| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Icelander |
Posted - 27 Feb 2012 : 21:54:54
We have several refencences in canon to large-scale climatic change in the Realms. Usually, these changes have ripple effect throughout the ecology, which affects the economy of anything from paleolithic hunter-gatherers, through pastoral peoples and to settled acricultural societies.
A cooling or warming period can often be associated with a decline or a fall of a civilisation, such as with the Sarrukh, lost Ostoria of the giants, the batrachi civilisations, Netheril, the goblins of Hlundadim and the High Moors, etc. They are also often the catalyst for the rise of new societies or new technologies.
With this in mind, any analysis of Toril's history with a view toward filling in gaps for undated events and piecing together a likely course of events during 'dark ages'* must have the climatic conditions of the time in mind.
So, I thought I'd collect together what canon references we have for climatic events, whether they were cooling or warming, what region they affected (or if they were global) and how long they lasted. The cause, if any, would be nice to know too.
Eventually, I hope to have enough to be able to say with a fair degree of confidence whether a given region was colder or warmer than in the modern era at any point. Of course, even during a generally warm period, you'll have cold snaps and vice versa, but at least I'd have the kind of knowledge that Earth-historians are used to working with, i.e. a general indication of a trend.
I'll put certain canon stuff in blue, probables in normal-coloured text and my own speculation in maroon. Normal periods are pretty much what we'd expect on modern Earth, modified by Toril being 12% larger (and climate zones thus larger too) and its axial tilt being slightly more (hotter summers, colder winters in north and south hemispheres, even if the average is the same).
Here goes, with the absolute macroscale first:
Blue Age: 70,000 to ? DR. Torrid period, moderated by oceans..
Coming of the Stormstar: -55,000 to -43,000 DR. Climatic extremes, with regions varying.
Cold Night: ca 43,000 to ca -42,000** DR. Deep freeze. I like to believe that a strip around the equator was ice-free.***
A New Sunrise: -42,000 to -37,000 DR. Transition between cold and warm periods.
Verdant Aeons: -37,000 to -33,800 DR. Torrid period.
Aeons of Hatching: -33,800 to -31,000 DR. Normal period.****
Time of Tears: -31,000 to -27,000 DR. Coldish period.
The Flowering: -27,000 to -24,000 DR. Normal period.
Sundering Aeons: -24,000 to -17,600 DR. Erratic climate*****.
[What We Have Here Is A Very Long Time For Which I've Got Nothing]
Time of Cold Hopes: -2550 to -462 DR. Coldish period.
Winterseve: -461 to -350 DR. Coldish period (cold in northern Faerun, droughts).
Úlföld (Time of Wolwes): -351 to 204 DR. Cold period.
The Snowflower Spring: 205 to 256 DR. Coldish period.
Years Without Summer: 257 to 270 DR. Cold period.
The Melting: 271 to 307 DR. Coldish period, very wet.
The Scorching: 308 to 330 DR. Normal period (on average, but with extreme temperatures, long cold winters and very hot summers).
Years of Waxing and Waning: 331 to 459 DR. Coldish period.
Time of Plenty: 460 to 478 DR. Normal period.
The Fading: 479 to 513 DR. Coldish period, drought.
The False Spring: 514 to 516 DR. Normal period.
Years of Dark Rain: 517 to 530 DR. Cold period.
Time of Hard-earned Harvests: 531-589 DR. Coldish period.
Turning of the Leaf: 590-599 DR. Normal period.
Auril's Fury: 600 to 653 DR. Cold period.
Time of Snowbriars: 654 to 720 DR. Coldish period.
Mornbright Era: 721 to 1037 DR. Normal period.
The Spreading Spring: 1038 to 1305 DR. Warm period.
Summer of Man: 1306 to 1357 DR. Warmish period.
The Harvests Without Gods: 1358 to 1371 DR. Normal period.
Time of Upheaval: 1372 to 1380 DR. Coldish, regional floods and drought.
The Freezing: 1381 DR to ?. Cold period.
Does anyone have any comments? Remember any lore which might suggest that some areas were warmer or colder at the time than they are now? Changes in sea levels? Advances or retreats of glaciers? Changes in desertification?
Also, it is very possible that some of the above were regional for Faerun and left the rest of Toril more or less unaffected. By all means comment on any that you think this applies to. Especially if you can point out that Kara-Tur's temperate areas were still blooming at a cold snap for Faerun or something like that.
*Times for which we have little or no lore for a given region or civilisation, but infer from connections with other lore that some things worth knowing must have happened.
**In -37,000, 'the last glaciations have largely ended', which means that at that time, there was almost no permanent ice on Toril, i.e. that the polar areas were almost ice-free. A frozen world does not reach this state in a year or two and I've chosen to go with around 5,000 years as being extremely fast (and calling for some pretty fierce sun), but not so fast as to risk wiping out what life had endured during the Cold Night. I go with speed for two reasons. One, with Ed claiming that Toril is around 70,000 DR, there isn't a lot of time for things to happen on a geological timeframe. The second is based on what I imagine was happenig in divine politics, which is that once peace between the battling Sisters was established, the Earthmother, Selune and Mystryl were anxious to see life diversify and flower.
***Kept that way by the reflected glow of Selune and focused warmth from the Earthmother. Isolated valleys near the equator might also have served as refugia, with various early gods having protected their people. I base this idea on the fact that after the rise of the Second Sun, there was a lot of life on Toril ready to spread out. I guess it could all have been created fully-formed, but I find it more interesting to assume that there was some living continuity with the earlier days. Not to mention that it allows us to assume that natural, if rapid, evolution happened with some of the more 'mundane' species.
****I'm assuming that the sarrukh ritual which rerouted the Narrow Sea and ended up causing 'an ecological catastrophe' altered the axial tilt of Toril and/or the amount of sun it got. In any event, things clearly got cooler, because in the map from -31,500 we've got permanent glaciers reaching inland, which suggests that glaciation started again. Also the sarrukh's somnolence and the fall of Isstosseffil sound like they were caused by a cooling period. We know that something concentrated the cold effects on what would became Aunaroch, but I'm guessing that the effects were more than just regional.
*****Some parts of the world having a cold period, others a warm one and yet others rapidly switching, with no apparent rhyme and reason. Only beings with command over powerful magic, like the elves of that time, could sustain acriculture and the nomatic hunter-gatherer human tribes often found their sources of food failing and the herds migrating. |
| 14 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Archasimos |
Posted - 11 Apr 2012 : 01:58:09
Does anyone know where Ed posted that comment about Toril being 70,000 years old, I wanted to check it out and so far I can't find it. |
| Lord Karsus |
Posted - 08 Mar 2012 : 17:33:39
-The concept of deities being forces of nature incarnate is what led me to eventually get rid of 'hard' deities, as opposed to 'soft' deities (their presence is absolutely known, as opposed to their presence being only speculated on) in my own setting. It got too much for me, that certain phenomena could be the product of natural processes and deities. An eclipse was not just the planet, moon, and sun coming into a certain alignment, but a deity itself doing something. Weather was not just the natural processes of the planet in relation to it's distance from the sun, and processes going on on the planet itself, but a deity itself represented on the physical plane. |
| Icelander |
Posted - 08 Mar 2012 : 10:50:40
quote:
Originally posted by Dennis
Let me rephrase that: If a bunch of insanely powerful humans can meddle with the weather, how much more the 'higher' beings? Gods, Primordials, or Outsiders... Even Chauntea does not have total control over the 'nature' in a certain realm or location; nor does Auril and Lathander in a realm's weather.
The tug of war by these higher beings might be the cause.
I know it could be the cause. I believe I even explained so above. The point is, if it is the cause, we can show examples in canon of how weather patterns caused by divine beings actually conform sufficiently to our expectations for natural weather for Realms expectations of weather to match ours, for the most part.
The underlying causes, then, don't actually affect our ability to observe the climatic variables and to explain history in their terms. |
| Dennis |
Posted - 08 Mar 2012 : 04:26:53
Let me rephrase that: If a bunch of insanely powerful humans can meddle with the weather, how much more the 'higher' beings? Gods, Primordials, or Outsiders... Even Chauntea does not have total control over the 'nature' in a certain realm or location; nor does Auril and Lathander in a realm's weather.
The tug of war by these higher beings might be the cause. |
| Icelander |
Posted - 07 Mar 2012 : 06:52:31
quote:
Originally posted by Dennis
Heck, Thay's weather is always 'regulated' by magic.
Yes, it is.
But, again, this does not provide us with any information about the macroscale climate of Toril over the centuries and millenia. Thay has not been in existence for five hundred years* and even during its existence, there is no evidence that they do more than adjust the weather conditions that they are already having to ensure that regular rain falls on their crops. I doubt that major events in the evolution of the human race on Toril or the rise and fall of civilisations have any relationship with Thay's weather magic.
*I find it impossible to think in terms of 4e dates. |
| Dennis |
Posted - 07 Mar 2012 : 01:31:29
Heck, Thay's weather is always 'regulated' by magic. |
| Icelander |
Posted - 06 Mar 2012 : 14:26:38
I'm not necessarily claiming that natural laws in Realmspace and our universe are the same at an atomic or subatomic level.
It might well be that all weather on Toril is caused by godly intervention and the eternal battles of the Gods of Fury against the 'gentler', more favourable to humans, ones.
But that's not really something that we have to know in order to usefully note down the climatic conditions of different eras on Toril. We know that Faerunian sages note it when glaciers are present in conditions that we would consider unusual and that they are capable of reaching the same conclusion that we are, i.e. that given the elevation and latitude, the glacier must be maintained by magical means.
This tells us that even if entirely caused by supernatural means, the 'normal' weather conditions of Toril are analoguous to ours. It doesn't matter if it's caused by the ascendancy of the Tripartite Sun over Shar, a wobble in the planet's orbit or a period of increased solar radiation; a warm period is a warm period, whether to Toril or Earth.
So, glaciers located where glaciers should not be, such as the Great Glacier, the High Ice and the Glacier of the White Worm, are recognisable to Faerunians as well as us outside observers as resulting from specific acts of magic. This is what I mean when I refer to 'correcting for magic', in that even in warm periods, you might have glaciers subsisting at lower altitudes and elevations than otherwise possible.
That being said, I am convinced that even if divine beings are the ultimate cause of all that happens on Toril*, the methods they choose are ones familiar to Earthlings as the results of natural phenomena there. To support this idea, I point to Faiths and Avatars and Powers and Pantheons, where most of the ways that deities express their views to mortals or intervene in worldly events are, indeed, seemingly 'natural' phenomena that are made significant to nearby believers by their timing.
I also point out that the permanent cooling of Toril after the Tearfall was attributed by designers to a minor change in its orbit caused by the asteroid strikes. So even if the climate change was tracable to gods, the mechanism is one familiar to Earthlings.
*Which is a view to which I don't particularly subscribe, but I'm acknowledging it for the purposes of the argument. |
| Barastir |
Posted - 06 Mar 2012 : 12:01:26
quote:
Originally posted by Ayrik
(...) Even in the Heartlands we have (had) a magical lifedraining hot and desolate desert immediately adjacent to the glacial extremes of the Spine of the World.
Well, we must remember temperature is influenced not only by distance from the equator but also from the height above sea level, like in plains or in mountain peaks. Besides, if the Anauroch is a normal desert, it will be hot during the day, but freezing in the night. And temperature is probably different in northern and southern Anauroch.  |
| Jeremy Grenemyer |
Posted - 05 Mar 2012 : 20:43:26
quote:
Originally posted by Icelander
While explicit acts of magic might occasionally produce different results on Toril, as always, the baseline is reality and then you correct for the effects of magic.
I think this is the most practical approach, but it should be noted you're still assuming quite a lot by stating the baseline is reality (where by reality it appears you mean “clone of the Earth”), particularly in the face of a timeline that is by its very nature ongoing.
What I’m getting at are two things:
1) There’s no evidence (that I know of) that on the sub atomic or the atomic scale the Realms are the same as Earth.
2) Over time, you don’t “correct” for magic so much as you accept it as another force; something with a highly variable nature whose influence can be very subtle; something whose presence has been part of the Realms since its creation. Ergo, magic isn't just overt.
Excellent thread by the way. This is an interesting topic.
|
| Icelander |
Posted - 05 Mar 2012 : 20:28:10
quote:
Originally posted by Ayrik
Climate on what scale? The Heartlands, all of Faerûn, all of Toril?
All of the above, as noted in the first post. Changes in temperature that affect all of Toril are the most vital datapoints, but the others are important too.
quote:
Originally posted by Ayrik
If it's cold somewhere then it must be warm somewhere else, at the very least to provide a comparative reference.
Not really. As noted above, the comparative reference is modern Earth climate.
It's perfectly possible to say that from 1400-1500 CE, the Eath was colder than in the centuries before and after. It ought to be possible to say the same for the Realms, or at least find clues on when it has been in warm periods and when in cold ones.
quote:
Originally posted by Ayrik
Historical changes in, say, Zakhara or Kara-Tur are likely influenced by their own regional climates. Even in the Heartlands we have (had) a magical lifedraining hot and desolate desert immediately adjacent to the glacial extremes of the Spine of the World.
Naturally. But the effects of global cold or warm periods on an Earth-like planet at a given latitude, for given geographic conditions, are well known and studied. While explicit acts of magic might occasionally produce different results on Toril, as always, the baseline is reality and then you correct for the effects of magic.
This is similar how we don't have to tell players creating characters for play on Toril that objects at rest will remain at rest unless affected by an external force and that large enough objects will exert a pull over smaller objects that could cause them harm on landing. They'll know that unless their characters use magic or other special abilities to alter them, these things will hold true.
By the same token, if Toril in general is warm enough so that the glaciers over all the world have melted and the polar regions are almost ice free, it follows that sea levels will be higher and temperatures across the board higher as well. Sure, one or two glaciers might be preserved by magic, but a GM wondering whether or not a given coastline was in the same place at the time can at least guess 'probably not' with a fair degree of confidence and thus be able to understand the causes of past events better. |
| Ayrik |
Posted - 05 Mar 2012 : 19:21:11
Climate on what scale? The Heartlands, all of Faerûn, all of Toril? If it's cold somewhere then it must be warm somewhere else, at the very least to provide a comparative reference. Historical changes in, say, Zakhara or Kara-Tur are likely influenced by their own regional climates. Even in the Heartlands we have (had) a magical lifedraining hot and desolate desert immediately adjacent to the glacial extremes of the Spine of the World. |
| Icelander |
Posted - 04 Mar 2012 : 20:13:01
quote:
Originally posted by Dennis
In a world awash with magic and where gods meddle in a regular basis, changes in climate is no wonder. Auril could plunge an entire continent in eternal winter should she want to and should no other gods try to stop her. And Lathander can make the people of the North experience the true meaning of "summer."
All true.
But when interpreting events in the past of Toril, it is extremely helpful to know what climatic conditions were at that time. Events in Earth history have often been precipitated by changes in weather conditions. |
| Dennis |
Posted - 04 Mar 2012 : 20:08:29
In a world awash with magic and where gods meddle in a regular basis, changes in climate is no wonder. Auril could plunge an entire continent in eternal winter should she want to and should no other gods try to stop her. And Lathander can make the people of the North experience the true meaning of "summer."
In The Year of Rogue Dragons trilogy, the North seemed a lot colder than usual because of the Ice Queen's (and her patron's) constant meddling. |
| Bladewind |
Posted - 04 Mar 2012 : 18:38:55
Mayhaps, apart from the tilt of Torils axial, the tripartite sun's activity can be linked to having a cold or warm period in time. Perhaps Amaunator represents less fierce solar activity, while Lathander represents an increase and the third sun-aspect harkens the coming of a warmer period? |
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