tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Apr 20 06:42:47 1999
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Re: Kagga's Crown (was Re: Klingonaase)
ja' Voragh:
>There was also an emperor Kagga, who led an unsuccessful revolt and was
>under sentence of death but was allowed accession to the throne for 20
>minutes.
ja' ghunchu'wI':
> >I recall that he was permitted to reign for a twentieth part of a day.
ja' voragh je:
> I wonder if this means that 1/20th of a Klingon day equals 1 Klingon hour
> according to Ford's vision of the Klingons. (1/24th of a Terran day is 1
> Terran hour after all.) A "twentieth part of a day" is an odd period of
> time otherwise. Allowing someone to reign for one hour before being
> executed seems fitting.
I know not whether the Day of Honor series is considered canon, but in
one of the books Kor refuses Sisko's challenge to the <Suv batlh>
(honor combat) because ..."you did not take into account the length of
the Klingon day. The <batlh jaj> (Day of Honor) ended eight minutes ago!"
Apparently, the <Qo'noS jaj> is shorter than the <tera' jaj>. Since
Klingons don't measure time the same way we do (at least on Qo'noS),
1/20th part of a day doesn't equal 1 standard hour.
Of course we know how Klingons ask the time: <'arlogh Quylu'pu'> "How many
times has it been heard?" How many times WHAT has been heard? The sound of
a bell or gong would not be amiss, nor would a horn blast or something
similar to the muzzin calling the faithful to prayer. You could probably
get away with singnaling the times that would roughly corespond to the
"temporal hours"--hours that shift with the length of daylight--used by
Catholic monks: prime, tirce, sext, nonce, compline, mattens, and vespers
(dawn, midmorn, noon, mid-afternoon, sundown, mid-evening, and midnight
respectively).
Alternately, the signal could be once every 1/10th part of a day. If we
don't number the first moment of the day (dawn) and instead give it a name
--like "new-day", or "sun-up", or whatever--we are left with nine "hours",
very much in keeping with the native Klingon counting system. This also
means Kagga ruled for what a Klingon would call "half an hour."
As to how the "hours" are named, many possibilities exist. Numbering the
"hours" (as is common in the 24th century) works, as does assigning each
"hour" a note from the musical scale (a gong/bell of a different note for
each hour?) with all nine sounding at dawn proclaiming the new day (WAKE
UP!!!). Or the "hours" could even be names for Qo'noSian constellations:
the Hour of the Targ, the Hour of the Sark, the Hour of the Norg, the Hour
of the Pipius,...you get the idea.
Naturally the is all speculation. The clerics at Borath would probably
know such things.
quljIb
Glory to the Klingon High Astrologer!