Worldbuilding Wednesday: Darkness and Time.

How People Kept Track of the Night and the Six-Hour Watch.

When the sun went down, communities around the world used a variety of practical, social, and ritual methods to know what time it was and to schedule work and rest. In many societies, precise mechanical clocks were rare and expensive. People relied on predictable natural cycles, recurring social actions, and simple timekeeping devices. The result was time lived as part of daily life rather than as an abstract number on a dial.

Let’s talk about medieval northern and western Europe, Viking and medieval Scandinavian practice, traditional Japan, Indigenous North American approaches, and notes on the Phoenician seafaring world. It then connects these practices to practical tools and rules you can use in Dragonbane.

How Europeans Knew When to Ring Bells

In medieval European towns and villages, bells set the rhythm of communal life. The church or monastery usually determined when bells rang. Monasteries kept the canonical hours for prayer, and their bell ringing marked those hours for the surrounding community. Typical canonical hours include matins, lauds, prime, terce, sext, none, vespers, and compline. The bell ringer or the monastic community followed that schedule. When a mechanical clock or tower clock was available, it often regulated bell ringing, but for most places the schedule was managed by people rather than machines.

Local officials and institutions also used bells for civic purposes. Town halls, guild halls, and castle keepers operated bell ringing to announce the opening of markets, curfews, or other civic orders. A town may have had a sexton, bell ringer, or watchman responsible for striking the bell at set times. In coastal towns and on ships, sandglasses and the ship s bell provided a regular auditory signal for the watch.

How Bells Were Scheduled and Coordinated

The practical act of deciding when to ring a bell relied on a human timekeeper and on common reference points. Monasteries had an internal schedule anchored to sunrise and sunset and to liturgical practice. In urban centers, the mayor, the council, or the church could issue an official schedule. The person who rang the bell used one or more of the following cues.

First, the position of the sun during the day. While this sounds obvious, for many communities the sun provided the primary shared frame of reference. Second, the liturgy. When a community followed religious hours, the ringing could be predicted by anyone familiar with the local rites. Third, a local timekeeper. A named person, such as a sexton or a town watchman, was responsible for coordinating the ringing. Fourth, audible signals and patterns. Repeated rings or a pattern of strikes communicated specific meanings, such as the start of the curfew or an alarm.

Did People Use Animals or Natural Sounds to Tell Time?

Animals and environmental sounds were useful informal cues but they were rarely the official method for scheduling public actions. Roosters, dogs, and owls are reliable indicators of certain parts of the night or morning, and people who lived in a place long enough learned the local soundscape well. For example, roosters mark dawn, and some owl calls are more common in deep night. These cues helped individuals estimate time when no formal signal was available, but communities relied on human timekeepers, bells, and simple devices to coordinate action.

Several devices and social practices allowed people to measure time at night without modern watches. Candle clocks were candles marked to indicate elapsed time as they burned. Incense clocks burned at a predictable rate and were used in parts of Asia. Hourglasses and sandglasses were widely used at sea and in civic contexts to measure fixed intervals. Water clocks or clepsydrae measured time by the regulated flow of water. A watchman or named timekeeper often reset or tended these devices. On ships, the established practice was to measure watches with sandglasses and to strike the bell at intervals to mark the passage of time.

Night Watches, Community Practice, and the Role of the Watchman

Communities used watch systems to ensure security and to coordinate the night. A watchman or group of watchmen walked set routes, blowing horns, blowing small whistles, making specific calls, or striking fixed bells at intervals so that the rest of the village knew patrols were running. The watchman was often a respected local role. In towns with walls or specialized guards, regulations sometimes required watchmen to make their rounds and to report the hour at fixed points.

How Other Cultures Kept Nighttime Time

Vikings and medieval Scandinavian communities relied on visible cues during daylight and on knowledge of seasonal patterns. At high latitudes the length of day and night changed dramatically with the seasons, so ‘hours’ were flexible and based on divisions of day and night rather than fixed sixty minute units.

In traditional Japan, time was measured with unequal or temporal hours. Day and night were each divided into six parts. This meant that an hour in summer was longer than an hour in winter. Japanese timekeepers used specialized clocks that were adapted to the seasonal change in hour length, and incense clocks and water clocks provided intervals during the night.

Many Indigenous North American groups used lunar months and ecological cycles to track years and seasons. Winter counts and pictorial records marked memorable events and helped communities count years. Timekeeping emphasized the rhythm of seasons and ecological events rather than the measurement of short hours.

Phoenician and other Mediterranean seafarers navigated by the stars and used the moon and known constellations as reliable cues at night. They worked with lunisolar calendars for longer scale timekeeping and depended on star positions for nightly navigation.

Applying This to Dragonbane

In a low technology setting such as Dragonbane, characters can keep six hour watches using several historically informed methods. They can use a marked six hour candle. They can use one hour or half hour sandglasses and rotate them among the watchers. They can use a knotted or beaded rope as a counting device. A named timekeeper, perhaps an NPC such as a veteran soldier or a trustworthy camp follower, can be assigned to mark the passing of each watch. Seasoned Hunters, Mariners, and possibly any character with the Old age listing could also have a pretty good understanding of the passage of time bases on natural cycles.

Mechanics you can use at the table include allowing an Awareness, Bushcraft, or Seamanship roll to estimate elapsed time based on sun or star position. Success gives an estimate within thirty to sixty minutes by day and within a larger margin at night, modified by cloud cover. If no timekeeper or device is used, include a small mechanical penalty such as a penalty to night watch rolls or a higher chance of surprise.

Night Watch Items You Can Use in Game

Examples of simple in game items are a six hour wax pillar marked in six segments, a one hour sandglass, a knotted watch cord with six knots, and a small oil lamp with calibrated wicks. These items provide clear in world ways to measure watches and to create interesting story beats when lost, stolen, or sabotaged. Water clocks might also be an option if someone knows how to set one up.

Sample Scene: The Curfew Bell and the Missing Watchman

A short scene that shows how these systems work: A village bell rings vesper as a thunderstorm gathers. The bell ringer is a named person, the sexton, who is also the keeper of the town’s sandglass. That night a traveler steals through the alleys and tampers with the bell ropes. The watchman is late for his rounds because dogs in the lane have been driven silent by something stalking the hedgerows. Without the regular bell and without the watchman’s call, the villagers do not know when the curfew starts or ends. The party must decide whether to guard the bell, track the thief, or find a way to signal the watch by other means.

Conclusion

Preindustrial people kept time in ways that suited their needs. Bells, named timekeepers, simple devices such as candles and sandglasses, and social rhythms produced a shared sense of when work and rest should occur. Animals and the soundscape served as helpful cues for people familiar with a place, but community coordination depended on human action and affordable devices. For Dragonbane this material offers many mechanical and narrative hooks for handling six hour watches, night ambushes, cultural confusion, and intriguing item based scenes.

Selected Further Reading

A short list of works to consult for more detail: texts on canonical hours and monastic life, studies of medieval town watches, descriptions of clepsydrae and sandglasses, summaries of Japanese temporal hours, and accounts of Indigenous winter counts and Polynesian and Phoenician star navigation.

Thank you for being here with me today. I appreciate you. Keep it real, but please strive for positivity, too. Please embrace the things that bring you the most joy in your life.