Basic Player Knowledge

layer knowledge is organised into several categories, in order of decreasing reliablility; from known facts about world, to rumours and hearsay.  This page lists basic facts about the World. You may assume these to be correct, as they constitute basic knowledge gained by anyone who has grown up or lived there.

The Physical Environment

The Sun:

• There is one Sun; a yellow, intensely bright, point-like source of of light in the sky.
• The Sun's brightness fluctuates in a regular cycle, by a factor of two.
• It is this fluctuation in brightness that defines the diurnal (day/night) cycle, not the position of the Sun in the sky.
• At its brightest (noon, full daylight), the Sun is too intense to look at with the naked eye.
• At its dimmest (midnight, half daylight), the Sun is still bright enough for ordinary vision (as if behind cloud cover).
• The Sun moves slowly through the sky; it takes 28 day/night cycles to travel in an arc from eastern to western horizon.
• Once the sun drops below the western horizon, it rises again in the east after another 28 days.

The Moon:

• There is one Moon.  It is a large^*, streaked, pearl-white or milky disk.
• Unlike the Sun, the Moon's location remains fixed in the sky, at the zenith.
• When the sun is in the sky, the moon is very dim; a ghostly white disk during both day and night.
• When the sun is below the horizon, the Moon's brightness fluctuates, at the same rate as the Sun's.
• In this way, the diurnal cycle is maintained even when the Sun is out of the sky.
• At its brightest, the Moon provides just enough illumination for normal vision (twilight).
• At it's dimmest, the Moon provides hardly any illumination, and stars become visible in the (night) sky.

^*The Triurne World's moon has roughly four times the diameter (16 times the area) of the Earth's moon.

The Sky, Weather and Seasons:

• The period of 28 days the Sun takes to cross the sky ("Summer") is known as a "solar traverse," or "solar cycle."
• The 28-day period when the Sun is below the horizon ("Winter") is called a "lunar watch."
• Spring and Autumn consist of a few days around the rising and setting of the Sun, respectively.
• Midsummer occurs over several days during the solar traverse when the Sun is occluded by the Moon.
• Temperatures during Summer are searing hot, as the Sun remains in the sky at all times.
• Winters are bitterly cold, as teh Moon provides no heat, only illumination.
• The 56-day period combining one solar traverse and one lunar watch is known as a "cycle" or "full cycle".
• Each solar traverse or lunar watch are also known as "half-cycles"^**.
• The daylight colour of the sky depends on the cycle:
  • During a lunar watch, the sky is a pale, blue-white, pearl colour during the day, and black at night.
  • During a solar cycle, the sky is a more bright, azure blue^†, day and night.
• There are 12 half-cycles (six full cycles) in one year.

^**A half cycle is essentially equivalent to a month.
^†This is similar to the usual colour of the sky on Earth.

Stars, Constellations and Planets:

• At night during the lunar watches, stars are visible, when not obscured by the disk of the moon.
• The stars are fixed relative to one another (but not to the Moon) and rotate in lock-step throughout the year.
• There are a small number of wandering (planetary) stars which move separately to the fixed stars.
• The fixed stars form constellations, through which the Sun, Moon and planetary stars move during the year.

Numbering, Time and the Calendar

The most commonly used Calendar is based on a 12/60 numbering system, in turn based on the observed motion of the Sun, as follows:

• Each half-cycle (month) is divided into 4 weeks of six days each, and one week of four days.
• There are 12 half-cycles in a year, so 60 weeks in a year.
• Days and nights are divided into 12 hours each.
• Hours are divided into 60 minutes, which are in turn divided into 60 seconds.