More on seasons

[Scott of Hyperborea]

I'm finally free of my Goldshire obligations, and Eoin's inspired me/made me feel guilty, so time to write down some of the stuff that's been building up in my head for a while.

Seasons. Not going to reiterate what the five seasons are, you can find them on the wiki (currently down so I can't link to it). This is more about what the seasons mean and how they're marked.

The first full day of every season is a holiday. So if the news that the first big auroral storm has been seen comes in one evening, the next day is a holiday to mark the beginning of autumn.

Raikoth has a lot of well-known classical musical pieces that can be played year-round, but each season also has its own score of music. These are songs that have become so strongly associated with a particular season that it's become taboo to play them any other time. It's kind of like how you look forward to hearing Christmas carols in December, except that technically you're allowed to play them all year if you really want, whereas it'd be considered bad luck to even so much as hum a few notes of a spring song in the summer.

The thought here is that there needs to be some extra things that makes each season special and different (compare to the restrictions on mass travel to keep each of the cities unique) and something people can do to celebrate and appreciate the season they're in.

I've been doing this for about four or five years now in the real world. I've got one song for each season, and I can't listen to it any time else. It's a great feeling to get my headphones on the first day of winter and start listening to winter music again. My own choices, which are in no way Hyperborean "canon", are:

Spring: One By One All Day, by the Shins
Summer: Summersong and July, July, by the Decemberists
Autumn: The Past and Pending, by the Shins
Winter: Faith Noel, by Trans-Siberian Orchestra

If I were a real Hyperborean, I'd need one for the cloudy season too, but we don't really get a separate cloudy season here.

Although I don't do it myself, the Hyperboreans also have certain pieces that can only be played on the first day of the season, so part of the holiday on the season's first day is hearing these pieces in concert.

The most important season in Hyperborea is winter. It's dangerous, often fatal, and much of Hyperborean civilization is an adaptation to help people get through it both physically and psychologically.

At the beginning of winter, almost everyone travels from their homes in the country into the big cities. Here, they either already have second homes, or they build igloo - like homes for their families with the help of the community. Once everyone has had enough time to enter the city, the civic leaders ceremonially close and lock the gates. In olden times, this was in deadly earnest: they were being locked against the ice demons, who were supposed to rule the wastes outside during the dark winter months. Poems speak of the demons constantly whining and pleading to be let inside, using all sorts of tricks and wiles and bribes, but the legend goes that if any enter, everyone in the city will freeze to death. Nowadays, the locking is purely ceremonial, and if someone doesn't make it into the city in time, people will happily unlock the gates to let them in.

Only a few days after the gates are locked comes Elithfest, a big holiday celebrated around December 21. Ropes are hung from the tops of buildings connecting one rooftop with another, and strings of lights are hung from the ropes. In Sidhal, the first day of Elithfest is also the Longest Night. For three days and nights, all the lights in the city are kept burning, to celebrate the god of truth and light and to drive the dark winter away. After that, everyone really hunkers down. The traditional winter activities are study, meditation, and sleep. Everyone has stored away food from the summer and no one is out shopping or building, so there is no work to be done. People sit in their icy houses and read and dream. The vast majority of Hyperborean culture - its philosophy, music, art, literature, and religion - comes from this winter dreaming - and part of the reason there is so much of it is that there is literally nothing else to do.

When winter ends and the cloudy season comes, the gates are ceremonially unlocked. Some people set out to return to their homes, and others wait in the city until spring.

[Wil Nider]

I know we've had this debate before, but for me summer always starts on the 1st of May, with the Mayday celebrations and the proximity of my birthday.

Sorry if I stepped on your toes with the Longest Night business, and I hoped you liked it. I'm glad that it got you to write something, I see a lot of unfinished stuff around here. Planning to revisit old storylines has filled me with a sort of giddy excitement, I hope it does the same for you!

[Scott of Hyperborea]

I very much liked it. I don't have a clue where you got all that Hyperborea information; I didn't even remember that all of that was written down outside my head. As for the Longest Night, very nice, but we both know where you stole the name from

[Wil Nider]

Here, mostly.