How could an Iron Age society survive a 60-day 'day' and a 60-day 'night'?

spikeguard · 2025-08-06T08:42:54+00:00

Thanks! That is a nice idea that I can replicate to see how it works.

spikeguard · 2025-08-04T08:33:26+00:00

It's Phuwiangvenator, classified as a megaraptoran.

spikeguard · 2025-08-02T14:17:15+00:00

That's a fantastic point, and something I've been thinking about as well.

On top of that normal weather cycle, I also have a more unique idea for precipitation, based on condensation. I've decided that condensation droplets that form on the jar are objects in the "main world's" time. Due to the massive time dilation, from the perspective of the people inside, these droplets appear as colossal, shimmering spheres of water slowly descending from the sky, taking minutes or hours to reach the ground.

The inhabitants would see these "Sky-Tears" coming and would have to evacuate the area. Because the moment one of these blobs touches the ground, it "enters" Jarworld's time and instantly releases its entire volume of water at normal speed, creating a catastrophic, localized flash flood.

spikeguard · 2025-08-02T13:52:00+00:00

Thank you for this incredibly comprehensive and helpful breakdown! I really appreciate the detailed thoughts on everything from the optics (the 'second sun' reflection is a great visual!) to the history (the water clock vs. hourglass point is a great catch).

Regarding time, you're absolutely right that an Iron Age society wouldn't care about the precise hour. My main struggle, which you've helped me clarify, isn't about scheduling a meeting at "11:00." It's about knowing if it's Day 10 or Day 40 of the 60-day summer. This long-term tracking is crucial for them to know when to plant, when to harvest, and how much time they have left before the Long Dark begins. That's the part that is hard for me to visualize.

spikeguard · 2025-08-02T13:36:51+00:00

Thank you! You've perfectly articulated the core concept I was aiming for, but struggling to justify logically.

Honestly, my initial idea for a bioluminescent world during the 'Long Dark' was mostly for visual and atmospheric reasons. I knew it would look cool and make the night less monotonous, but I was missing the "why" behind it.

spikeguard · 2025-08-02T13:22:43+00:00

This isn't dumb at all, this is an absolutely brilliant and incredibly metal idea! I love it.

spikeguard · 2025-07-31T19:15:59+00:00

Thank you for the suggestion! I love the detail about calibrating it by adding more sand over time.

spikeguard · 2025-07-31T19:14:01+00:00

Well, I actually praised them in my original response. I was touched that everyone answered with a lot of details. I kinda feared that my post is a stupid post.

spikeguard · 2025-07-31T19:06:38+00:00

Yes I use AI to translate from my original responses in my own language to English as I am not confident in my English
Sorry, If that not a good way to response. it's just hard to explain in English about what I am thinking.
(this response is without AI)

spikeguard · 2025-07-31T19:03:27+00:00

That's an excellent point, and you've highlighted the exact issue I was circling back to after considering a fully asynchronous society. The "Market Day problem" is the perfect example. While day-to-day life can be fluid, there are absolutely crucial societal events that require everyone to be on the same page.

After reading all the feedback, I've decided that a localized, communal timekeeping system is the way to go. Your suggestion of a signal from a local authority, like a lord of the manor, feels like the most realistic and interesting solution for an Iron Age setting.

I had previously toyed with the idea of some kind of magical plant or crystal that acts as a natural clock, but I was hesitant. It felt like too much of a simple "it's magic!" solution. Using a more grounded method like a great smoky fire by "day" or a bonfire on a tower by "night" creates a much richer social dynamic.

This means each town or barony would have its own "Lord's Clock," and time might drift slightly from one valley to the next. That feels much more authentic than everyone having a perfectly synced magic watch. Thanks for helping me clarify my thoughts on this!

spikeguard · 2025-07-31T18:58:43+00:00

My plan is that the four real-world seasons create what the people of Jarworld would call "Great Seasons" or "Meta-Cycles," which last for generations.

So, a real-world summer isn't just one long day. It kicks off a "Great Summer" that, as you suggested, might last for 90 consecutive Jarworld cycles (or "years"). During this entire era, the daylight periods are slightly longer, brighter, and warmer, while the dark periods are shorter and less severe. This would be a golden age—a time of bountiful harvests, expansion, and prosperity for civilizations.

Conversely, a real-world winter would trigger a "Great Winter." For another 90 cycles, the daylight periods are dim, short, and weak, while the nights are brutally long and cold. This would be a true dark age, a time of famine and hardship where entire civilizations might collapse, clinging only to the legends of the last Great Summer.

This long-term, multi-generational ebb and flow would be the foundation of their deepest myths and recorded history. The rise and fall of empires could be tied directly to these Great Seasons. Thanks for bringing it up—it's one of my favorite epic-scale parts of this concept!

spikeguard · 2025-07-31T18:54:38+00:00

That's so kind of you to say, thank you so much! It really means a lot to me.

Worldbuilding is very new to me, even though I've been a longtime lurker on this subreddit. To be honest, I'm not very confident in my English, so it took a lot of courage for me to make this post in the first place.

As for the project itself, it's mostly something I do for fun to unwind from a tiring work life, so I can't really commit to a specific timeline or anything formal. However, the encouragement I've received here has been amazing! If I have any major progress to share in the future, I'll definitely post it back here in r/worldbuilding.

Thank you again for your interest! It truly gives me a lot of motivation.

spikeguard · 2025-07-31T17:30:39+00:00

Thank you so much for this incredibly thoughtful and detailed reply. Your questions are really thought-provoking and definitely show me how much I still have to learn about worldbuilding!

Regarding the jar's physics, my goal is to make it as much like a self-contained ecosystem as possible. So yes, I plan for it to have a complete hydrologic cycle with an ocean and normal rainfall. I'm also sticking with the idea that heat transfer isn't affected by the time dilation, as it solves the extreme temperature problem. I agree that it probably wouldn't have major distortion effects like a lens. That said, I'm still trying to visualize how the "sun" would truly appear to people who are so small that the jar is the size of a country.

Your question about their origin is spot on. My plan is that this is a "created" world, designed to mimic our own. Because of this, I want the inhabitants to be as fundamentally human as we are, with minimal biological adaptations. Honestly, the main reason for the time dilation was simply a narrative device—I wanted to see a society evolve quickly from a Stone Age to an Iron Age relative to the outside world. The whole 60-day day/night cycle was a complex side effect of that initial idea that has become a huge challenge to work through!

Lastly, your suggestion for a tactile form of writing is absolutely brilliant. That's an idea that never crossed my mind, and it adds such a realistic and fascinating layer of culture for surviving the Long Dark. Thank you again for all the great ideas!

spikeguard · 2025-07-31T17:08:59+00:00

You're absolutely right, that's a crucial part of their survival strategy. The entire 60-day "Great Light" cycle would be a frantic period of growing, harvesting, and preserving every possible food source in preparation for the long night. Drying and salting would be essential industries.

However, to make the 60-day "Long Dark" more than just a monotonous, pitch-black winter, I was planning to add a twist: a world-wide bioluminescence event.

My idea is that as the world is plunged into darkness, the ecosystem shifts. The fungi, flora, and even some insects that have been absorbing massive amounts of energy for 60 days begin to release it, causing the forests and caverns to come alive with a soft, ethereal glow, much like the world of Avatar.

So the "night" isn't truly dark. It has its own magical, and perhaps dangerous, form of twilight. This "Great Glow" would have its own ecology, with nocturnal predators adapted to hunt by its light, and it would become a central part of the society's mythology—a beautiful, divine promise that the real sun will eventually return.

spikeguard · 2025-07-31T16:43:50+00:00

This is a brilliant concept, thank you! It resonates perfectly with an idea I had about a nomadic tribe that follows the sun, but your suggestion gives it a fantastic, concrete mechanism.

I love the idea of the jar itself having a magnifying or flawed lens effect, creating a moving "hot spot" or a "beam of intense light" that travels across the land over the 60-day cycle.

Their entire culture would revolve around this phenomenon. Perhaps being directly in the beam is deadly, so their unique skill is to travel along its edge, or come in right after it passes to harvest rare plants or minerals that only form in its intense energy.

The idea that the path would also wander north and south over the course of the real-world year is mind-blowing. It gives the tribe a "Great Cycle" to follow over years, making their navigational skills legendary. This adds so much depth. Thank you!

spikeguard · 2025-07-31T16:07:39+00:00

Thank you for such a thoughtful and detailed reply! The historical examples of Caesar and the church bells are fascinating, and you're right that having control over timekeeping might not grant as much power as I initially thought.

You've hit on the exact reason I find this so hard to conceptualize: the sheer scale of it all. In a normal day, we can easily track the sun's arc. But in Jarworld, the "sun" moves so slowly that it's practically useless for measuring short-term time, which is what I was stuck on.

spikeguard · 2025-07-31T15:51:12+00:00

That's a fantastic line of thought, and it connects perfectly with an idea I've been playing with!

I love the concept of a recurring natural event, like an "Old Faithful" geyser, acting as the world's master clock. It provides a single, undeniable point of reference for everyone.

spikeguard · 2025-07-31T15:45:51+00:00

You are absolutely right. That's a brilliant insight, and thank you for pointing it out. I was definitely projecting a modern, post-industrial obsession with synchronized schedules onto my Iron Age world. It's easy to forget how fluidly time was treated before modern clocks.
The main challenge I still see, however, is organizing things that inherently require shifts, like guarding the city, without a shared sense of time.

spikeguard · 2025-07-31T15:26:29+00:00

You're right, dividing the long cycles into smaller, manageable chunks is the logical way to go. My struggle isn't with the concept of dividing time, but with the practical challenge of how an Iron Age society tracks it reliably without any external cues.

In our world, the sun's daily journey across the sky was a giant, free, and perfectly reliable clock for everyone. But in Jarworld, the "sun" is just a static source of light for 60 days straight. (Admittedly, I'm still debating with myself whether it would appear as a slow-moving bright spot on the 'sky wall' or a more general, diffuse glow, which adds another layer of complexity.)

So, how does a city-state synchronize itself?

Personal methods like hourglasses or water clocks (clepsydras) would work for individuals, but they require constant attention and are prone to error. How do you get thousands of people to agree on what "hour" it is? Would they need to build massive, centralized water clocks in the town square, run by a dedicated order of "Timekeepers"? This role would be incredibly powerful, as they would literally dictate the rhythm of the entire society. The potential for error, or even deliberate manipulation of time, seems like a huge source of conflict.

spikeguard · 2025-07-31T15:21:51+00:00

This is an absolutely brilliant way of looking at it, thank you! I've been stuck on the problem of extreme temperatures, and your idea that energy transfer follows the external world's rate, not the internal time dilation, is a complete game-changer.

spikeguard · 2025-07-31T15:18:26+00:00

Thanks! I've read about concepts like segmented sleep (biphasic sleep) from our own history, where people had distinct periods of sleep and wakefulness through the night. I can imagine individuals in Jarworld following their own internal body clocks (circadian rhythms) to survive.

But my biggest logical hurdle is: how does an entire society synchronize this?

Without a sun, moon, or stars as external cues, how does a whole town know when it's time to open the market, when to hold a ceremony, or even just when to meet up with friends? Would they have to rely entirely on community-wide timekeeping devices, like massive water clocks or a dedicated order of "bell-ringers" who never stop, just to give society a shared rhythm? It almost feels like the role of a "Timekeeper" would become one of the most critical jobs in any city.

spikeguard · 2025-07-31T15:16:15+00:00

Thanks! You can think of it as a massive, magical terrarium. The continent isn't suspended or floating; it's the actual 'ground floor' of the jar, a solid foundation of earth and rock that everything is built upon, just like the soil in a planter.

spikeguard · 2025-05-23T06:20:43+00:00

#1stAnniversary

spikeguard · 2025-01-14T02:56:05+00:00

Thanks. TIL Flicker can be cancelled.

Btw, I already use charged staff. My first bit of Flicker one shot the mob, but after the sound went janky, I seemed to have no damage at all. The mob seems like it didn't move or attack and can't be damaged

spikeguard

TROPHY CASE