I've been thinking about this lately and couldn't find any information confirming or denying it: Do the moons have any relation in their cycles of spinning to the seasons of the constellations? We know that the form of a Khajiit varies greatly depending on what phases the moons are in, but would certain types of Khajiit be more likely to be born under a certain sign? Is an Ohmes-raht Khajiit more likely to be born under The Warrior or one of its charges? Is an Ohmes Khajiit more likely to be born under The Mage or one of its charges? Do these things have any recognizable relation whatsoever?

I assume, if there's no information to the contrary, that any Khajiit can be born under any sign, as is the case of Morrowind and Oblivion, but it's possible that could just be a gameplay mechanic designed to not give a Khajiit player limited options.

To determine this, we'd have to know how long it takes the both the moons and constellations to fully cycle, right?
Shouldn't be too hard.

Do we know how long it takes for the lunar phases to cycle, because all it would take would be for it to be asymmetric with the constellation seasons for any khajiit form to be possibly matched with any sign, right?

Assuming its relatively similar to own, there shouldn't be any difficulties with sign and khajiit form, as long as we don't know the age of our character to any specific day of the month.

In Daggerfall, a lunar cycle was 32 days (or maybe 24 or 27; don't remember exactly). Secunda's phase was always a few days behind Masser's.
In Morrowind, Masser took 24 days to fully cycle, while Secunda cycled 1.5x faster.
In Oblivion, both Masser and Secunda took 24 days to cycle, and their phases were in sync.

Ah. The joys of inconsistency.
Well, since the constellations each have a season of one month (And in Daggerfall a month was 30 days; in Morrowind and Oblivion it more or less matches the Gregorian Calendar) we can safely say that it's possible for a Khajiit born under any phase of the Lattice to have any sign.

Phew, most effort I've done on something in a while.

Alright, let's use Morrowind's cycles, because that actually theoretically lets us get all of the Khajiit's forms. Daggerfall wouldn't let us have a Full/New combination and Oblivion's moons would make nothing but Senche, Cathay-Raht, Pahmar, and Dagi-Raht. Assuming that both moons spend the same percentage of their time waxing and waning that the RL moon does, we can figure out rates.

Ok, going off of Huleed's numbers, I drafted a quick dirty http://i153.photobucket.com/albums/s221/silverhawk100/MoonChart.png?t=1303184732.* For anyone interested in the gritty numbers, I figured 2 days for a New Moon, 8 for a Masser Waxing or Masser Waning, 6 days for a Masser Full, Secundas Waxing, and Secundas Waning, and 4 days for a Secundas full.

Now there are a few interesting things that pop out just from this. First, Secundas has a blue moon (2 full moons in a month) every other month and Masser has one every 4 months. Compare this to real life blue moons which occur once every other year or so. Second, there seem to be weeks where the Khajiit type (moon phase) changes every other day and then periods where you can be pretty assured one way or another which it's going to be. Third, on this 30 day calender, Masser matches a pattern that repeats every 4 months while Secundus matches a pattern that repeats every 3 months and they meet (dual new moons) every 3 Masser moons (72 days). The patterns, of course, only meet every year on the 1st of Morning Star.

Next, I then replaced the moon phases for their corresponding Khajiit forms and color coded everything for easy reading. http://i153.photobucket.com/albums/s221/silverhawk100/KhajiitBirthCalender.png?t=1303185804 (sorry about the bad quality, also it's not very color-blind friendly).

What immediately popped up was that under Morrowind's moon cycles, it is impossible to get an Ohmes Khajiit (Masser New, Secundas Full)! Oops. Other things of note:
1. the -raht forms are generally more common than the base
2. for knowing next to nothing about the Tojay-raht, Alfiq-raht and Dagi-raht, they are surprisingly common. Far more than Suthay-raht.
3. If you transpose this to a Gregorian-like calender, it is easily conceivable that depending on the year, you can get any Khajiit type under a birthsign.
4. If I were a Khajiit, I'd be a Tojay-raht.

After further number anolysis, here are a few interesting statistics from this:
-If you are born Khajiit, chances are likely you'll be some version of Cathay or Alfiq. Your next likeliest forms are pretty equally Senche, Tojay, Dagi, then Pahmar, then Suthay, then Ohmes.
-While most forms have either 40 or 10 days out of the year, and a few garner 30, Senche is the only form to have 20 days of time.
-Suthay-raht is the only -raht form equally as likely as its basic counterpart.The other -raht forms are significantly more likely than their basic counterpart.

It's a pity we will never have a census of the forms of Khajiit because then we could tell if the Lattice favors some forms over others and then speculate why.

* Note, to make the maths easier and have this calender apply universally, I rounded down to 30 days a month. If you're tracking the cycle by years, just bump everything by 5 days for each new year. Period is 73 years to Day 1 Month 1 New Moon on both.
** Note for anyone else fascinated by TES Numerology: While 24 is less entangled in numerology (best case mathematical permutation being 4*3*2*1, but 12 isn't as common a number as you'd think it would be for containing the two most important TES numbers), 18 days for Secundas' cycle is twice 9. One wonders if Secundas is somehow entangled with the Divines.
*** If you would like the original document I was puttering around with, message me and I'll email it. I can't easily find a place that'll host documents.

That's brilliant; I was hoping someone would do the maths.

Bethesda should wire their head and ass tighter together and keep things consistent. No wonder why we always have difficulty figuring things out.

Hey Huleed, how did you get those numbers anyways?
I don't remember even SEEING the moons in Daggerfall, though I recall a book about them.

Daggerfall's is listed here: http://uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Calendar#Phases_of_the_Moon
Morrowind is partly specified in the INI file:
Masser Daily Increment=1
Secunda Daily Increment=1.2 ***NOTE, I apparently got the 1.5x value wrong. it's 1.2x***
I don't remember where I got the 24-days-for-Masser number... it might be somewhere in the CS, but I can't check (it's crashing for me, ATM)
24 days for Oblivion is what I found when trying to track the full moon for a mod, and its easy to see the two phases be constantly in sync.

Wow, that's fantastic. Thanks! That should be added to TIL or something.


I'd suggest some type of conspiracy that the Ohmes Khajiit don't really exist, if it weren't highly suspected that the Khajiit in Arena are Ohmes Khajiit.

It makes me wonder if the way one sees the cycles of the moon varies depending on where in Tamriel one is located. It could make sense, then, that Morrowind and Cyrodiil's moon cycles are close but slightly different, whereas in the areas of High Rock and Hammerfell for Daggerfall, it's a bigger difference. It wouldn't be exact, of course, seeing as if that much distance could make the difference, then it should be different for someone in Cheydinhal to see the moons differently than someone in Chorrol, yet they'll look the same for the player, but for that I'll have to put my over-justification aside and chalk it up to gameplay mechanics.

while you don't seem 'em, the game keeps track of 'em for some reason. Most noticeable if you're a werewolf or wereboar.

Truly awesome, Lord Dagon.

Velorien- Never give up on over-justification! It could also be something as simple as a clerical error- perhaps Khajiit use a different reckoning, and our sources are confused? You could also just say 'dragon broke it', but that seems a bit cheap- plus, 'the moons were the only constant', according to the Tender to the Mane. Perhaps the Khajiit are the only ones who can count the moons properly- since only they have the sugar to see them.

Aww, [Excessively long Nummit]! I spent like 8 hours yesterday working on that under false data. *Sigh.* It's not your fault, I should've sourced your numbers. I'll fix it and repost, but not right now, probably tomorrow. Although I can already tell you Secundas' pattern is not going to line up nicely to either Masser's pattern or the Calender year. So it looks like there can be Ohmes Khajiits.

Great stuff, Mehrunes Dagon. Someone should definitely put this in-game via a book or a wall chart form. At the very least, get it up on the Imperial Library!

We need more consistent and developed information on astronomical affairs. But MD is doing great work.

I hope to see this. Keep up the good work!

So I just watched Morrowind's moons for about 30 days. Masser's period is definitely 24, but Secundas is synced with Masser's cycle. I think the numbers Huleed pulled out of the .ini was the daily increment that the moons rise and fall because Masser rose an hour later each day and Secundas a bit longer than that and yes that means they rose at noon and no that also meant you couldn't see them. The good news is that Masser's phases follow the numbers I came up with exactly.

So decision time: Do I pick a number for Secundas to cycle around that hopefully gives us all the Khajiit forms, or do I give up because it wouldn't be "official" in any capacity? If I do continue, what number do you think it should be? 1.5x faster (18 days) showed us we can't get Ohmes. 1.2x faster (21) will sync the moons to one and a half years 30-day calender time which wouldn't be pretty but would be workable. The more I think about this, the uglier the numbers are going to have to be to fit all the combinations in. Another possibility is 16 days which would make the math ugly but creates a nice multiple of 4 pattern with Masser (but 21 also gives us a multiple of 3 pattern with Masser).

I suppose, going to extremes, we could make Secundas 4x faster or slower (6/96 days) and that would also get us all of the forms. It'd make the moon calender nice and universal, if a little bigger than one year.

Personally, I'd just give up. My curiosity is sated, and the information is too loose and inconsistent to do anything meaningful with.
What you've come up with already is plenty interesting.

Are you saying that Masser rises one hour later every day and Secunda 1.2 hour later? If it is so, then I think that their cycles shouldn't be in sync, because it would mean, that they orbiting Nirn at different speed. I just checked http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ol3GKoQaF4U and they seem to be orbiting Nirn at different speed. It should be possible to count how fast are they orbiting and from that you can get the cycles.

If Secunda orbits at a speed difference of .2, then going by Earth physics, its phase would cycle at a difference of .2 as well. However, I think it's an accepted trait that the moons are not being illuminated by the sun, and their phase works independently of their orbit.

It does seem as though lore expects them to not stay in sync (as evidenced by the Khajiit forms). I wonder why both Morrowind and Oblivion make them syncronized.

You are right, I forgot about this, they are partially transparent..

Are they partially transparent? As far as I know, that's never been consistently established.

Go into Vanilla Morrowind and/or Oblivion and see for yourself.

this left me wondering: since the type of khajiit being born depends on the moons, (i already knew this) does this mean that an Alfiq or Dagi could give birth to a senche-raht ? think of a housecat giving birth to something as big as two altmers on top of eachother. or do khajiit all look the same when born but grow up in different ways at different rates ?