? Noivorcen ni keew A ? - MD birthday quest

[lashtal]

Recently I was approached by a conglomerate of Shades. They seemed uncomfortable to see people inside Necrovion.

I tried to explain the terms of our agreement: sacrificing a personal item gets one to stay one week.

Although eager (so to speak) to get personal effects, they didn't seem to get the concept of "week"...

So, I'm afraid I need your help here: how would you explain Shades what a week is?

Your submission can be written, sketched or whatever you wish, just keep in mind it should be understandable to them.

Please post it in this thread before Saturday 30 April - 23.59 s.t.

 

Submissions will be judged by a shade ambassador who'll remain anonymous and by myself.

Rewards depend on how many entries we get: for sure there will be huge amounts of gold; if we get 5 submissions or more I'll toss a WP as well.

Have fun and happy MD birthday!

[Fyrd Argentus]

The wet ones often cower in the dark, swaddled like a baby, and seek to restore their sanity before venturing timidly out again.  Again and again they do it - seven times they do this and call it a week.  For they are weak.

[Ledah]

I would simply remind them it is all a matter of perspective!

[Muratus del Mur]

Initially i wrote an answer here, but due to obvious reasons i decided to pm it to the quest creator inststead

Ps: I'm not the anonymous judge, just a silent observer interested in this subject.

[Aia del Mana]

Betwixt the moon and ground alike
Doth live a very special light,
She travels thither through the night
Returneth she at speed of sight.
When thou observest her change of scene;
Five hundred thousand times between,
Necrovion's guest must pay anew,
Or lashtal's scythe will find it's due.

Spoiler

One assumes that the reader were quite familiar with the concept that time were indeed not constant, and in the other-realm were dependent on other factors, including the speed at which one travels relative to their surroundings; the constant, rather, were the speed of light. However, from one who observes light travelling between the Moon and the Earth (observed from a relatively stationary point), light travels approximately this distance between - 384000km - in 1.23 seconds. There are 604800 seconds in a week, so an approximate number of trips that light could travel between the Earth and the Moon in a week - as perceived by someone on the Earth - is around 500000 times.

 

Edited April 22, 2022 by Aia del Mana
explanation added in the spoiler

[Nep]

I think it would be easiest to explain to them in terms of a human lifespan. Average life expectancy right now is about 72,6 years. 

72,6 * 12 = 871,2 months.
871,2 * 4 = 3484,8 weeks.

Therefore, a week is about 1/3485 of a human lifespan. 

[Invie]

.mitciv eht nwod gnitnuh strats lathsaL ecno ro ,laid llams eht fo snoitulover etelpmoc neetruof ot tnelaviuqe si keew eno taht snialpxe dna kcolc enob sih ta stnioP.

Edited April 19, 2022 by Invie

[lashtal]

Aaaand with Invie's we reached 5 submissions!

So, the best submission will be eligible for a WP.

11 days left, so plenty of time to add yours...

I'll avoid any comment until the end.

Enjoy the celebrations!

[Eara Meraia]

Ok, here is my humble submission.

Trying to solve this, one gets into one major problem...well, actually two problems.

 First one - what is actually"a week"?

Second one - how do you explain it to Shades?

Let us start with the the first one. I did some research - a week is an artificially devised unit of time. Its duration differs across cultures and calendars (fluctuations are between 7-14 days, but maybe one can find other, if one diggs deeper).

Now, how to explain to Shades what a week is? To be honest my memory is very rusty, so I hope that I am not telling some nonsense here, but I have to try to share my thoughts with you. I see Shades as "the Opposite", a necessary pole to maintain an overall Balance. A normal human instinct is to maintain life, create, put things into order, progress. Which would mean that Shades necessarily would stand for death, decay, chaos, which would make an impression of Shades as being evil. I do not see it this way, I see Shades as a necessity to maintain Reality in all its colours. But I got distracted. Let us go back to Time and what the above premise would mean to us explaining Shades the meaning of the week. Time is an inevitable byproduct of the Order, which would make me assume that Shades as embodyment of Chaos are beyong time. However, being beyong doesnt make Shades unable to understand a concept of time as a flow. They are probably familiar with concepts of Life and Death and so they can understand the linear connection between Beginning and End, Birth and Passing away when applied to living beings as humans, animals etc.

So, my solution to this dilemma is this. I would present Shades with a Luna Moth in a jar...just hatched to its adult (Imago) form. Since adult luna moth has no digestive system and cannot eat, its life span is between 7-10 days. After that the moth inevitably dies. Shades could understand a change in state of a Moth and get a notion of an approximate week duration. Of course it is only an approximate solution, but as stated before - week duration varies across calendars as well. A more precise solution would be maybe design a sandwatch that would last a week, but honestly, I think like Luna Moth concept better. I have a feeling that Shades would appreciate it more.

Thank you very much for reading

[Else]

I was taught in University that when you fully understand a topic you should be able to explain it to a 5 years old kid by splitting it in easier concepts.
So to explain what a week is, it would be needed to explain what a day, an hour, a minute and a second are.

I would approach this task by explaining what a second is with the help of either of the game items "Pocket Watch" or "Reverse Pocket Watch", a second which is an instant of time can be explained with a move of the seconds hand.
From there I would go to explain a minute which is 60 moves of the seconds hand or one move of the minutes hand. Then the concept of an hour which is 60 moves of a minute hand or the hour hand moving 30 degrees(easier to show with a clock than explaining angles to shades).
A day would be the hour hand moving 360 degrees or the entire circle coming back to the initial position. A week would be the hour hand arriving at the original position for the 7th time.

At this point Shades should have understood the concept of a week, however, to help them keep track of time in the context given, I would use 7 stones in a line, each one representing a day of the week with the stone representing the current day being out of the line.
At midnight the stone out of the line should go back in line and the next stone should go out of the line. After sunday the next stone would be the monday stone, starting the cycle over again.

If I deducted from Shade Sentinel's words correctly explaining this to one shade would be enough, otherwise it would be needed to explain to all of them...

Edited April 24, 2022 by Else

[lashtal]

Quick update: since we have 7 submissions right now, the rewards include:

1 wish point

2 x 30 gold note

1 x 30 gold note

2 x 10 gold note

2 x 30 silver note

1 x 30 silver note

2 x 10 silver note

Your submissions will get a score, the highest score will pick first and so on.

[Ailith]

I would visit them every day at the same time. Each visit I will call "Day" and mark it on a rock near Deathmarrow.

Every seven visits I would start a new row of marks and call the last row "Week".

I would trust them to either follow the markings and understand that way or use my crude method to come to their own understanding better within their own sense of time.

[AmberRune]

So we start with the visit at the stone. You  leave the area, leave the land. Take a turn through No Man's Land. Take another turn in Marind Bell. Wave at the Shades from the Passage of War. Turn around and back out to the Archive Gardens.

You visit the librarian, you build a fort out of books, you get kicked out. You sneak around to the back, poke some orbs in the garden. You turn some more, throw a coin into the fountain. Continue and throw your fists in the air outside the puzzle. You leave the Garden. You take a turn at the maze.

You get lost in the maze. You get lost some more. Take a wrong turn. Take a right turn. Take more right turns. You find a way out. You try to jump and touch Mt. Kelle'tha.

You climb down a mountain, cross a bridge, climb a different mountain. You get tired of the mountain. You walk down the mountain like a normal being. You get distracted by a cave. Get chased out of a cave. Swear vengeance upon inhabitants of the cave. You get down to the beach. You kick the base of a lighthouse. You kick the base of a bunch of pillars. You hobble away like kicking everything did not hurt. It did hurt. You cross another bridge. You leave the land of footy hurty.

You take the same turn when entering No Man's Land again. You avoid people. You keep going. You punch a tree. You punch a tree. You decide to stop being silly and walk through the arch. You meander. You stop at a bar. You admire the architecture. You try to climb a tree, and fall out of the tree. You climb the bigger tree. It's easier somehow. You admire the sky. You admire the lake. You'd rather be by the lake. You go swim in the lake. You leave the way you did not come in.

You find a path you recognize in the gardens. You leave the gardens. You cut back through Marind Bell. You do not make faces at the egg in the lake. You maybe make a few faces at the egg in the lake. You actually leave the Bell. You take the road out that you haven't used yet. You add a brick to the old gate. You jump the ravine between the stone and the passage. You enter the Tribunal. You climb the stairs. You add facial hair to the statues at the top. You creep out the back. You go down stairs. You sit in a pub. You climb more stairs. Everything is stairs. You're at a temple - it is not a temple to stairs. But there are more stairs - it should be a temple to stairs. You go down the stairs. You admire more architecture. You drink some tea. You decide the architecture is not worth the stairs.

You leave the land of stairs. It is exactly as you remember. Up stairs, both ways. You check if you are a fossil. There is no shame in being a fossil.

You think that it's been a while since you saw the Shades. So you turn around and go back to the land of the Shades. The cycle starts again

 

The leaving to returning is a week.

[lashtal]

And here we are folks, 9 submissions!

I'll be contacting the Shades in the next few days, hoping they know at least what a day is!

Jokes asides, I wanted to thank all the participants, I enjoyed reading your submissions.

I'll post the results in this thread, stay tuned!

[Aia del Mana]

On 4/14/2022 at 3:08 PM, Muratus del Mur said:

Initially i wrote an answer here, but due to obvious reasons i decided to pm it to the quest creator inststead

Ps: I'm not the anonymous judge, just a silent observer interested in this subject.

I wonder if, since entries were now closed, whether this could be revealed while we all do await judgment, @lashtal.

[lashtal]

5 hours ago, Aia del Mana said:

I wonder if, since entries were now closed, whether this could be revealed while we all do await judgment, @lashtal.

It will be revealed, just not yet... 🤪

But I can say that one of your submissions, at some point, got very close to Mur's answer.

Anyway, since the possibilities are many, to rate your entries is a matter of fine tuning.

Apologies if it requires some more time (and patience).

[lashtal]

Apparently, the Shade ambassador has vanished. Perhaps too much was revealed, perhaps too little?

We'll never know for sure.

Anyway, I found a scribbled parchment by the Well of Tears. The calligraphy doesn't resemble any of yours, dear questers, so you might want to take a look at it:

Spoiler

<<I would say a week for a rock compared to a week for a plant are very different.. it would take a year of a stones life to equivalate to a plants week. A shade would not understand very well time as a linear flow, but they will understand a comparison of the degradation level of two states ...or emotions... as two moments in time are two moments of present for a shade.. but i shall stop here>>

Interesting, uh?

Now, given the disappearence of the ambassador, I had to judge your submissions by myself.

I used these criteria:

• how much comprehensible it would be to the Shades (0 - 4 points)
• originality / inventive (0 - 3 points)
• effort (0 - 2 points)
• synthesis (0 - 1 point)

As you can see, the maximum score is 10. Without further ado, here are the results:

• Eara Meraia: 8
• Fyrd Argentus & Invie: 7
• Aia, Else, Ailith: 6
• Nep, Amber Rune: 5
• Ledah: 3

When more people has the same score, the submission order will be used. Therefore, I expect you to pick your reward in this order: Eara, Fyrd Argentus, Invie, Aia, Else, Ailith, Nep, Amber Rune, Ledah.

Reward pool (I'll update this as people choose):

1 wish point: Eara Meraya - delivered

30 gold note: Fyrd Argentus - delivered

30 gold note: Invie - delivered

30 gold note: Aia - delivered

10 gold note: Else - delivered

10 gold note: Nep - delivered

30 silver note: Ailith - delivered

30 silver note: Amber Rune - delivered

30 silver note: Ledah - delivered

As a final note, I'm very happy for your participation and I hope you enjoyed it.

Keep in mind lashtal is allergic to gold, so pick your prize as soon as you can.

Edited May 18, 2022 by lashtal

[Fyrd Argentus]

I'd be happy with a 30 gold note.  Thank you for the contest!

[Eara Meraia]

your piece of parchment gave me goose bumps...

Thank you for a very interesting quest idea

Probably not surprising that I prefer wp as a reward.

 

[Invie]

Thank you for the quest. I will take a 30 gold note.

[Aia del Mana]

I would also like a 30 gold note, if it should please thee.

[Else]

I will take a 10 gold note, thanks

[Ailith]

30 Silver Note please

[Nep]

Then I'll take a 10 gold note, if it's still available

Edited May 17, 2022 by Nep

[AmberRune]

Thank you kindly!