cosmictuesdays asked:

Would there be any historical timekeeping based on Cardassian lunar cycles? Would any of that have survived to the present day, much as the common Western names for some of the days of the week come from Greek and Norse and Old English - Sun's Day, Moon's Day, Týr's Day, Odin's Day, Thor's Day, Freya's Day, Saturn's Day?

tinsnip answered:

God, there MUST be, mustn’t there?

Mmmmph. Three moons, though. Wide-eyed moon, side-eye moon, blind moon. (Or something. Vyc knows.)

Perhaps the month rotates around the brightest time and darkest time, instead of a specific moon’s rotation.

Perhaps the length of months varies as the moons wax and wane. You’d have long months with big separations, and short months that might consist of only a week.

(Which, I remember, we worked out some time back would be thirteen days long. Because Cardassian memory can handle it no problem, and it works out neatly.)

God, what a bitch that would be. I love it, she said, enraptured. ^^

And most certainly the days would wear names that aren’t as meaningful as they might appear. I wonder if they’d have links to Hebitian myth? That seems pretty funny. :)

[feltelures]

How many moons there are actually depends on which canon you’re using! If you go by the novels, there are three: Letau (the closest to Cardassia Prime), the Blind Moon, and one other that doesn’t get named (I think). (Either of you wanna fix that?) (Note to self: Translate “Blind Moon.”) If you go by the Cardassian Sourcebook, there’s only one, that’s nowhere near as interesting.

I’d love to find a place where you could model lunar cycles of a planet with three months, because I’m having a lot of trouble picturing it. orz

Remind me to put the finishing touches on the document where I’ve collected the various cultural things from the sourcebook–there’s a ton of Hebitian religious stuff in there that would be useful for naming days/months/etc. I could probably manage it within the week, provided I don’t get distracted again.

[tinsnip]

Didn’t we work this out once upon a time? leta’U and such?

Let me go and see…

Yes, here it is! Edited for spelling, grammar and capitalisation errors, all entirely mine, because wow, was I drunk?

* * * * *

tinsnip wrote: Hey, what do you think re: “Watcher” for Cardassia’s sun? Big eye in the sky, seems appropriately paranoid and/or protective, depending on how you look at things.

“Watcher sees everything today” = it’s too bright out

“Good day for secrets” = it’s cloudy

ajev = watcher already

In fact, call it “The Watcher,” ra'ajev, because she’s the ur-watcher, the watcher of all things. She deputizes the moons to spy for her when she’s sleeping. There are three of them. We can give them names too–I don’t see names in the file! What do you think?

feltelures wrote:

XD That sounds very paranoid and Cardassian. And I absolutely agree that ra'ajev is the better name, because all other watchers would have been under her aegis. (Possibly in ancient times the sun goddess would have been the patron deity of the police? Would there still be sun symbolism surrounding law enforcement?)

IIRC in ASIT at least one of the moons was given a name–I’ll have to check to be sure the other two weren’t as well.

…

feltelures wrote: Memory Beta says Letau is the name of the innermost moon, but the last one doesn’t seem to have a name.

[…]

tinsnip wrote: Mnnnnnn right okay moons getting back to this–

So we have ra'ajev, “The Watcher”, for the sun.We have three moons. Let’s deputize them as the watcher’s spare eyes. So we have the brightest one, Keen-eyed moon. We have the slow, fat one, Low-lids moon, who might be watching, might not. And we have the tiny, pale one, Blind Moon. Perhaps with blind not literally meaning blind; perhaps with blind meaning more in the sense of “choosing not to look” - the forgiving moon. I like the idea of Letau being the blind moon. 

So let’s have letaU (leh-tah-oo) mean “unseeing (with connotation of choosing to ignore)”.

Keen-eyed moon is Chov, also meaning “watchful”.

And Low-lids moon is ca'pris, literally “half-eye”, which can also mean the expression of someone who is pretending not to watch but is watching very subtly. (Garak is the maaaaaster of ca'pris.)

Thoughts?

(I know the suffix for moon/satellite is -ok but it didn’t seem to fit. Perhaps if these three are being formally named, they’re letau-ok, Chovok, and ca'prisok?)

feltelures wrote: Oh, I like the idea of the deliberately forgiving moon, the one who knows but turns away. letaU it is! Chov is good, and mmmmmm, ca'pris–delicious! Though Garak spends quite a bit of time talking about letaU in ASIT, I can’t help but think he would identify with ca'pris quite a bit!

I like the idea of -ok being the official/scientific designation–that’s certainly the impression I got from the sourcebook. letaU, Chov, and ca'pris would make great common names.

avoidingdestiny replied to your post: wait, wait in the relaunch no…

They do? Why? You should write fic of them visiting Garak and Julian.

As per memory-beta, they do:

O'Brien was later detached to the Starfleet Corps of Engineers on the planet Cardassia as a part of the Federation’s relief efforts, while Keiko was in charge of the planet’s botanical renewal efforts following the Dominion War. (DS9 - Worlds of Deep Space Nine novel: Cardassia: The Lotus Flower, DS9 novel: The Never-Ending Sacrifice)

like

this is great! (wow, Keiko, in charge? whew! I bet that put some noses out of joint)

I own The Never-Ending Sacrifice, I just haven’t read it yet. I foresee some reading in my future, and then a strange blending of canon, semi-canon, and headcanons, because yes I would like Miles et famille to visit the Bashir-Garaks yes I would!