Position of the sun

Ssaliss

Is there ever a direction given to where the sun rises/sets/zeniths/anything? I've been looking through the ambients over an hour, but haven't seen anything of note, really, but there might be other cases (quests etc) that I don't know of.

Kalnid

Judging by the fact that the sun rises and sets, you can make some assumptions about the spheres. Over the course of an ingame day, the sun comes up from one side of the horizon, goes down on the other, and stays within a specific astrological sign. Now, the zodiac to be in some sort of order, and it's clearly a circular one, so if nothing else we've got a standard orbit.

Sidenote: it's still weird to me that as an astrologer I can observe the position of, say, the sun when it's clearly not visible. Gameplay and story segregation and all, but still weird.

Anyway. We thus have a band across the sky that the sun and presumably rest of the spheres follow. Its tilt and rotation, though, are unknown to my knowledge, as well as if it varies at all over the year. I don't think the day/night time changes between summer and winter, though, so the sun's movement is probably static. That also means that there's some other reason for seasonal differences, but those can probably be written up to nature spirits doing their thang.

Oh, I'm pretty sure the time line for noon includes 'The sun sits directly overhead', so there's that. ed-whoops the line is from time, not forecast

Ssaliss

Or, for that matter, the position of planets/the moon/astrological signs?

Xenthos

Ssaliss said:

Or, for that matter, the position of plants/the moon/astrological signs?

Well, I know at least one of these!  The plants are underfoot, excepting for mistletoe which likes to vine around overhead in the tree branches.

Ssaliss

Wiseguy :P

Xenthos

Given that the Basin is large enough for distinct differences in temperature (the southern Basin is far warmer than the north), I'm not sure it's possible for the sun to sit "directly" overhead everywhere.  I think that's more of a flavour thing than something you can actually rely on for the purposes of this discussion.

Ssaliss

Hmm. The "sits directly overhead" is one I didn't know about! I suppose that does prove that Lusternia rotates around its own axis, which was what I was kinda curious about. Doesn't say if it rotates east-to-west or west-to-east though, but yeah, might as well go with west-to-east in that case.

Ssaliss

Xenthos said:

Given that the Basin is large enough for distinct differences in temperature (the southern Basin is far warmer than the north), I'm not sure it's possible for the sun to sit "directly" overhead everywhere.  I think that's more of a flavour thing than something you can actually rely on for the purposes of this discussion.

Clearly, that is just caused by global warming created by Magnagora.

Kalnid

Ssaliss said:

Hmm. The "sits directly overhead" is one I didn't know about! I suppose that does prove that Lusternia rotates around its own axis, which was what I was kinda curious about. Doesn't say if it rotates east-to-west or west-to-east though, but yeah, might as well go with west-to-east in that case.

North to south!

Xenthos said:

Given that the Basin is large enough for distinct differences in temperature (the southern Basin is far warmer than the north), I'm not sure it's possible for the sun to sit "directly" overhead everywhere.  I think that's more of a flavour thing than something you can actually rely on for the purposes of this discussion.

I'd say that really depends on the sun's distance from the surface. Plus, I'm not sure you can assume that seasons are caused strictly by the sun's location.

Xenthos

I am not really talking about seasons; even in the summer, Serenwilde is generally cooler than Glomdoring. This has always left me with the impression that the Basin is situated rather like the United States. A small chunk of the overall planetary surface, but large enough to sprawl across entirely a huge swathe of different biomes (from the border with Mexico to an area roughly equivalent to southern Canada). The permanently snowy places tend to be up in the mountainous regions (snow valley, Rikenfriez, etc). Glomdoring pretty much never sees snow (ala Texas / Florida).

To me, this lends credence to an east-west or a west-east movement of the sun (because I am sure that there are messages about it spreading its "life-giving warmth," indicating that it is the main source of heat in this world too).

Karlach

You're saying that it takes us three weeks longer than everyone else to decide who won an election?

This then also makes me wonder on where the geographical location of the Basin is, while clearly not as far north as Icewynd (hello Canada) it's definitely northern Hemisphere.

Also has me wondering whereabouts Dio and Lirangsha are in relation to the Basin.

Xenthos

Dio could be anywhere, really.

I feel like Icewynd's pretty close to the arctic circle region of the planet.  It never really thaws at all, even in the "low" parts.

Lendren

I'm fairly sure the length of day doesn't change with the seasons at least in terms of game mechanics (when the ambients happen, when you can do night and day things, etc.).

I had thought the Book of Aslarn shed some light on the path of sun and moon in the sky, but it doesn't seem to suggest directions either.

The other thing that informs the seasons is the way Etherwilde is arranged.  When I was in Her order I once asked Lisaera to shed some light on where the seasons come from and She got all pissy at me for asking, awakening some painful memory.  Always hoped that meant that there was going to eventually be a canon answer, perhaps in the Elder Wars which were still being written at the time, but if one ever came, I didn't hear about it.

Shaddus

Lendren said:

When I was in Her order I once asked Lisaera to shed some light on where the seasons come from and She got all pissy at me for asking, awakening some painful memory.  Always hoped that meant that there was going to eventually be a canon answer, perhaps in the Elder Wars which were still being written at the time, but if one ever came, I didn't hear about it.

That likely just meant she didn't want to have to make something up on the fly that would end up being non-canon in the end

Siam

The sun is a LIE. There is only the Night.

Lendren

Shaddus said:

When I was in Her order I once asked Lisaera to shed some light on where the seasons come from and She got all pissy at me for asking, awakening some painful memory.  Always hoped that meant that there was going to eventually be a canon answer, perhaps in the Elder Wars which were still being written at the time, but if one ever came, I didn't hear about it.

That likely just meant she didn't want to have to make something up on the fly that would end up being non-canon in the end  

Yeah, but it did make me hope something would eventually come of it, but nothing ever did.  If no one's ever explained the seasons or why they're separated in time on Prime but in space on Ethereal by now, seems likely they never will.  Just feels like an interesting exploration of Lusternia history and spiritualism that got left dangling and unused.