The Great Winter

[jajagappa]

6 hours ago, DrGoth said:

Ouch- that's a lot.  Where's the 508k figure from?

My Heortland work that's in the current RQ pipeline queue.

2 hours ago, JRE said:

That includes two years of civil war with religious civil war overtones, and strong foreign intervention, so it not clear how much is hunger driven, as those are the bloodiest.

Ernalda's fertility will not have helped much as the full return is in Sea season 1624. 

Not just hunger (for those along the coast, if you can break through whatever ice above the Mirrorsea you can fish), but the cold is ongoing and intense. However, as noted, its ongoing civil war (I'm not sure 'religious' is the right reference for Lunar vs. Storm), and surges of Chaos. It's an early glimpse into the Great Darkness due to come in the Hero Wars.

[Joerg]

3 hours ago, jajagappa said:

Not just hunger (for those along the coast, if you can break through whatever ice above the Mirrorsea you can fish), but the cold is ongoing and intense. However, as noted, its ongoing civil war (I'm not sure 'religious' is the right reference for Lunar vs. Storm), and surges of Chaos. It's an early glimpse into the Great Darkness due to come in the Hero Wars.

The Mirrorsea doesn't normally freeze over, and did not in the Godtime (by virtue of having been dried up before the Great Winter arrived). The Rozgali current would not have been hampered by the Windstop, bringing decently warm water into the coastal areas.

While not exactly a hot pool like on Iceland or in Japan, the water would emit mists or fog, which (without any wind) would have remained more or less stationary. The tidal areas might have been an exception, as those would cool down significantly at low tide and then reheated to above-zero (Celsius) as the warm(ish) tides ran in.

The fisherfolk might remember this time as the reign of Iphara, possibly with some demonic infestation of the unmoving fog.

[JRE]

I had not thought about cold, as I expected the sea would soften things in terms of weather. But you know best the Ketahelan weather. As for Civil War, I was thinking of Red Earth vs Old Earth, as I still think Red Earth is Earth with some Lunar overtones and not Lunar with some Earth overtones. But I am sure the Lunars, Greymane and the Wolf Pirates kill their share of people too.

Being allied with the Merfolk may well mean the difference between life and death in the bay.

[Joerg]

 

3 hours ago, JRE said:

Being allied with the Merfolk may well mean the difference between life and death in the bay.

For my little sandbox in the tidal zone I have schools of Ludoch managing human fisherfolk and schools keeping certain parts of the bay free from their fishing. The latter aren't really hostile unless someone comes poaching in their reserves. The latter wouldn't be of much help, and only the local fisherfolk can reliably make the distinction based on pod markings etc.

[mfbrandi]

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

I have schools of Ludoch managing human fisherfolk and schools keeping certain parts of the bay free from their fishing …, and only the local fisherfolk can reliably make the distinction based on pod markings etc.

Or just ask them?

[jajagappa]

10 hours ago, Joerg said:

The fisherfolk might remember this time as the reign of Iphara, possibly with some demonic infestation of the unmoving fog.

Given that the Holy Country was a proximate realm during Belintar's reign, they would in fact have experienced Iphara's fogs even before the Great Winter.

However, with Iphara as an Air goddess, she may not have been able to manifest in that area during the Great Winter.

[Joerg]

On 6/10/2023 at 4:12 AM, jajagappa said:

Given that the Holy Country was a proximate realm during Belintar's reign, they would in fact have experienced Iphara's fogs even before the Great Winter.

Sure, but prone to be blown away when the winds take up again. Which doesn't happen in the Windstop.

 

On 6/10/2023 at 4:12 AM, jajagappa said:

However, with Iphara as an Air goddess, she may not have been able to manifest in that area during the Great Winter.

Good point, but Iphara doesn't have Mobility, she is a still air phenomenon just like her half-sister Molanni, who was "active" in the Lokamayadon era windstop, too.

Also, Iphara is half Sea tribe.

[Scotty]

Please keep to the topic (the demographics of the Great Winter), or start a new one.

[EricW]

I think there’s a strong hint in Orlanth is Dead that things magically return to normal after the battle of Iceland - at least for people who didn’t defect to the seven mothers.

So cattle turn out to be fine, and lots of people who everyone thought were dead turn out to be alive?

[hipsterinspace]

The Eleven Lights campaign makes it clear that a lot of people die, on the order of a few hundred in a relatively large and wealthy clan of 1500. Lots of people and animals die, it’s genuinely dire even coming out on the other side of it. Broyan, Kallyr, and the rest of the rebellion in Heortland and Sartar are still weak and on the defensive, it will take years to recover, which makes extreme options like calling on Harrek or the Dragonrise very attractive.

Even after the decapitation strike that was the Dragonrise, the population in Sartar will take a long time to recover while the post-occupation baby boom grows to adulthood.

Edited June 16, 2023 by hipsterinspace

[DrGoth]

On 6/17/2023 at 7:54 AM, hipsterinspace said:

The Eleven Lights campaign makes it clear that a lot of people die, on the order of a few hundred in a relatively large and wealthy clan of 1500. Lots of people and animals die, it’s genuinely dire even coming out on the other side of it. Broyan, Kallyr, and the rest of the rebellion in Heortland and Sartar are still weak and on the defensive, it will take years to recover, which makes extreme options like calling on Harrek or the Dragonrise very attractive.

Even after the decapitation strike that was the Dragonrise, the population in Sartar will take a long time to recover while the post-occupation baby boom grows to adulthood.

I'm not sure I'd agree with that. eleven Lights isn't listed amongst the canon now and that high a death rate doesn't match the canon figures we have.

 

[Zit]

it has been probably asked somewhere else, but is it possible to initiate Orlanthis during this time ? And what about new rune lords and priests ? And what about after the Great Winter, until Orlanth is free again ?

[John Biles]

33 minutes ago, Zit said:

it has been probably asked somewhere else, but is it possible to initiate Orlanthis during this time ? And what about new rune lords and priests ? And what about after the Great Winter, until Orlanth is free again ?

Orlanth is dead during it, so you can't really advance or be initiated.

 

[David Scott]

17 hours ago, Zit said:

it has been probably asked somewhere else, but is it possible to initiate Orlanthis during this time ? And what about new rune lords and priests ? And what about after the Great Winter, until Orlanth is free again ?

Outside the windstop yes, inside no. After the windstop, everything slowly returns to normal.

So out in the Wastes there are likely a few new Praxian Wind Lords created on holy days, likewise over in Maniria. Initiations would continue as normal. Trilus in Balazar is also unaffected so the temple would continue as normal.

Edited June 25, 2023 by David Scott

[AlexS]

It’s not an exact comparison, but we do have a very recent parallel to the Windstop/Great Winter: the COVID-19 pandemic.

On the disease side, actual mortality from Covid has been significant but not devastating by historical standards (great plagues), but it was concentrated among particular demographics - particularly elders. As I know from coordinating a research project on the pandemic’s impacts on indigenous peoples, the loss of elders is particularly catastrophic for societies that rely on memory and orality for preserving and transmitting knowledge. Since the hunger, disease and other dangers that accompanied the Great Winter are also likely to have hit elders disproportionately hard, we should assume that the Heortlings have taken a major hit to their reserves of wisdom and knowledge (albeit one that can be mitigated through shamanic ancestor communication).

On the economic and social disruption side, the pandemic was a massive intensifier of inequality, with food insecurity and loss of livelihood concentrated among the urban poor in low and middle income countries (particularly hard hit by lockdowns, which affected rural areas much less) and among people in rich countries whose work couldn’t be done remotely. We can assume a similar dynamic in the cities of Sartar (merchants and scribes living off their home or temple food reserves while street-sweepers starve) but also expect something similar to have happened in rural areas, with thanes and carls living off the stores in their granaries and salting the meat of animals who died while some cottars and all stick-pickers throw themselves on the mercy of the temples, turn to banditry or starve.

Perhaps most significantly for an RQG game set in 1625 (three years after the peak of the Great Winter, just as we are three years after the peak of the pandemic) we should acknowledge these events as an unprocessed collective trauma. All the political sound and fury of 1623-1625 will have drowned out the voices calling for peace, reflection on what we have lost and learned and focusing not on conflict but on nurturing communities’ fractured relationships with Orlanth and Ernalda back into health. As with the political polarisation in our societies and the invasion of Ukraine on our doorstep (for Europeans) drowning out our own need to mourn, heal and learn, so with purging Lunar collaborators and blaming the Dragonrise for rising food prices drowning out the voices in Sartar that may be calling for the Hero Wars to be postponed.

Adventurers whose protagonist role in their own Family History started in the midst of the Great Winter are the Sartarite equivalent of our kids who had to go through High School or university in the pandemic - perhaps wise before their time, and angry with it, but well acquainted with mourning beloved elders - and perhaps yearning to build a world that is better than the one they have inherited from those elders?

[Joerg]

Another similarity COVID bears to the Great Winter is the loss of opportunities for an entire batch of young people who lost their initiatory schedule, as in learning to be "normal humans" through interaction with the other initiees.

Lokamayadon's actions during the breach of Compromise that was the Battle of Night and Day did a similar thing to the Heortlings in his time.