Fascinating piece, btw. Enjoyed reading it.
I think the Skydome is "mythically far away" from the normal world. To my mind therefore, if we used a basic understanding of earthly physics, this would mean that there would be nowhere on the lozenge that would see differing sun behaviour. However we are always urged not to use our earthly physics savvy in connection with these things. The myths determine what happens and they are perceived by those whose lives are permeated through and through by the origins of those stories that describe how the world works.
The rule-of-thumb I use to express Gloranthan things is: they all tend to look and feel like Earthly ones unless described otherwise. Gloranthans might not have grey matter inside their heads to perform the thinking but why bother to come up with an alternative unless you have a story about that? A Gloranthan apple falls from a tree and hits the ground just in the same way one does on Earth, unless we have a reason for it not to.
Everyone's Glorantha varies, right out of the gate, so I believe it's all down to your own feeling and experience of what fuels good stories in your games.
In short: I think that Gloranthans see the sun rising and setting in the same way Earthlings do. There are just different reasons for this, depending on who you are (of course, these 'whos' live in different places, so you can still have geographical variations if that makes for interesting elements in your stories). This definitely doesn't discount certain peoples seeing something different; they may have a dramatically different myth structure. I just don't know of any :)
I don't recommend using any complicated methods for determining sun movements, unless this is an important element in your storytelling.
Matthew
-----Original Message-----
From: WorldofGlorantha_at_yahoogroups.com
[mailto:WorldofGlorantha_at_yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of chrphrgrv
Sent: 07 September 2009 04:01
To: WorldofGlorantha_at_yahoogroups.com
Subject: The Solar Passage
Being how Glorantha is flat would the experiance of the passing sun not be dramatically different based on what longitude you are at?
For those living in the middle latitudes the following:
In the far east, the sun must appear to shoot up, or rush in from the hazy eastern distance in the morning, pass by fairly quickly and then appear to be moving slower and slower in the western sky until for a while the sun would not appear to be moving at all, finally the sun would dip down quickly. Regardless for much of the day the suns power would slowly diminish. The concept of noon would be non existence. Long shadows would spring up in the morning and at a rate almost disorienting to us terrans shrink and then grow again in the other direction, though after a certain point the lengthening would be very very slow indeed.
In the far west, the sun would suddenly rise up dim in the far eastern sky and gradually grow stronger and swifter all day in ever increasing orders of magnitude until with all his glory he would pass swiftly overhead and in a relatively brief time dive down quickly to a misty far away point in the west where he would disappear again.
In the center of the world this effect would be less but still apparent.
To the extent that you are watching this spectacle from a far northern or southern point the suns progress would appear more steady. Its strength would feel more constant. But shadows would not lengthen as appreciably and would rather be marked by their fairly swift movement from one direction to the other as the day progressed.
Or is there some mythic magical intersession that allows all Gloranthans to experience the passing of the sun in similar ways? I am hoping no.
I'm not terribly mathematical so I don't know how to balance the changes in curvature would do to the perception of the distance of the sun. But it is inconceivable that the Gloranthan sun is anywhere near as far away as our sun or anywhere near as big. This too would dramatically impact the perspective of the suns passage especially from the far north and south where after a certain point the passage might appear far lower in the sky very quickly though it would never appear as low as it does for us on a globe. Also the rising or setting of the sun (never both) would be a local phenomena. For example in the east, the sun would not set so much as get fairly low in the sky fairly early on and then eventually appear to drop from the sky. From the far north and south the rise and fall of the sun might appear curves nearly as it it would on some chart.
I like all this. It would force me to rethink the attitudes, myths, temperament etc. such as the Brithini and the Varelans and especially the folk of the East Isles.
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