Forthcoming New Elcenia Editions

[Alicorn]

If you've been thinking of re-reading (or reading for the first time) any Elcenia book, this is a good excuse. In September, I'm getting married, and will start rolling out new cover art with my married name on it, and this is as good an occasion as any to produce revisions to the text of the stories. Silver is slated to go first (its cover is already complete), followed by Summons (art in progress). I am not seeking consultation on large-scale issues of plot, character arc, etc., but anything on the level of an awkward sentence, typo, or continuity error should be brought to my attention. You can email me, or comment in this thread (I'll move it out of Announcements later so people don't think there's updates when there aren't).

I'm doing a re-read of my own, trying to nail down Elcenia's thorny timeline in the hopes of being able to rekindle my motivation to work on Red and/or Siaddaki again.

[PlainDealingVillain]

I am reading Elcenia for the first time, and haven't found any corrections I'd suggest through Ch. 22.

What I did find was an excellently foreshadowed shren relative. An audible "Damn, well done" was emitted.

[PlainDealingVillain]

I have read all of Summons and Blood, and still found no correction suggestions. Might start an Elcenia discussion thread; there isn't another around that' I'm missing, is there?

Also, if occasional updates about how much I've read and not seen anything are more annoying than useful, I can not do that.

[Alicorn]

There isn't a general Elcenia discussion thread, and by all means carry on :)

[DanielH]

As I mentioned in the general Elcenia discussion thread which now exists, I'm rereading Elcenia. I've encountered two things worth commenting on here.

• In Blood, chapter 16, Talyn thinks something about 15-hour work days. Presumably this means 15 angles.
• In the table in the date and time sections of the Settings page (I don't know if those are included in the potential updates), both a split and a fragment are listed as equal to one second. This conversion ratio is maintained up through their respective days (65,536 fragments for Barashi, 78,125 splits for Elcenia). However, the direct fragments-to-splits conversion ratio isn't one-to-one, but about 25-to-24. I know that the earth-time column is approximate, but this gives errors on the order of 45 to 55 minutes for the different days (less if a second is between a split and a fragment, but still very large given that the conversions are precise to the Earth second).

[Alicorn]

Fixed the reference in Blood, thanks!

I regret using non-Earth measurements for these things >.> I'll ask my deltabeta what my confused spreadsheet programming instructions added up to re: the chart.

[Adelene]

Bearing in mind that I didn't design the spreadsheet to handle very small numbers, so this might not actually be accurate: One fragment is 1.041666... splits which does indeed translate to about a 24:25 ratio.

(I noticed that the chart wasn't internally consistent when I was making the spreadsheet; Alicorn decided that "1 Elcenian day = 1 Barashin day, 2 divisions, 4 subdivisions, 62 slices" is the canonical conversion and anything that disagrees with that is incorrect; we also established that 19 Marahel of 11251 at 6-and-naught (noon) is 5 Pyrgorest of 24868 at 3-0 (4:30am-ish).)

ETA: spreadsheet link, canon date equivalence.

[DanielH]

Okay, so that gives 78,125 splits = 75,000 fragments, which gives the 25 splits = 24 fragments ratio exactly. That gives some minor rounding errors in the chart (it says that a fragment is 1.0413 splits, and the simple Barashin units of tmie don’t have precise integer Elcenian equivalents because of that factor of 3 in 24 which all the powers of 2 won’t get rid of), but doesn’t help with conversions to Earth times. I guess that doesn’t particularly matter if they never encounter anybody from Earth, but might make it harder for some of us Earthlings to work with. I guess we could approximate with Earth days being longer than either of the other two kinds, an hour being somewhere between an angle and a div, degrees and subs both being between one and five minutes, and both splits and fragments being about a second. Any more precise than that runs into contradictions, though.

Just be glad that Elcenia and Barashi aren’t having to deal with the kind of temporal asynchronicity that develops when Milliways gets involved. I can’t wait to see how that works out in Incandescence (although if they maintain scry or mirror contact until they develop a portal, Spring’s world should just start when they arrive and never lose sync), but at the same time I’m glad that Elcenia doesn’t need to deal with anything like that.

[Kappa]

...I want to marry that spreadsheet. XD

[Adelene]

...I want to marry that spreadsheet. XD

:D