reign, High Priest Thralldin passed away.

>

>>35087273
>>35087477

Rather like the rock upon and under which they live. Things happen in their own time. A beautiful cave formation may take eons to form, and the rock cares not for quibbling days and hours with the water. By the same token, a boulder dislodged from the mountainside bounds free when the time is right, crashing down with such speed and power that trying to time it is a fool's errand. Such, likewise, are the ways of Dwarven craftsmen and Dwarven warriors, as it is with all Dwarves.

>>35085423
Also, an old wizened Dwarf, when stroking his beard, is actually counting the years since the event. This mannerism has been adopted by humans thinking that is was a sign of great wisdom and thinking hard.

>>35087477
>>35087575

Perhaps they've got 'it takes as long as it takes' down to a science. They know how long it takes to drink a mug of ale, they know how long it takes to walk the halls of stone, and they know how long it takes to craft a fine suit of armor. So they use all of these as convenient measures of time, much as you would use, say, a handspan as a measurment of length.

So a dwarf might say things like "We'll meet here again after three mugs." to refer to a length of about an hour, or "I'm only staying in town for as long as it takes to craft a fine blade." when referring to staying in town for about a week. For the dwarf these are all relatively precise measurements of time, but it causes understandable confusion around the other races.

>>35087655
This is also awesome.
>I miss helfra. She left me the craft of five swords ago, yet...
> Get over it Horthar, i would've been over it in less than 2 mugs!

>>35087655
I like it.

Everybody thinks the Dwarf is using some sort of idiom or poeric metaphor, only to find the Dwarf impatiently standing outside the Inn asking "Where the hell were you? I could've drank ten pints in the time it took you to get here!"

Everybody else thinks the Dwarf is testy and obtuse, but the Dwarf is secretly frustrated that his idiot friends can't be bothered to show up on time ever and so he ends up standing around wasting valuable time. What kind of intelligent person can't tell how long it takes to craft a fine blade, I mean honestly? Races these days, can't get anything right.

Easy.

They don't calculate time.

Why the FUCK would a bunch of subterranean guys who can live up to 500 years invent the concept of time?

You don't need to invent time to pass time. Time passes by itself.

For a boring approach, you could probably use pendulum swings. They're damned consistent if you keep the starting parameters such.
Though personally I prefer dwarves working by eye and ear mostly. And for stuff like taking watch, everyone does it differently. One stronghold has it so you watch for a candles worth of time, another uses a great stalactite's dripping.

>>35087779
The opposite is also true.

Human: "Man, I waited ages for you to arrive!"
Dwarf frowns and says "Obviosuly not. Don't you dare lie to me again, human."

>>35087812
We've discussed this. Time is based on events that happen often. Flooding of subterranean lakes, how long it takes for crops to grow, how long it would take to make things (Urist! How long 'till them swords get done? Elf scum might attack! Eh, wait. *Time passes* Urist, I got them swor-OH SON OF AMOK YOU ALL DEAD.)

>>35087779
He's then confused by the human smith who both think it takes entirely different lengths of time. Eventually they have a race. The human makes enough fine strong arms for a squad of soldiers, the dwarf makes one masterwork blade. They then both laugh and get drunk on dwarven lichen ale.
The forge explodes later that day under mysterious circumstances.

Again, we get this interesting divide between the ideas:

>Dwarves are meticulous timekeepers

And

>Dwarves are largely unconcerned with small time.

>>35085519

That is why pendulums are sooo AWESOME: adding or removing weight does not change the time period of a single swing of the pendulum. Neither does it matter how far away from the vertical it swings. It only depends on its length and the pull of gravity.

Both should be very constant things.

>>35087903
Well you have two sides to dwarves. One likes clockwork and big big machines and steam golems alongside steel plated axe throwing drunkards.
The other has quiet short people with a slightly alien way of life who live in perpetual darkness, and happen to create amazing pieces of smithwork.

They're both good.

>>35087909
Thus so long as they have length down, and they fucking do, dwarves can maintain accurate short term time with clockwork.
Good. Now we can have both the super accurate timedorfs and the chill "chill, it'll be aces" if we still want.

>>35084915
Dwarves use radiation clocks.

>>35087935
This is why I think I might pursue my idea from >>35086202's idea to some kind of fruition. I like the idea of Dwarves being less homogeneous, and having two or more distinct cultures that sometimes clash on things as fundimental as timekeeping.

>>35085767
These are giant spiders son, quite a bit bigger than the ones that calculation was for

>>35088064
Oooh, now I like the idea of a dwarven capital with a pissing massive pendulum of gold and shit keeping time, with a massive shrine to both ancestors and a god of time in the middle.

And you just know some chuckefuck PC will try to steal it.

On the founding of the mountain home, in the central chamber, there was a small stalagmite, no higher than a dwarf's knee, standing alone. From above there was a very regular drip of water; already knowing much of stonework, the dwarves knew it was the mineral in this water that was building on the diminutive stone pillar.

The king pointed to the stalagmite and said "This is our empire. Small, but inevitable- To look on this stone now is to see something meek and easily toppled, but to look forward is to see its aspiration to be a mighty column. And so shall the Mountainhome be. Drip by drip; dwarf by dwarf; tunnel by tunnel; our legend will grow in time with this rock, a spire fed not with water but with blood and sweat, and when this humble thing has grown to the vaults of this cavern, so thick that no axe may fell it, so too will our empire have reached the depths of the earth and the strength to withstand all trials."

From that basis, the interval between two drops of water became the smallest unit of their time, analogous to our second. It was grouped into a larger unit by matter of convenience, and that unit grouped into a larger one still, and soon other ways of keeping the time came to be by means of watchwork spring. But they all trace their lineage back to the inexorable drip still heard today in their grand hall.

I imagine if you look at a profession where the precise mechanical keeping of time is important, you'd wind up with dwarves who have proper time keeping pieces and who reckon the hours by the counting of seconds. It probably just never trickeled down into the overall mentality of your average dwarf. Most jobs that require only some degree of good timing (like baking) are probably left to the dwarf's natural intuition about how much time has passed. A baker dwarf put in a loaf of bread for the amount of time it takes a loaf of bread to cook. Over the years, the baker dwarf learns better and better exactly how long to keep it in in order to achieve the best results. This is why master dwarven craftsmen are so good, because they learn to do everything by ear. So its not that dwarves don't have precise time keeping devices, it's just that they don't really think they need them and they never caught on culturally.

>>35088137
Some say that when the stalactite and stalagmite finally join to become a pillar, the dwarven nation will fall.

>>35085423
I like the idea of dwarves being inhumanly patient and slow to act.
Have them be 'like the rocks'.

Even underground, they're going to be affected by the seasons: differences in temperature would be muted but they'd still notice periodic droughts and floods, as the amount of water seeping or flowing down from above changed.

While we're on water: if they've a lot of it, there will be significant tides, giving a possible notion of a day ("two tides") not that far removed from a surface dweller's.

>>35085505

Well you need a REGULAR event, the filling and emptying of underwater rivers, the growing of the Shaven-Time Priests' beards, the ripening of underground funguses, some weird time cycle imposed by differences in how the luminous funguses luminesce over time etc...

It is an interesting question.

Our timekeeping system is based on the geometry of circles, the number 12 and natural cycles. Some things will continue to apply to dwarves, but some thing are entirely historical.

It's reasonable to assume that they'll have some kind of yearly cycle. It's also reasonable to assume that they have some kind of sleep cycle and a heartbeat. These could be used to set their year, day and second.

The precise numbers are more difficult to tell. The use of 12, 60 and 360 comes from the Babylonians, who viewed those numbers as special (60 has 12 divisors: 1,2,3,4,5,6,10,12,15,20,30,60. 12 has 6 divisors, while 360 has 24). It turned out that 360 days fit the year remarkably well, as did 12 months. Without a fantasy Babylon we have no idea how they might end up dividing their days or hour equivalent, or how they could divide years if they can't see the Moon.

>>35087903
Why not both?
They keep fantastic records of the ages, but can't divide a day off for toffee.

>>35087909
Adding weights shifts the center of gravity, which does change the effective length and thus the period.

Hourglasses?

They'd base their time measurement on work shifts: how much can a dwarf work without getting too stressed/tired.

>>35087968
>>35088136

This is what you guys want.
>>35086772

A massive Foucault pendulum that measures the hearbeat of the earth itself (rotation around its axis) and depends on the invariability of the strength of the earth (force of gravity) and the distance from its massive heart (north or south pole).

A dwarven day is a percise and unvarying thing, unlike the elven days that look at the sun, moon and stars. Who wander across the sky willy nilly, never knowing when to rise and when to set (changes in the length of the day), even their fancy seasons and years do not match the earths heartbeat, requiring complex rules born of guesswork (leap days and leap years).

Our calendars are wheels, cycles, or spirals. But they are always a long count of the earth's heartbeats.

The heavy pendulum swings, but not back and forth like the impatient humans think. Its swings rotate tracing a circle the revolution ever constant. Felling hammers as it travels its course. Hammers are placed around the circle striking bells to mark time, the number of hammers to build to match the earth's true heart is a deep secret only the priesthood can divine (requires calculus to calculate) but it marks the dwarf in both time and space (also can be used to determine latitude) our distance is measured as a fraction of this length allowing us to glimpse how tiny we are before the earth which bears us (angular distance from the pole and the circumference of the earth.)

To the earth it matters not, one circle will take exactly the same time in the place it is built. As long as proper care and devotion is used to construct it.

This is the unshakable foundation on which dwarven culture is built.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M8rrWUUlZ_U

>http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foucault_pendulum

>>35089871

A percise mechanical clock plus a magnetic compas can be used to also find the longitude (at least I think so...) this would give the dwarves the ability to craft very accurate maps.

>>35089871

This method fails at the equator. This might be a reason why dwarves would hate living in tropical places because they believe it is too far away from the heart of the earth to hear it.

>>35086476
Hexa can be possible naturally if you count nails + joints with your thumb.

Didn't happen in our world as far as I know, but it's not impossible. We have cultures with very weird ways of counting, resulting in things like base 27 or base 15.

>>35084915
Seasonally. Just find something that happens once a "year" or season and go from there.
If they can make complex machines or Mastercraft weapons turn they could bust things down to a smaller increment of time

>>35084915
Possible that every realm uses a calendar of their own, based on something happening there in a somewhat regular intervall.

Eventually they would have to find some common system for interactions. They may end up using a common overworld calendar for that, and finally it would replace all the local ones out of convenience.

But since your stereotypical dwarf if´s very traditional, they might not do this.

>>35087060
How about a bell? I think a bell could be made to toll for a specific and potentially very long time if it was big enough.

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I'm reminded of Deep Sounding's system of bells.

>>35090412
>Deep Sounding
One of those moment you flinch and realise you've seen a little bit too much /d/...

>>35090412

I'm unfamiliar with this. May I ask what it's all about?

They'd still try to use a day/night based clock, because damn near everything does. They might not use it the same way everything else does, but it would still be helpful to keep track of it. Longer than that, maybe they'd measure by some cave creature's habits/migrations? Perhaps by the growth rates of mushrooms or some other crop?

>>35089654
given a perfect space (no friction) adding weight would do jack shit

>>35090722
Only in a model where the mass is a point.
In reality, putting mass on top of the weight raises the center of mass and reduces the period.

>>35085700
>>35084977

those are good.

underwater rivers. hot springs.

>>35090533
Sounding is when you take a metal rod and slide it into an erect penises pee hole and gently stroke it up and down while masturbating the penis

>>35088172
As the ages passed, the drops grew shorter and shorter, forcing the dwarves to developer faster and faster methods of calculating and adhering to time. Before the column formed, the dwarves mastered FTL and the DM collapsed the cavern out of spite

>>35091276

False.
They are measuring the time between when two consecutive drops land. So the height of the drop doesn't matter. Only how quickly a drop forms on the tip of the stalactite.

>>35091256

Not at all what I meant, but thank you, I suppose.

>>35087047
That gave me fucking shivers man

First ever foray to /tg/
Fuck it but I am impressed. New home board it is.

>>35085501
Length of pubes.

Bell systems would be a great way of telling the time and relaying messages down in the depths.

Each dwarf kingdom has one dwarf whose responsibility is to live a very long time and be the basis for their calendar.

>>35084915
I like the thought of dwarves not tracking time at all. Just sinking themselves into their societal role with pure dwarven stubbornness and traditionality.

"This is what I do. I've been doing it forever, and I'll keep doing it forever; because dammit, this is what I do."

"I'm a blacksmith. If I'm not asleep, I'm forging hammers. AND I WILL NOT SLEEP UNTIL I PHYSICALLY COLLAPSE."

"How long until it's done? Until it's BLOODY WELL DONE, that's how long. Rush a Dwarf and a Dwarf will rush you!"

>>35098810
>Rush a Dwarf and a Dwarf will rush you!

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>>35098810
we just found the reason for the bad diplomacy between dorfs and other races.

And if the dorf-clans have to help each other, they just send messengers and meet as fast they can.

>>35086476
>donger joints
ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ

>>35090167
Well, if you want to go nuts with your worldbuilding details:
>Anggor includes the wrist(6 and 18), forearm (7 and 17), elbow (8 and 16), upper arm (9 and 15),shoulder (10 and 14), breast (11 and 13) and the sternum (12) in its tally-system. The count ends at 23 andit is customary to call such a system a 23-cycle system. For counts above 23, such systems would usuallycontinue on with a phrase like "one man and " begin the count anew.
http://www.academia.edu/2056304/Counting_on_Your_Body_in_Papua_New_Guniea

>>35087903

Maybe different cultures of dwarves? Or perhaps both, as suggested.

>>35090533
A short book divided into two parts written by a fa/tg/uy who passed it off to us for free a year or so back and published it on Amazon for kindle now. First part is about a dwarf who's been exiled outside the mountains, the second is a slice of life in the mountain and they interact a bit at the end. The dwarves a promethean beings and the mountains are like dwarf fortress fortresses that haven't collapsed horribly into murder frenzies. Time is regulated by a giant system of bells that are fairly important to both stories.

>>35098810
>As long as you're doing your craft, and your work is meaningful in some way, your fellow Dwarves don't give a fuck how long it takes to complete any given task you might undertake, because everyone knows you'll finish it eventually.

Sounds nice.

>>35088092
Well then all you have to change is the size of the spider. So whats the calculation?

>>35103116
>Both
For dwarves timekeeping is more of a religious experience and a method to teach younger dwarves.
Dwarf craftsmen know exactly how long do things take and tend to measure time by them. Of course, they will convert their internal clocks into Drips, but they don't do it often, as they believe it cheapens them.
Also all work must be done in one sitting (if it's a big work, with breaks for eating and sleeping). Leaving work unfinished mars the sanctity of time.

>>35084915
>How would a Dwarven civilization, who cares nothing for the surface realms and their silly sun-and-moon based systems, calculate time?
Assuming they are relatively recognizable Dwarves then they would still understand the concept of years and seasons. They are of earth, and the earth recognizes such things. They might have a much more 24-hour culture than the surface cultures, though this is largely dependent on the setting.
>If you asked a Dwarf their age, in what manner would they respond?
Grumpily. Seriously though, they'd probably just tell you how many years and possibly remainder seasons they've been alive
>If you asked how many years a Dwarf had been standing guard among these tunnels, what would the answer be?
You'd probably get made fun of for thinking that guard shifts last more than a couple of hours.

>>35089871
How do they react to the rotation of the earth gradually slowing down?

>>35103562
THE END IS NIGH

>>35103562
The Earth is alive. And like all things they age and die.
But that doesn't mean we shouldn't live in the meantime.

And.. There are paths to immortality. Perhaps a planet could be made to never die.

>>35093888
/tg/: you don't even need the other boards.

Did we archive this?
Also bump, i guess.

>>35105939

Not to my knowledge, though it is probably worthy.

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>>35084915
Days and years.

Even if they don't bother with day and night themselves, the people that they do business do and weather they like it or not Dwarves are dependent on trade with the topsiders for food.

>>35103590
Planich? Lichsteroid?

>>35108252
I'm finding the idea of an undead planet more silly than I should.

What would the effects of undeath do to a planet, anyways? I mean, it's not like it'd become a hellscape of bone-trees or something; the stuff that grows on a planet isn't actually the planet any more than the moss growing on a tree is part of a tree.

I plan on using inspirations from this thread to characterize my next dwarven race.

>>35111264
Since undead planet would presumably be radiating negative energy, i'm not sure about that.
But those are all faggoty trees and surface-dwelling scrubs, so dwarves won't care.


>Dwarven necromancers' doomsday death cult

this should be archived

I would do it myself, but I don't know what tags to give it

>>35112643
>not knowing that everything is archived automatically and has been for years now
You're either incredibly new, a questfaggot, or incredibly old.

>>35112643
>>35106761
>>35105939
Archived.

>>35112741
even though the shitty w/a/ifu quests have flooded suptg, doesn't mean this isn't worthy of being there.

>>35103287
so how many drips are their in the time it takes to craft a fine blade?

>>35085424
Took the words out of my mouth, anon.

Flooding of underground water sources, volcanic activity, underground crop growth cycles, or livestock birth cycles for the year. Sleep cycle for the day. Important events for the week/month, assuming both are tracked. Heartbeat or a swing of a pick for seconds.

>>35113093
Our sleep cycle is influenced by daylight. Without it it gets weird and erratic

>>35113318
part of the reason why basement dwelling hermits have such fucked up sleeping patterns.

>MFW the mechanized prayer-wheels are a cross between a babbage engine, a player piano, and a god-machine

my face.. OH GOD WHERE'S MY FACE

>>35114580
It's a great idea.

>>35113318
>fantasy race must adhere to human physiology
doin it wrong anon

>>35115911
It's the physiology of most things with eyes

>>35116007
Dwarfs spend most of their lives underground, they almost never see the sun. Having their physiology be reliant on the day and night makes no sense.

>>35116153

Dwarves aren't real so they'll do as their told

>>35116153
Our bodies still operate as if we were hunter gatherers yet it's been thousands of years since we've lived like that. People are still largely lactose intolerant despite it being a staple of diets everywhere. Some things don't go away easy.

In my setting, Dwarves and Elves and even Humans were all originally extraplaner semi-divine spirits that came to this world, which the Gods commissioned the Dwarves to build, as a sort of metropolis. All those races though had to spend time resting in order to synch their mind and spirit up with their home plane, which is what sleep does. The dwarves though, since they had to build the damn place to begin with, did some ritual fuckery and made it so that they can go for a long time without having to sleep at all.

Those dwarves devised a measurement of days based not around when you are awake and when you are asleep, but instead around productivity.

If it takes one hour to smith a new pick, then the span of an hour is called a Pick. If it takes four days to build a tomb, than a span of four days is called one Tomb.

>>35116632
Sounds cool, but wouldn't work rate be variable?

>>35116632
>"Urist, how long will it take you to make me 40 axes?"
>"Uh, I dunno, probably around 40 Axes."

>>35116663
Dwarves are ritually, almost autistically consistent. It takes exactly X amount of time to make Y object. All things are built at the same rate. There is no rushed production, but then neither is there any getting behind schedule.

>>35116694
That sounds kind of dumb.

>>35116694
>Dwarf smith has broken hand, can't work as quick
>Dwarf smith loses all sense of time and goes mad

>>35116738
Well, it isn't that they CAN'T rush production or anything, more that they won't. If it takes four days to make a Tomb, the Tomb will be done within four days, even if they can do it quicker or even if they SHOULD do it slower. It has a lot to do with non-human magic being based a lot on rhythm and cadence and things like that, but basically if they don't do it in exact Dwarven time, it'll be shit compared to if they do it whenever the hell they feel like.

So like, if it takes a dwarf two days to complete say, an basic iron sword, and instead the dwarf completes it in one day or three days, it'll be just as good as a sword from a master human armorsmith. If the dwarf does it in the exact time though, it'll be The Sword, the epitome of what a basic Iron Sword could ever be. Almost like an enchantment, only the magic is woven into the fiber of the item or building or whatever.

>>35116779

Dwarf Fortress, ladies and gentlemen!

>>35084915
I'm pretty sure they'd tell time by gold
(read:paychecks / material wealth)

>If you asked how many years a Dwarf had been standing guard among these tunnels, what would the answer be?
£125 and six copper as of next pay
3 more and I get a dower to grade 3.2

that or excessively intricate clocks

>>35116838
Terrible idea.

>>35116956
How so?

>>35116779
I laughed entirely too hard.

>>35085285
Imma use that, thank you very much!