Carcosan Measurements of Length

[Blackrazor]

Your characters each have a knowledge of length which is different from our modern understandings save for our blue man sorcerer - more on that later.

Gibbering and Blood are as follows

Each of you has a standard measure of distance based on the distance from middle finger tip to the elbow. You each call this distance by a different name.

We will call it a cubit for reference since that is the actual standard used way back when on earth.

1 cubit = about 18 inches (1 and 1/2 feet).
1 cubit = 6 palms each palm equaling about 3 inches
1 palm = 4 fingers each finger equaling about 3/4 of an inch.

So please each of you come up with a cool name for your cubit. Palms and fingers do not really need new names.

Sorrow the sorcerer - you have knowledge about cubits and call them something else go ahead and give it a cool name, and you have knowledge of another measurement system from ancient times

The ancient writings of the serpent people use a decimal system.

The base unit is a suun (sounds like soon) which is roughly 1.2 inches
10 suun = a dasuun or a foot
10 dasuun = a etasuun or 10 feet
10 etasuun = a magasuun or 100 feet
10 magasuun = a egasuun of 1000 feet
10 egasuun = a terasuun or 10,000 feet or a serpent men mile which is about modern earth 2 miles.

Now Merc feel free to rename the standards of measure if you so desire - just shoot me a PM with your changes.

Please correct me if you see any problems.

I would like to adopt these terms and add them to the cyclopedia.

I would like to use your characters terms when discussing distance, in combat when everyone is involved I may use cubits to keep it simple.

I hope you do not mind this idea.

I will be doing weight as well in the future.

I think it gives the world a bit of oddness, a bit of vagueness, strangeness and uniqueness. Share your thoughts.

[Grognardsw]

Among Blood Skald's tribes...

1 Arm = 2 cubits = 36 inches (3 feet)
1 Half-Arm = 1 cubit = about 18 inches (1 and 1/2 feet).
1 Half-Arm = 1 cubit = 6 palms each palm equaling about 3 inches
1 Fist = 1 palm = 4 fingers each finger equaling about 3/4 of an inch.

[Merctime]

Ok, story time

The people of Sorrows of Vale and Mire's ancestry have long discussed distance using the "Teldrin" in place of the cubit, which measures 18 inches in our own world. This nomenclature was adopted when the first blue sorcerors of his tribe attempted to commune with the elder gods, and were rewarded only with the spawns of shoggoth; These spawns being visions of horror. Bubbling, leathery bodies shambling on stumps that looked as if legs amputated prematurely, all eyes and mouthes, and encircled in tendrils of varying shape. Yet there was some slight order to them. Each of the tendrils where in measurements of 6", or divisible by the same; While no tendril was shorter than 6" and none greater than 36", the majority where 18".

Once the majority of those fools were eaten, the Shoggoths shambled about most lazily, allowing some lucky few to escape with the tale of them. And yet they still sought the secrets of the maddened blackness of beyond-space... One thing did perplex the survivors, though... There must have been some ethereal significance to the multiple of the number six, specifically in orders of 3.

This stuck with them. In the very maw of chaos itself, some wicked order yet remained... and thus was the 'Teldrin' adopted as the unit of measure. The 'standard' length of the wicked vine-like tendrils that had enshrouded their fellows, and which name they distorted as the acceptable descriptor of that measure of distance.

Having encountered few other tribes of men in those days, it must have been the lack of black-gulf encounters (And this most likely attributable to many of the early, more-knowledgeable sorcerors having been, in fact, eaten) that spurred the adoption of a more common name for smaller measures of unit. These being, curiously similar to other cultures, the palm and finger, and measuring the same distance as most Carcosan's understand them to do.

It wasn't until one of those old, initial sorcerors disappeared before another unit of measure was discovered (...Provided?) by Sorrows of Vale and Mire's people. This black souled individual was called "Illuminated Secrets of Blasted Minds", and his absence was sudden and most frightening. Even as he pour into a tome of terrible writings whom none knew of his attainment, a bright spark fell from the stars as a column of the skies fury, directly into the man's mud hut complex. What was left was the husk of his walls, and a smouldering crater with a small, brilliantly-faceted zircon-like gem left at it's center.

The man, his possessions, furniture... All whisked away, or fried to a crisp. He was thought dead.

18 decades later, he returned, not having aged a moment, clutching his vile tome. He simply walked into the village. Some elders who knew him in those days dropped stone dead simply by the sight of him, so utter was their shock. Yet, the others of his people flocked to him; To the young, a curious stranger, to some of those of middling age, more of a strange occurrence. But all witnessed the change in his eyes. But none could put a finger on just what had changed in them.

He spent the next 6 days teaching the people of a new unit of measure, using a decimal system, that he bespoke having learned in a vast, floating city beyond the black gulf. When pressed for details, he shouted foul things and threatened to smite with the back of clenched fist any who would continue to do so, stating that the simple knowledge of this new way should be accepted with great cheer and no further thought whatsoever. The severity of his outburst cowed the people as one, and they left him to continue to teach them these things.

Interestingly, these measurements also where later found by other cultures, and with a strikingly similar naming convention. They were, and still are to this day for this tribe of Blue Men...

A Quasuun (sounds like soon) which is roughly 1.2 inches
10 Quasuun = a Quadasuun or a foot
10 Quadasuun = a Zetasuun or 10 feet
10 Zetasuun = a Stellasuun or 100 feet
10 Stellasuun = a Parsuun or 1000 feet
10 Parsuun = a Omegasuun or 10,000 feet. Also similar to the mile of the Serpent-Men which is about 2 modern-earth miles.

This instruction is the last that Illuminated Secrets of Blasted Minds ever spoke about his disappearance, or his subsequent re-emergence, ever again.

[Alethan]

Among Gibbering's tribe...
One Talon is the average size of the end appendage of the legs of the desert scald, a scorpion-like creature with nine legs.

One Talon is roughly equivalent to five cubits.

(I'm cool with making terms up, to a point. If it gets to be too much to remember, I'm apt to not remember/use them.)

[Merctime]

(I'm cool with making terms up, to a point. If it gets to be too much to remember, I'm apt to not remember/use them.)

I know I went all nuts-O on my last post, but this is what I was thinking, too. It will likely add some neat flavor, but if we are constantly using different terms for 'foot' it may be hard to follow. I think when I use the ones I came up with, I'll just put 'foot' etc in parenthesis.

[Blackrazor]

I do not want to get bogged down by jargon either. Consulting a lexicon for every word well might as well take Arabic or Mandarin or German again.

Thanks for playing along. A few unique words and/or phrases do add space to game.

[Blackrazor]

When I refer to a stone's throw or a stone's cast away it will refer to a distance of roughly 50 to 100 earth modern yards distant.