I've been thinking about this ever since I first got here, but finally remembered to toss this idea out. We all find ourselves commonly saying something like this:

"Good morning... er, well, whatever time it may be. Good time of day, nonetheless!

With no sun, we can't really tell when day and night are. I think I have a plausible solution to this, though it's arguable that NOT knowing adds to the "Geez, this place is really crappy, I just wanna go home." feel to the server.

In caves, it's very common for winds to start because of the temperature difference outside and inside the caves. Caves tend to stay the same temperature year-round, while temperature changeds can be quite drastic outside. When this happens, the pressure pushes air in or sucks air out of the cave, producing a wind. It is also in my understanding (which I'll certainly agree is fairly limited) that the temperature changes caused by the the sun during the day and night are great enough to produce enough wind for someone in a cave to tell when it's day or night.

It must also be considered that Sanctuary is somewhere beyond a mile deep in the earth. That's a long frieken way, but a windtunnel that goes that distance is still a very possible geographic feature. In fact, something like this could be put in the wilderness and a good Lore roll would make it work like a Sundial and give you the time.

Last point- wizards are capable of divinity to see across the planes, including spaces in the material plane. Although NWN doesn't support any of these kinds of spells, I don't think we are assuming they don't exist entirely, but I could be wrong. I find it very unlikely that SOME wizard in Sanctuary has not used his craft to glimpse the surface, possibly even becoming addicted to his skill and staring constantly at the sky and obsessing over his return.

Would this be worth emphasising, making public, or whatever? What do you guys think of any of these ideas?

Seven miles. And many, many, many winding caverns.

(In the real world, by the way, seven miles would probably be quite impossible to survive in due to air pressure differences -- for the purposes of our world, you can ignore that)

Time is determined by mechanical or magical clocks, but your average citizen (and adventurer) really is simply quite clueless.

Not to mention the lack of vitamin D..

Yea, 7 miles is a long way.

Howland

In the real world, by the way, seven miles would probably be quite impossible to survive in due to air pressure differences...

Probably not.

A first order model of atmospheric pressure puts the pressure at 512 KPa -- about 5 times the pressure at sea level. You'd expirence that pressure at about 40 meters underwater.

Consider: The record for deepest freedive (just a wet suit and wieghts, no SCUBA -- holding one's breath) belongs to a german fellow, Herbert Nitsch. His record was 173 meters.

Another reference point: The air pressure at the top of Everest is about 25% that of sea level. Everest has been climbed with out breathing assistance.

It turns out that the human body is actually pretty robust with respect to air pressure.

If I were searching for a mundane, but accurate, way of clocking the passage of days I'd use tides. Tides occur on a semi-diurnal schedule, and there if there are large bodies of water, there will be tides.

None-the-less, the lesson seems to be that a normal person wouldn't know if it was day or night, or even if it had been a day or three. The exception would be a Gond(ite?)(ian?) with a nice little clock. Or if a survivor came fairly directly from the surface telling the recent news and date. But its not like people can be forced not to say things like "good evening" anyway, right? It may just be a habit that a character has. *Shrug*

Edit - I don't know about tides. Unless Black Lake is as large as a small sea, I don't think it would have noticable tides.

Maybe some local Gond worshippers would be so kind as to build a clock in front of the town hall for the benefit of residents?

How would I set it the first time?

Find an ancient gnomish clock or just randomly decide on a time of day XD

Or find a diviner to find out magically.

outcrowd1 Maybe some local Gond worshippers would be so kind as to build a clock in front of the town hall for the benefit of residents?

Arkov I'm looking into scripting a timekeeping placeable in the Town Hall that, on use, would tell you that it's, for example, "Eleasis 1st, Year 150". There are several little tricky details regarding this, however, and I'm presently swamped with bug reports and other, higher-priority issues.