Ah, this is evidently the Missing Link. I'd always assumed (and it appears others have too, given the comments about it in connection with the Seasonal Menses idea) that it's exactly in synch with the Theyalan seasons, by virtue of doing some sort of orbital "jink" during Sacred Time.
I think I prefer this "take" though, Greg-approved or not, as it's both a bit more reasonable, and less redundantly "regular" in its fit with the solar year.
> For example, some people might believe that the tilting of the Dome
> is slowly changing, and has been for millenia.
This is unlikely to be an observable change, given the Secret Dayzatari (True) Belief that the Dome was actually _never_ untilted. (Unless it's a secret from even the people with the first secret...)
> Such a people might well believe that a Great Summer would eventually
> follow, a time when the Summer tilt was greater than the northern tilt
> is now.
Not a very reasonable belief, IMHO, as there's no rational link between degree of northern tilt, and warmth of the weather. Of course, I may be biased, since I dislike the whole "summer tilt" idea in the first place. (Though it'd be a whole lot better without the dreaded Second Dome, but that's getting off-track.)
> They would likely tell that Rufelza's original "period" in the Godtime
> was in fact seven days, which is why the Red Moon has that period today.
They quite possibly say this of the _Veritherusan_ incarnation of the Goddess, at any rate...
> 54 is 2 x 3 x 3 x 3. This would give a Great Cycle of 27 x 248 = 6696
> years. I had hoped for something closer to 5000
Not quite sure why you want 5000, but another element of 23 years would give a joint period of 4712...
47 years gives a Cycle of 11656, whatever that's worth.
> And, since Artia's cycle is 8 years, this would give a Cycle of the
> Southpath planets of 8 x 27 = 216 years, certainly long enough for most
> Gloranthan peoples to not have figured it out.
If everything _but_ the exact annual position in Artia's "orbit" in an otherwise-repeating Southpath is duplicated every 27 years, it'd be pretty easy for all but the dopiest of Celestiologists to figure out, I'd think.
Actually, has anyone ever considered how "un-Lunar" a numer 54 years is? The most obviously "Lunar" thing about the length of a Wane is that 54 = 7 + 47 (cf previous Deneron council remarks)...
I suspect what's more likely is that some _element_ of the Southpath variation shows some such period of variability. Such as the change in the position of the Dodging Gate, or the timing of the planet's "retrograde" motion, or whatever, or that one of the Southpath planets in particular does so. Say, "Artia is in in conjunction with <important star> on <important date> every 27/47/54" years...
One idea I've favoured for some time is that each of the Southpath planets actually follows a different path, which just "happen" to lie along approximately the same track. Their behaviour is similar enough that Celestionomers think they follow the same Path, but when they try to predict their joint behaviour their heads explode. As the above discussion illustrates, if all three have mutually-prime periodicity on the order of 20 years, their _joint_ period becomes truly huge, a bit of a problem if you're trying to predict things like their conjunction with each other.
Slainte,
Alex.
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