Revising the Seasons of Creation

[Flagg]

I've posted several times about how the seasons in Exalted are wholly different than what we experience in real life. They do not fit our pattern of Cold-> Warming-> Hot-> Cooling. It confuses a lot of people, but I won't get into that again here.


However, taking Creation's seasons for what they are, it seems to make little sense to me how they are ordered -- or at least their ordering would make for some fairly chaotic weather.


I'm going to make a few assumptions about each season's defining  characteristic, based on it's element in the following list, which is ordered using the canonical progression of seasons:

• Air - Cold and windy
  
• Water - Rainy and damp
  
• Earth - Cool and dry
  
• Wood - Some mixture of rain and sun that is conducive to growing things
  
• Fire - Hot and dry

Given these assumptions, the year cycles from cold, to wet, to dry, to warm, to hot. There's no gentle flow here. The wet season is immediately followed by the dry one, and the hottest season is immediately followed by the coldest one. If the Exalted of the First Age designed this system, why the fuck did they make it so haphazard?


I think most likely it's a case of some WW writer not really thinking too hard about it.


I propose this alternate order of seasons:

• Wood
  
• Fire
  
• Earth
  
• Air
  
• Water

This is a lot closer to our progression of seasons. The growing season is preceeded by the rains, during a period of inceasing warmth, which makes a lot of sense. The hot season gradually dries and cools down to the cold season. It's a much smoother cycle.


As to why I made Wood the first season: I think it's important for stlyistic reasons that Earth be in the center.


Feedback?


-S

 

[Persell]

The only issue I have with the original sequence is the transition from fire to air.  Of course this would follow calibration, so it isn't too big a problem for me.


Your fix to the sequence does make sense, and is more fluid, but I can still see both working.  Still, have a growing season that terminates with something other than the dry season is probably a good idea for exalted, but this is only because I see the season changes in Exalted as more dramatic than in real life.  I don't imagine there is as much transition from season to season.  


I do agree that it is important for Earth to be in the middle.

 

[Forn Clakes]

Personally, I don't see Earth as cool and dry, but rather as a period of stability in the region, returning more to the natural conditions of the elemental pole.


Have to say though, I like the revisions you've made. Don't feel as sporadic.


~FC.

 

[Seiraryu]

I kind of like the idea of the seasons in Creation changing all of a sudden, almost as if they were the mood of Gaia, or something to that effect.  Suddenly, a hot, dry day corruscates and passes into being a viciously cold and windy night, or whatever.  I like it.

 

[Flagg]

I kind of like the idea of the seasons in Creation changing all of a sudden, almost as if they were the mood of Gaia, or something to that effect.

But that's not what it's supposed to be. The Solars of the First Age designed the current weather system. It isn't chaotic, and it's not sudden. It follows a very proscribed order -- but kind of a ridiculous one.


And as to liking the extreme swings in climate that the offical calendar ensures, imagine actually living in such a world. Imagine trying to grow crops to feed yourself.


-S

 

[Flagg]

Personally' date=' I don't see Earth as cool and dry, but rather as a period of stability in the region, returning more to the natural conditions of the elemental pole.[/quote']
Agreed. What I meant to convey by "cool" was "not overly hot or cold" (like Fire or Air) and "dry" as "not overly wet" (like Water).


Perhaps "mild" is a better term.


-S

 

[Forn Clakes]

Mild it is then.


~FC.

 

[Kajata]

But surely if, as you say, the Solars of the first age came up with the weather system currently used annd designed it according to their whims it really wouldn't need a logical order at all?  I mean, evidently it was changed using magic, so what makes you thin that it would follow a logical order?


I can see why you make the changes you did and hell, I even like them, but Exalted is a world of magic and arcane mystery, tbh, I don't think anything has to be logical, because if it isn't, it was probably altered with magic to be whatever the sorcerer wanted.

 

[Flagg]

I mean, evidently it was changed using magic, so what makes you thin that it would follow a logical order?

It wasn't created by magic. The Exalted called the Court of Seasons to a meeting and said, "Here's our new plan for the seasons. Get to work."


-S

 

[Flagg]

I re-organized my calendar PDF. You can find it in the Downloads section.


-S

 

[fmneto]

I think that, being controlled by the Bureau of Seasons, weather is a quite bureaucratic system, and the order of seasons probably was established to optimize the required heat, cold, rain and dry periods for, say, agriculture. In other words, for economical purposes.


It was established by the ruling Solar Exalted in the First Age (Sidereals, pg 43).


Also, the members of the bureau are quite conservative, because no one was able to manage the weather after the Solar Purge.

 

[Flagg]

the order of seasons probably was established to optimize the required heat, cold, rain and dry periods for, say, agriculture.

Yes, but it's obviously NOT optimized for agriculture, or even, I'd argue, human survival. It's an INSANE weather pattern, which is why I thought it needed ro-ordering.


-S

 

[Guest]

the order of seasons probably was established to optimize the required heat, cold, rain and dry periods for, say, agriculture.

Yes, but it's obviously NOT optimized for agriculture, or even, I'd argue, human survival. It's an INSANE weather pattern, which is why I thought it needed ro-ordering.


-S

Depends. Remember, it's only relatively northern latitudes that only plant one crop a year in the real world. In the sub-tropics/tropics, it's more typical to have (at the very least), two major harvests a year. Since Water is wet and damp, it sounds like the season is designed with growing grains and various cereal crops in mind (since this is what spring is like in much of Northern Europe), with Wood designed more for rice and crops that need warmth -and- moisture. The DB book mentions 3 crops a year on the Blessed Isle (which I assume is the result of the various weather-controlling toys and artifact fertilizers they have to play with), but I'd argue that to support the massive cities that exist in the world of Exalted, at least two harvests a year would be necessary. I mean, a lot of rural areas can't be cultivated that extensively, what with the Lunars/mad Solars/demons/hostile elementals/Fair Folks/rogue gods/nasty, nasty wild animals roaming around. If you're going to get enough food to feed insanely large populations, you're going to want two harvests.


Why might have First Age Solars wanted this pattern, though? That's not a question I can answer, but it's damnably convenient for the Second Age that they decided it would be a good idea. Presumably the greater populations and larger degree of urbanization led to similar farmland-to-urban-areas ratios.


Just my two cents.

 

[Flagg]

Since Water is wet and damp, it sounds like the season is designed with growing grains and various cereal crops in mind

Water is also supposed to be cold, as in winter-like, according to canon.


-S

 

[Guest]

Since Water is wet and damp, it sounds like the season is designed with growing grains and various cereal crops in mind

Water is also supposed to be cold, as in winter-like, according to canon.


-S

Ah, well, you're definitely right then. It is just a stupid system of organizing seasons.

 

[Logos Invictus]

Sorry to bring up an old topic but I was just reading Savage Seas and I noticed something interesting. Apparently, the sun meanders from north to south as the seasons pass. As I recall, it reaches its southernmost point during Resplendent or Ascending Fire, and during that time period most of Creation (except the South) is denied the greater portion of his warmth, indicating that Fire season is actually wintery for most of Creation, except the South which finds it to be the hottest time of the year.


What I'm getting at is that Creation is a biiig place, and the named seasons aren't going to mean much the same thing all over. I'd say that, since it's based on the Imperial calender, it represents the seasons on the Blessed Isle. In my games, it works something like this.


Blessed Isle Seasons


Air - Cold going to cool temperatures, very little rain. A dead season for most planting.


Water - Considerably more rain with cool to moderate temperatures. Flooding of major rivers and streams fertilize the soil and fill rice paddies, signaling the begining of the planting season as the snow begins to melt.


Earth - Moderate temperatures and pleasant weather, the 'spring' of the blessed isle.


Wood - Moderate to cool temperatures and almost as much rain as Water. The height of the growing season.


Fire - Cool to cold temperatures, with the sun far to the south. This is the time of harvesting and reaping before Calibration.

 

[Seiraryu]

Sorry to bring up an old topic but I was just reading Savage Seas and I noticed something interesting. Apparently, the sun meanders from north to south as the seasons pass. As I recall, it reaches its southernmost point during Resplendent or Ascending Fire, and during that time period most of Creation (except the South) is denied the greater portion of his warmth, indicating that Fire season is actually wintery for most of Creation, except the South which finds it to be the hottest time of the year.
What I'm getting at is that Creation is a biiig place, and the named seasons aren't going to mean much the same thing all over. I'd say that, since it's based on the Imperial calender, it represents the seasons on the Blessed Isle. In my games, it works something like this.


Blessed Isle Seasons


Air - Cold going to cool temperatures, very little rain. A dead season for most planting.


Water - Considerably more rain with cool to moderate temperatures. Flooding of major rivers and streams fertilize the soil and fill rice paddies, signaling the begining of the planting season as the snow begins to melt.


Earth - Moderate temperatures and pleasant weather, the 'spring' of the blessed isle.


Wood - Moderate to cool temperatures and almost as much rain as Water. The height of the growing season.


Fire - Cool to cold temperatures, with the sun far to the south. This is the time of harvesting and reaping before Calibration.

All that would make some sort of sense... save that Creation is flat, every day lasts the same, and every night does too, it's always the same time in Creation--if someone is eating lunch in Nexus, it's more than likely that someone is eating lunch in the far West.

 

[Logos Invictus]

The length of the days wouldn't affect the nature of the weather. Someone eating lunch in the South during Ascending Fire would be doing it in early summer while someone who was eating lunch in the north on the same day would be doing so in early winter, because the sun would be nearer the southern pole at that time. Also, the sun does travel from one end of creation to the other in the course of a day, so that would create something like time zones at the very extremes - nightfall in the Far West would probably come at a different time than nightfall in the Far East.

 

[Flagg]

It would not create time zones, as the world is flat. All of Creation would see dawn and dusk simultaneously.


-S

 

[Logos Invictus]

Fair enough. I wasn't thinking clearly when I made that post. It doesn't invalidate the rest of what I said though. The seasons seem to be different from place to place (apparently) based partially on the sun's north-to-south wandering.

 

[Flagg]

The seasons seem to be different from place to place (apparently) based partially on the sun's north-to-south wandering.

Which is another example of WW's inconsistency. The seasons on our spherical world are tied to the sun, and it's apparent change of position in the sky.


In Creation's flat world, the seasons are clearly caused by Elemental powers. That shit about the sun in Savage Seas is just some crap to make things jibe better with real world sailing and navigation techniques.


Even in the context of a fictional world, it's bullshit.


-S

 

[Ker'ion]

I kind of like the idea of the seasons in Creation changing all of a sudden, almost as if they were the mood of Gaia, or something to that effect.  Suddenly, a hot, dry day corruscates and passes into being a viciously cold and windy night, or whatever.  I like it.

Try living in Southern Kansas sometime if you enjoy that kind of crap! :x


I hate this place!! :evil:


On another note:


The original seasonal setup would be conductive to a dual harvest per year, where the new setup is good for a single extended harvest.  It really depends on how you want to set things up.  If the plants grow quicker because their patterns are stronger, then go for a dual season, otherwise, a single season might be ok.


Even so, a single harvest might just yeild significantly more.  Having two harvests might also be good for survival, since if the barbarians raid your village during the first harvest, you can still get enough food to survive by being careful with the second harvest.  But with one super-harvest, you can just split the food, if the barbarians are nice enough to not take everything. :roll:

 

[psychoph]

I was thinking that maybe the season design was not designed witht he Second Age in mind but the First Age, where there was a lot more sorcery involved in everyone's day to day life.  It could be that the sorcery that no longer exists is what made life both bearable in the conditions and optimal.


The idea being that maybe you wanted hot and cold right next to each other because there was some machine that created great and wonderous things but only worked because the difference between the seasosn on that one day of the year created some large amount of essence in some spot on Creation.


IMO the current set of seasons makes for a much better playing climate than the proposed one.  And it is for the very reasons that stillborn dislikes it.  Exalted is supposed to be messed up and a fairly harsh place to live.  If the seasons rolled in a way that worked with real life it seems to me that it would be a better place to live, but less of a place the needs change or needs sorecery back.

 

[The zombie cat]

While metrologicaly your system makes more sense in creation weather is not an aspect of heating differentials and evaporation rates, weather is determined by the spirits gods and elementals, suitable bribes can ensure that your open air party will have fine weather, or that your rivals will be rained out. Regardless of season.


The solars wrote the calendar, decided what the weather would be and ordered the relevant spirits gods and elementals to make it happen. They had almost unlimited freedom to chose the order, even the number of seasons.


The system is actually quite good for growing crops, you can grow many crops in air but grain probably wont dry well before harvest. In water you grow grain to harvest in early earth, in wood you grow grain to harvest in early fire. The most common crop is rice, in eth wet system, you only need a couple of dry days to harvest that. In Indonesia the dry system gets rain every 2-3 days and they manage to get there rice crops in, indecently they get 2-3 crops each year. The blessed isle, the scavenger lands, the east, the west, and the coasts of the inland sea could easily get in 6-8 crops every year


What you mite expect is a violent transition between seasons, while some regions will experience this during the time of tumult. In better times it was the duty of the gods and elementals of weather to properly manage this time. Now? bribe them well.


It would only be a horrible system to live under if generations of farmers hadn’t worked out how to work with it, they would have as much difficulty adapting there tecneks to our silly for seasons alternating between hot and cold, why most farmers in eth western world only get one crop a year.


The system is nicely set up for agriculture if you don’t assume a single annual cycle.

 

[Ledaal Kajiri]

Also remember that many areas likely also have Thaumaturges with Weather Control to help limit difficulties. Is it as nice as Sorcery might be, or a fuinctioning Celestial and Terrestrial Bureaucracy? No. But it can help a good bit.