Interpreting Weather, Dates, Threadfall, and Restdays
Obviously it must be summer in the south when winter in the north and vice versa. So this is what we go by:
Month 9 - 11: Spring: Rainy/ starting to get warmer
Month 12 - 2: Summer: Hot/ monsoon starts late summer
Month 3 - 5: Autumn: End of monsoon/ Rainy
Month 6 - 8: Winter: Dry/ cool
But please keep in mind we are so near equator (there's a map on the Ridges of Pern homepage) that there won't be the big differences that can be found further south.
Dates:
Ridges of Pern is set on the Southern continent. We're currently in the 25th Turn of the Tenth Pass. A date on a post could be: Month 3/ day 9. There are 28 days in a Pernese month and 13 months + two extra days called "Turn's End" and "Turn's Beginning".
About comparing RL and Pern time, that can be difficult. Try to imagine a book. Ridges of Pern can be compared to one, big book written by many people. When reading a book, you don't have to read a certain number of pages each day, because you can jump in time when writing/ reading. You don't need to have snow outside your house to read about a cold winter. So there's no actual relation between RL and Pern time.
We just have dates to keep order in the stories. It would be hard to have a club, where everybody said "this post is going on right after his/ her post" - which was originally going on two days after someone else's story, which was the same day as ... etc, etc ... you get the point.
In PR do we (almost) find the dates to our post ourselves. We just usually look at others' posts to see, when our own could have been going on. Like, we don't jump a month forward or backward suddenly (except in flash backs and the like). Looking at the timeline is a good help. There you can see what weather it is and when there's threadfall. If refering to another person's story you'll have to pay attention to when that story is going on. We can't have a person thinking about something that has chronologically not happened yet, if you know what I mean. Also we can't have conflicting storylines (one person posts about doing something in the morning on one special day, and then posts about doing another thing all the morning the same day).
Thread:
Thread falls north east to south west in periods of 4 candlemarks (hours) and it's like a rain storm, it moves in so far and then quits, so the falls' length vary a bit.
Restdays:
There is a restday once every sevenday. The 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th.
There are no specified duties (wing meetings, drills, work) on restdays. Except when there's threadfall or if it's the day before (the fall day explains itself, the day before the candidates and weyrlings need to sack firestones and riders look their harness over). Of course some can choose to work on restdays (make wing assignments, get things done they don't have time for on other days). The basic thing is the Pernese have some time off.
Restdays can be compared to Sunday on Earth in many ways, only the "shops are open", meaning traders and crafters can put up stalls and sell things in the various holds/weyrs and the harpers may entertain some more in the evenings. But it's not like a gather, because a gather is much bigger and more time demanding to prepare (whereas the restdays just are ... well, restdays).
� 1997. Last updated on August 2, 2001 by Cynthia.
Website Copyright 2001 Ridges of Pern