Sun-path and Sky Dome cross-sections through the year

[svensson]

So Yelm's hat is crooked?

That'd explain some things 😆🤪

[Alex]

7 minutes ago, svensson said:

So Yelm's hat is crooked?

Anyone implying that there's anything the least bit tipsy about Emperor of the Universe will be crucified!  Twice!!

[svensson]

1 minute ago, Alex said:

Anyone implying that there's anything the least bit tipsy about Emperor of the Universe will be crucified!  Twice!!

Hey Yelm! Shut up! Yer drunk!

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, Alex said:

 If only there were a forum of some kind in which over-opinionated Gloranerds who fancied their chance at asterism design artists might be goaded into action!

First step would be to translate the firmament map (in the Guide) into polar coordinates, I guess, so that the tilting Sky Dome gets adjusted for curvature of the bowl, unless you have the ability to map a flat depiction of the sky into the hemisphere.

 

Then the exact amounts of tilt to the north (in summer, less of a tilt) and to the south (in winter, reminiscing the Skyspill, hence stronger) needs to be defined. It should veer off to the north where the pillar broke when Umath was thrown into it.

Does the Skyspill leave the southern pillar unaffected, or has that edifice disappeared, too?

Some fluidity of the rim region would be interesting to construct. Lots of mythic explanations required, though. And different ones for the same phenomena, too, depending on the culture of the observers.

Then there is the question whether the Sunpath planets (other than Yelm and Lightfore, thus  Mastakos/Uleria, Dendara and Lokarnos) are bound to the vertical offset of the Sunpath, or whether they have a static altitude arch. Would the changes in altitude affect the appearance of Mastakos' trail on the sky dome?

Did you ever produce an algorithm to predict the Soutpath with its zig-zagging course?

The new entry of the Boat Planet and the exact behavior of Orlanth's Ring (outside of the accelerated course it took during the Dedication rite for the New Lunar Temple, resulting in the Dragonrise) are the other variables. Does the annual tilt of the Sky Dome affect the length of the course of the Ring and which constellations it encounters? Does the ring stay in the direct line between Stormgate and Pole Star, or does it match the sky dome precession when it enters, climbing upward, or does it move faster or slower than the sky dome during its rise?

The celestial river is an area with some width that provides the possible positions of the Boat Planet as it rises to the edge of the City, crawls along that edge and then descends the opposite portion of the river. At constant speed? Influenced by the Blue Moon which also uses (the back side of) the celestial river for its ascent, but which continues through the backside of the celestial city to Pole Star before plummeting into Magasta's Pool.

[Alex]

On 8/22/2024 at 11:00 AM, Joerg said:

First step would be to translate the firmament map (in the Guide) into polar coordinates, I guess, so that the tilting Sky Dome gets adjusted for curvature of the bowl, unless you have the ability to map a flat depiction of the sky into the hemisphere.

The Guide shows what I'd take to be an "equinoctial" configuration (but see Nick's comments about when it might actually be, YSDWV, etc), so we're actually seeing none of the "Hell Stars" at all.  (Other than those at the lower edge here, which will dip below the horizon some nights, but never for a 24h straight as the ones missing here are.)  Likewise with the ES map, and I can't think of any other source that shows them more extensively.  If there's anything on the JC or anywhere else I'd be glad to learn of it!

On 8/22/2024 at 11:00 AM, Joerg said:

Then the exact amounts of tilt to the north (in summer, less of a tilt) and to the south (in winter, reminiscing the Skyspill, hence stronger) needs to be defined.

Feel free to start the bidding!  I think every version of the Ephemeres has made the total tilt relatively small, but if were using Earth as a rough model, they'd total something like a quarter-dome.  Which would be quite a large amount of "new" celestial real-estate to make up for the new seasonal constellations!  Albeit perhaps most of that is common to the summer and winter configurations.  But that'd still be a whole "new" chunk of sky to make up out of whole cloth.

On 8/22/2024 at 11:00 AM, Joerg said:

Then there is the question whether the Sunpath planets (other than Yelm and Lightfore, thus  Mastakos/Uleria, Dendara and Lokarnos) are bound to the vertical offset of the Sunpath, or whether they have a static altitude arch. Would the changes in altitude affect the appearance of Mastakos' trail on the sky dome?

For my money, to ordinary mundane perception, all the 'true' celestial objects appear at infinity.  No measurable parallax.  Of course people's subjective impressions as to its shape. height, and especially how it appears magically, that might be radically different. 

On 8/22/2024 at 11:00 AM, Joerg said:

Did you ever produce an algorithm to predict the Soutpath with its zig-zagging course?

Well yes, in that various versions were churned out that produced various amounts of SoP wiggle.  But given that we have little in the way of specifics about any of their motions, nor do we have dates and so forth for past "Doom Conjunctions" or suchlike that we might "hindcast" with a model.  So pretty much guesswork, wild extrapolation, and hitting of "might be something kinda like this, who knows" provisional balls.

On 8/22/2024 at 11:00 AM, Joerg said:

Does the annual tilt of the Sky Dome affect the length of the course of the Ring and which constellations it encounters? Does the ring stay in the direct line between Stormgate and Pole Star, or does it match the sky dome precession when it enters, climbing upward, or does it move faster or slower than the sky dome during its rise?

I can't recall whether Stormgate was said to be dome-tilted along with Pole Star.  Or indeed, has some subtle additional movement of its own.  In its wilful,, unrepentant Brokenness!

[Joerg]

7 hours ago, Alex said:

 If there's anything on the JC or anywhere else I'd be glad to learn of it!

There was a sky map in the precursor book to The Fortunate Succession that was sold at Convulsion 1994 as a fund raiser, Dara Happan Book of Emperors. That content has since been pushed over to GRoY. In any case, that map would have served as source material for the Guide.

 

7 hours ago, Alex said:

Feel free to start the bidding!  I think every version of the Ephemeres has made the total tilt relatively small, but if were using Earth as a rough model, they'd total something like a quarter-dome.  Which would be quite a large amount of "new" celestial real-estate to make up for the new seasonal constellations!  Albeit perhaps most of that is common to the summer and winter configurations.  But that'd still be a whole "new" chunk of sky to make up out of whole cloth.

There was some give northward as the pillar crashed, which started the (single) tilt cycle of Godtime. At some point, Kalikos seems to have pushed back, all the way to the sky spill that dried up the Blue Fire Sea and turned it into the Nargan Desert. That (midwinter) move southward might be a lot further than the move northward.

A quarter-dome would mean a tilt of 22.5° for the annual Skyspill re-enactment?

 

7 hours ago, Alex said:

For my money, to ordinary mundane perception, all the 'true' celestial objects appear at infinity.  No measurable parallax.  Of course people's subjective impressions as to its shape. height, and especially how it appears magically, that might be radically different.

I agree, objects in the Upper Sky (and Outer Sky for objects closer to the horizon) should not change the observed angle when viewed from below regardless where on (the inner world parts of) the Lozenge. My worry was about different path lengths for Yelm and Lightfore, and for the three other Sunpath objects if the bobbing Sun course and the counterpoint bobbing Lightfore course are the reason for the variance in day length between summer and winter rather than different angular speed along that circle. A problem for sorcerers in Glorantha, whether Buseri, Kralori star gazers or Malkioni.

 

7 hours ago, Alex said:

I can't recall whether Stormgate was said to be dome-tilted along with Pole Star.  Or indeed, has some subtle additional movement of its own.  In its wilful,, unrepentant Brokenness!

Storm Gate, Zenith and the Red Moon are the three Fixed Objects in the sky. I don't think they are subject to the tilt.

[Alex]

5 hours ago, Joerg said:

There was a sky map in the precursor book to The Fortunate Succession that was sold at Convulsion 1994 as a fund raiser, Dara Happan Book of Emperors. That content has since been pushed over to GRoY. In any case, that map would have served as source material for the Guide.

I don't recall those having any additional lower-sky-dome constellations, but I'll doublecheck when I can trouble to peel myself off the couch.  And find a light source for that corner...

5 hours ago, Joerg said:

That (midwinter) move southward might be a lot further than the move northward.

A quarter-dome would mean a tilt of 22.5° for the annual Skyspill re-enactment?

I mean a total of ~~~45° between the two, not -- as you say -- necessarily symmetrically.  But I don't have a particular handle on how asymmetric.  20/25?  15/30?  10/35?  Your guess is as good.  I think everything actually ever coded up used much less, but I just mention that in the the context of the terrestrial analogue.  Our axial tilt is +/- 23.4°, necessarily symmetrical, so slightly more than a "quarter-dome" in total.  Of course it was slightly different in the Bronze Age, and people's awareness of it seems to vary according to the latitude of where they live, so I'd not go so far as to suggest that's a compelling precedent.

5 hours ago, Joerg said:

My worry was about different path lengths for Yelm and Lightfore, and for the three other Sunpath objects if the bobbing Sun course and the counterpoint bobbing Lightfore course are the reason for the variance in day length between summer and winter rather than different angular speed along that circle.

I think "reason" is very much in Subjective Realm territory.  As far as what's objectively observable, i think that what Nick reckons one sees and I what I reckon one sees are very similar -- I can't say I've done the maths as to whether they're identical -- so his model makes pretty good sense to me as a "some/many people in Glorantha are certain to say this".

I don't think Yelm simply moves as a visually constant rate across the visible part of the Sky throughout each day -- but different from day to day according to the length -- because that'd imply a sudden change of 'speed' at sunset and sunrise.  Not strictly a problem since -- obvs -- to mundane perception the course of the sun below the horizon isn't observable.  And again, if you use magical perception of any kind, all bets are off, on an own-assumptions watermark basis.  But conceptually a little odd.  I mean, nothing on Mastakos of course, but Yelm, sudden braking or accelerating maneuvers?  That just ain't right.

5 hours ago, Joerg said:

A problem for sorcerers in Glorantha, whether Buseri, Kralori star gazers or Malkioni.

#sorcererproblems

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, Alex said:

I mean a total of ~~~45° between the two, not -- as you say -- necessarily symmetrically.  But I don't have a particular handle on how asymmetric.  20/25?  15/30?  10/35?  Your guess is as good.  I think everything actually ever coded up used much less, but I just mention that in the the context of the terrestrial analogue.  Our axial tilt is +/- 23.4°, necessarily symmetrical, so slightly more than a "quarter-dome" in total.  Of course it was slightly different in the Bronze Age, and people's awareness of it seems to vary according to the latitude of where they live, so I'd not go so far as to suggest that's a compelling precedent.

I was willing to have maybe 30° to the spill (but would have gone with 22.5°) and maybe 10-15° to the north.

You said you wanted another quarter of the sky dome visible at greatest tilt, I assumed that to mean surface area of the observable sphere rather than angular. (And I don't have any formulas for calculating the surface of a sphere produced by intersections in my ad-hoc memory...)

When figuring out how much of that part-time above the horizon underworld sky belt there is visible, we need to take into account the day length variation between midsummer and midwinter, and the precession of the Sky Dome (which is exactly one cycle per year, either skipping one or cycle or having an extra cycle). That precession means that the same midnight section of underworld stars will be above the horizon at the solstices, with less tilt and shorter visibility at Summer Solstice nights and more tilt and way longer exposure at Winter Solstice nights.

As an estimate, we will see the constellation Youth rising up both times, and possibly an underworld portion of the Celestial River exposed. Over the night, you will be able to see the Sunset sky, the Sunrise sky, and the area in between up to the tilt maximum.

So, what are the myths about Lorion in the Underworld? Or at least rising up from the Deep?

Which constellations of the upper sky take a dip below the horizon?

 

You mention the terrestrial analogue. That analogue isn't, really - the equinox sky is how you would experience the stars a few days twowards winter before or after the equinox at our poles (minus the light pollution you get from the sun almost being on the horizon). The solstice night sky would resemble a rather high latitude terrestrial winter solstice night sky in terms of stars and constellations going below the horizon or rising up.

2 hours ago, Alex said:

I don't think Yelm simply moves as a visually constant rate across the visible part of the Sky throughout each day -- but different from day to day according to the length -- because that'd imply a sudden change of 'speed' at sunset and sunrise.  Not strictly a problem since -- obvs -- to mundane perception the course of the sun below the horizon isn't observable.  And again, if you use magical perception of any kind, all bets are off, on an own-assumptions watermark basis.  But conceptually a little odd.  I mean, nothing on Mastakos of course, but Yelm, sudden braking or accelerating maneuvers?  That just ain't right.

Apparently, the shadow rotation on the Red Moon has such a rest-then-step motion for the phase change.

Another possibly weird effect might be the timing of the eastern and western jumpers at the Solstices. At the equinox, Theya and Rausa rise 12 hours apart. Does this change as days shorten or lengthen, or are the two jumpers barely visible in summer but displaying (almost) their full rise and fall during winter.

[Alex]

11 hours ago, Joerg said:

You said you wanted another quarter of the sky dome visible at greatest tilt, I assumed that to mean surface area of the observable sphere rather than angular. (And I don't have any formulas for calculating the surface of a sphere produced by intersections in my ad-hoc memory...)

Same thing.  I think.  My geometry's pretty rusty, and spherical trig is the stuff of 'Nam-style flashbacks for me, but imagine slicing an apple into segments.  If you cut it into eight equal parts (say) then the fraction of the total internal angle and the surface area are pro-rata.  So 45 degrees is a quarter of the hemisphere.

But when i say that, i just mention that's the O(mag) of the RW sitch, I'm not saying I'm hugely wedded to that figure, just that I could see anything up to that -- and maybe a little more -- as being perfectly sensible.  And again I mean the total, so only that much unique new sky in the case where a) summer tilt + winter tilt = that sort of figure, and b) the summer stars and the winter stars are all completely different, with a big equinoctial set-change between the two, somehow, apparently.  (Strange things happen in Hell, clearly.)  Whereas at the other extreme, say we only get 3 degrees of tilt in one direction, and 2.5 degrees in the other and they're furthermore very largely the same stars between the two...  Then you're only looking to "patch in" a new slice 1/60th of the size of what we have already.

So really it's in the first instance up to some enterprising individual to decide whether they want an excuse to create as much new sky as possible, or moreso a little as is necessary.  For purposes of Varied Glorantha, that is, I dare not suggest anything beyond that.

11 hours ago, Joerg said:

That precession means that the same midnight section of underworld stars will be above the horizon at the solstices, with less tilt and shorter visibility at Summer Solstice nights and more tilt and way longer exposure at Winter Solstice nights.

Sure geometrically, if Glorantha were a planet or anything with naturalistic geometry then they'd be the same.  Or more precisely, the summer stars would be duplicated in the winter, with a slightly larger "downward extension"in the winter, perhaps giving some huge plot-twist on the meaning of the constellations.  But given that it's not, that there are weirder phenoms by far, and that it'd be a rather stately change from one to the other (twice per year), them being different to some degree doesn't seem very GloranToon to me.  Albeit it's a whole-cloth invention -- but so is anything to fill in this gap, by definition.

11 hours ago, Joerg said:

Which constellations of the upper sky take a dip below the horizon?

Pick a number, get out a protractor!  Or look at the mythologies and fudge to taste, perhaps...  I doubt there's as big a deal as the Ancient Egyptians made between the Indestructibles and the lesser-order stars, but there might be some mythology about the formerly non-Underworld stars that are now are part-time, and conversely about those previously only in the Underworld that now sometimes are seen above the horizon.  Whether they're seen as morally degraded, or unfortunate, broken, or especially heroic... 

11 hours ago, Joerg said:

You mention the terrestrial analogue. That analogue isn't, really - the equinox sky is how you would experience the stars a few days twowards winter before or after the equinox at our poles (minus the light pollution you get from the sun almost being on the horizon). The solstice night sky would resemble a rather high latitude terrestrial winter solstice night sky in terms of stars and constellations going below the horizon or rising up.

Well, scare-quotes "analogue" to your personally desired level and taste!  The biggest weirdness of the Gloranthan sky -- and its a long list, so this is no small claim I know -- is that we have an equatorial sun and polar stars superimposed on each other, at the same time and same place.  (All places in Glorantha apparently, but that might be another can of worms best left to another ultra-niche thread entirely.)  i.e. in the Perfect Sky configuration, the sun or Lightfore is directly overhead, as if we were in central Africa or South America.  But the pole star is also directly overhead, and the sky rotating flat around it, as if we were at the North Pole.  That's an odd pair of intuitions to try to combine.  But it wouldn't be Glorantha were it not often the wacky side of odd!

[Joerg]

2 hours ago, Alex said:

Same thing.  I think.  My geometry's pretty rusty, and spherical trig is the stuff of 'Nam-style flashbacks for me, but imagine slicing an apple into segments.  If you cut it into eight equal parts (say) then the fraction of the total internal angle and the surface area are pro-rata.  So 45 degrees is a quarter of the hemisphere.

Of a non-rotating hemisphere, yes. However, the sky rotates, and even just one third of that rotation (an eight hour summer solstice night) would extend the extra visibility by (estimated) half again that area.

2 hours ago, Alex said:

But when i say that, i just mention that's the O(mag) of the RW sitch, I'm not saying I'm hugely wedded to that figure, just that I could see anything up to that -- and maybe a little more -- as being perfectly sensible.  And again I mean the total, so only that much unique new sky in the case where a) summer tilt + winter tilt = that sort of figure, and b) the summer stars and the winter stars are all completely different, with a big equinoctial set-change between the two, somehow, apparently.  (Strange things happen in Hell, clearly.)  Whereas at the other extreme, say we only get 3 degrees of tilt in one direction, and 2.5 degrees in the other and they're furthermore very largely the same stars between the two...  Then you're only looking to "patch in" a new slice 1/60th of the size of what we have already.

Well, if you want those summer and winter Underworld stars completely different, something must happen at the equinoxes to switch out the scenery, or otherwise the tilted up rim would not quite follow the same rotation as the decent upper half sky. Which would be a cool thing, and which might need some heavy mythologizing to provide a bunch of explanations for.

One model might have the upper hemisphere do 293 or 295 rotations in a year (no idea which is the case) while the lower half does exactly 294 rotations and therefore does not change as the year progresses, which leads to different stars tilting up in the north in winter than in the south in summer.

2 hours ago, Alex said:

The biggest weirdness of the Gloranthan sky -- and its a long list, so this is no small claim I know -- is that we have an equatorial sun and polar stars superimposed on each other, at the same time and same place.

With a bunch of stationary objects tossed into the mix, too.

But yes, one night looking at the sky and you know you aren't in Kansas any more.

[Alex]

5 hours ago, Joerg said:

Of a non-rotating hemisphere, yes. However, the sky rotates, and even just one third of that rotation (an eight hour summer solstice night) would extend the extra visibility by (estimated) half again that area.

Oh, yeah.  Sorry, I was basically just thinking of the 'midnight' visibilities.  So yeah, in total rather more, though due to the daylight issue extra fiddly to work out how much exactly, even if all the parameters were fully determined.  

5 hours ago, Joerg said:

Well, if you want those summer and winter Underworld stars completely different, something must happen at the equinoxes to switch out the scenery, or otherwise the tilted up rim would not quite follow the same rotation as the decent upper half sky.

Not necessarily completely different, but possibly a minority scenery-change.  As I don't have a 'design' either, i can only speak as to the possibilities, in annoying generalities.  But yes, it'd have to happen at the equinoxes, or at least equinoxward of the time any given patch of hellsky between the time it appears in the summer night sky, and the winter one.

5 hours ago, Joerg said:

Which would be a cool thing, and which might need some heavy mythologizing to provide a bunch of explanations for.

It's Glorantha, of course there'd be mythology!  In first instance, simply mythology saying "yeah those are the Summer/Winter Pastures", "behold the Fire/Dark/Storm Winds", "it's the Oslir in spate/drought", etc, etc.  The meta-mythology about the 'mechanics' of it would be implicit, secondary, and maybe largely absent.  We don't get a lot of such to explain why if Stars are Forts -- not itself a universal belief anyway -- then other star-like objects behave entirely inconsistently with that explanatory account.  I mean, those would be nice, but IMO not essential, and certainly not something I'd even want there to be a single objectively correct mechanistic rationale for.

5 hours ago, Joerg said:

One model might have the upper hemisphere do 293 or 295 rotations in a year (no idea which is the case) while the lower half does exactly 294 rotations and therefore does not change as the year progresses, which leads to different stars tilting up in the north in winter than in the south in summer.

I forget offhand whether it's 293 or 295 too, and I know the overall sum of sources do contradict themselves on that.  But I think we did get a Definitive answer at one point!  Of course, that might be post-definitive in turn if the GtG doesn't nail it back down again.

If one is anxious about Sufficiently Heavy Mythologising, I'd say having two hemispherical domes joined together by some sort of differential gear mechanism might pose its own questions!  Granted it's not so rapid a change as to look visually startling, but it's an odd concept if one is thinking of it as a solid object.

I suppose if one were of a sufficiently indecisive or maximalist bent, one might combine one of more of these concepts with different stars appearing by different mechanisms.  Not sure that makes the 'needs more mythology' issue worse, or confuses the pain somewhat.

5 hours ago, Joerg said:

But yes, one night looking at the sky and you know you aren't in Kansas any more.

Or any such Anomalously Southerly location, indeed!

[Joerg]

4 hours ago, Alex said:

In first instance, simply mythology saying "yeah those are the Summer/Winter Pastures", "behold the Fire/Dark/Storm Winds", "it's the Oslir in spate/drought", etc, etc.

I like the pastures angle, that would work with stars phasing in and out of visibility.

Oslir in spate or drought works fine, too, since the river should be in that part of the sky around dusk and dawn.

Winds as semi-fix stars is something I am a bit dubious about. (But then, the celestial river - a moving feature - is represented by fixed constellations, too.) But with Orlanth's Ring about, the celestial hurricane is well represented.

4 hours ago, Alex said:

We don't get a lot of such to explain why if Stars are Forts -- not itself a universal belief anyway -- then other star-like objects behave entirely inconsistently with that explanatory account.  I mean, those would be nice, but IMO not essential, and certainly not something I'd even want there to be a single objectively correct mechanistic rationale for.

I cannot even tell whether (or when) star people live inside the sky dome or outside, or whether they shift sides along with the day/night cycle. If you travel the celestial river upward, does the celestial city turn up starbord or portside of your ship?

Stars will appear as forts/towns or as walled wells when approached in a certain context. Or campfires, trees, ziggurats, mountains... Different context, different explanations, different appearances.

 

[Alex]

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

Winds as semi-fix stars is something I am a bit dubious about.

Vingkot's various viwes, perhaps?

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

(But then, the celestial river - a moving feature - is represented by fixed constellations, too.)

Hrm, this reminds me, there must the an Underworld segment of the River, too...  I assume more-or-less contiguous with the equinox-visible half-turn, but who knows with what plot twists...

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

I cannot even tell whether (or when) star people live inside the sky dome or outside, or whether they shift sides along with the day/night cycle. If you travel the celestial river upward, does the celestial city turn up starbord or portside of your ship?

As to when, I think wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey.  I assumed that in the Star Fort myth-metaphor, the garrison live topside.  In other framings, perhaps exactly the opposite, as you say.

[Alex]

On 8/28/2024 at 7:04 PM, Joerg said:

Winds as semi-fix stars is something I am a bit dubious about.

This was just an off-the-top-of-my-head frinstance per culture, and the Orlanthi aren't at the top of anyone's "design the sky to suit their preferences" list, so this isn't any sort of hill I'd die on.  But it occurs to me belatedly that these are necessarily all "new" stars -- or heavily rearranged ones, might be even worse! -- not those in the Golden Age sky at all.  They'd only be visible from the Storm Age at the earliest, maybe later if they didn't appear immediately after the Tilt happened.  So I'd suspect that even for the likes of the Dara Happans they have if not Air then Disorder or Darkness sorts of connotations.  ("You just said much the same bad thing three times," quoth the average Solar.)  So Iunno, maybe we'd see things like the Ruins of Mernita, Umath's Bones, the Bad Rains, and so forth.

[Joerg]

Just now, Alex said:

This was just an off-the-top-of-my-head frinstance per culture, and the Orlanthi aren't at the top of anyone's "design the sky to suit their preferences" list, so this isn't any sort of hill I'd die on.  But it occurs to me belatedly that these are necessarily all "new" stars -- or heavily rearranged ones, might be even worse! -- not those in the Golden Age sky at all.  They'd only be visible from the Storm Age at the earliest, maybe later if they didn't appear immediately after the Tilt happened.  So I'd suspect that even for the likes of the Dara Happans they have if not Air then Disorder or Darkness sorts of connotations.  ("You just said much the same bad thing three times," quoth the average Solar.)  So Iunno, maybe we'd see things like the Ruins of Mernita, Umath's Bones, the Bad Rains, and so forth.

It israther weird how young the stars are. According to the Dara Happans, Umath might as well be called "midwife of the stars", as it took his invasion through Stormgate to populate the sky dome with stars. In the Copper Tablets text, Zator, one of the Planetary Sons of Yelm (or possibly Dayzatar as a planet) left the sky dome through Stormgate, and in response the stars flooded out of Stormgate to take up their positions on the sky dome. Pretty much at the same instance as Umath crashed into the northern Pillar.

There is a chance that the tilt area is inhabited by celestial entities somehow landing in the below-the-rim zone. But infernal denizens may well have joined them.

[Alex]

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

It israther weird how young the stars are. According to the Dara Happans, Umath might as well be called "midwife of the stars", as it took his invasion through Stormgate to populate the sky dome with stars. In the Copper Tablets text, Zator, one of the Planetary Sons of Yelm (or possibly Dayzatar as a planet) left the sky dome through Stormgate, and in response the stars flooded out of Stormgate to take up their positions on the sky dome. Pretty much at the same instance as Umath crashed into the northern Pillar.

Or if you go with the "Star Forts" myth-framework, necessarily by the very premise that's Not Ideal.  The immaculate sky hasn't just been slightly shop-soiled -- there's a buncha holes in it!  That's "Used" condition at best, and scarcely better than "For Parts or Repair".

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

There is a chance that the tilt area is inhabited by celestial entities somehow landing in the below-the-rim zone. But infernal denizens may well have joined them.

Yeah, might be a Star Captain that's been slain and restored to life, though at less than the ~50% quota of vitality that the likes of Yelm and Lightfore get, much less the stately circumpolar eternal vigilance of the Indestructibles.

Edited September 3 by Alex