[Glorantha] Re: Cycles

> >OK, quite a mundane question, and a rather odd one perhaps,
> but I'd be
> >surprised if no one's thought about the issue before.

> It's a perennial.

Though it's been a while, so don't feel you're upsetting people by asking a FAQ.  
> >On Earth, the female menstrual cycle is often associated
> with the lunar
> >cycle, both being about a month long. Assuming that a human
> Gloranthan woman's cycle is about the same length,...

Quick lesson in female biology for you - it's only approximately a "month", and varies enormously. "Between 21 and 35 days" is the last I read. More detail here
http://www.clearplan.com/YourMenstrualcycle.cfm (yes, one of the websites I administer, no other reason for picking it, I just knew it was there)

One thing it doesn't mention is that a group of women living in close proximity will tend to synchronise cycles. Not all the time, no, but there's a tendency. No, I have no idea why.

Plenty of room for flexibility in matching other cycles there.

> When writing Thunder Rebels, we tried to get the basic
> gloranthan/terran time translations sorted.

Which was an excellent idea, as they'd never been tied down before, and different authors had made different assumptions. (Someone tried to work on a menstrual cycle of one WEEK. Yes, they were male...)

> That is, in direct ratio to human pregnancy (in months)
> against the terran
> year. I've refined that to 294/365 when calculating human and
> domestic
> animal pregnancies. [Ratio of Gloranthan days in a year to
> earthly days in a year].

> Using that equation, Gloranthan human pregnancy is
> 280*294/365 =
> 225, which I'd shorten to 224 days or 4 seasons, giving the
> same day and week to
> both conception and birth, (barring Sacred Time complications ).

This has always struck me as being a nice idea. And adds interest to finding out what day etc you were born on, and the magical significance it might have.

> I you wanted to be totally consistent, you might apply the
> same ratio to
> menstrual cycles and shorten each phase by a day or so. Personally, I
> wouldn't: effects on storytelling are negligible. YGMV.

And a day or so will be lost in the natural variation anway.

> I'm not aware of any official myths.
Says John Hughes, who I thought had written one.

> Personally,
> I'd favour an Earth pantheon explanation with positive power/blessing
> overtones, though doubtless warped by local social structures and
> attitudes.

Taking a look at the connections between blood, earth, and fertility might prove useful here. Tarsh, that sort of thing. Think of the "monthly" cycle as going round the various Earth powers. Someone once suggested that Babeester Gori are in permanent PMT-mode, and mythically it sort of fits. Received on Tue 17 Jan 2006 - 07:59:04 EET