Strange passage in Way of Kings

[zeppomarks]

So, I'm going through SA for the second time and I came across this:

"The cool stones of the soulcast chamber seemed to hold the chill of the spring weather. It continued to refuse to slip into summer. But at least it hadn’t slid into winter, either."

It was in one of Dalinar or Adolin's POVs, I think. Early in Part IV, I also think.

This came off as very strange to me. What kind of orbit would make seasons so unpredictable that they could go forward or backward at unknown intervals? The first thought I had was that Odium and Cultivation were having a tug of war competition with Roshar, but that would just be weird. Do we have any information on this?

[Spoolofwhool]

I think it's just a metaphor. He's saying the room is still cold despite it being summer, but it isn't cold enough to feel like winter. He's not saying spring could actually transition to winter.

[Djarskublar he/him]

1 hour ago, Spoolofwhool said:

I think it's just a metaphor. He's saying the room is still cold despite it being summer, but it isn't cold enough to feel like winter. He's not saying spring could actually transition to winter.

Nope he totally is. Coppermind http://coppermind.net/wiki/Roshar Mobile sucks! Roshar's seasons are somewhat random. My bet is that there is something really funky going on with its axial tilt.

Edit: apparently urls don't want to work for me now, just changed it.

Edited August 24, 2016 by Djarskublar

[Yata he/him]

As far as I remember Roshar's Seasons are quite random (or determinated by unknown factor).

Spring may actually became winter or summer or fall.

EDIT: @Djarskublar was faster than me XD

Edited August 24, 2016 by Yata

[Darkness Ascendant he/him]

Now that I think of it.....it's magnetic poles must be completely screwed...

That might explain some unusual phenomena

[WeiryWriter he/him]

4 hours ago, Djarskublar said:

Nope he totally is. Coppermind http://coppermind.net/wiki/Roshar Mobile sucks! Roshar's seasons are somewhat random. My bet is that there is something really funky going on with its axial tilt.

Edit: apparently urls don't want to work for me now, just changed it.

It's not so much that the seasons are random but that they aren't really seasons in the way that we have seasons. There isn't something funky going on with the axial tilt, there just isn't one. So winter/summer don't actually mean "time when this hemisphere is tilted away/towards the sun" but "it's cold/hot outside".

[Jofwu he/him]

There's plenty of mentions about how random the seasons are. Keep your eyes open and you'll see a lot more about it. The planet has no axial tilt (and a roughly circular orbit), so there are no seasons in the way that we think of them. They're more like weather patterns.

1 hour ago, WeiryWriter said:

It's not so much that the seasons are random but that they aren't really seasons in the way that we have seasons. There isn't something funky going on with the axial tilt, there just isn't one. So winter/summer don't actually mean "time when this hemisphere is tilted away/towards the sun" but "it's cold/hot outside".

I think it's a bit more exaggerated than this though... Summer seems to be hot and Kaladin mentions patches of ice on the ground (in one of his flashbacks) during winter. So it's not like they just have mild weather and then summer is "hotter than normal" and winter is "colder than normal". It seems to me that they're talking about significant changes in the weather, and it comes and goes in waves.

[+hwiles]

14 minutes ago, jofwu said:

There's plenty of mentions about how random the seasons are. Keep your eyes open and you'll see a lot more about it. The planet has no axial tilt (and a roughly circular orbit), so there are no seasons in the way that we think of them. They're more like weather patterns.

I think it's a bit more exaggerated than this though... Summer seems to be hot and Kaladin mentions patches of ice on the ground (in one of his flashbacks) during winter. So it's not like they just have mild weather and then summer is "hotter than normal" and winter is "colder than normal". It seems to me that they're talking about significant changes in the weather, and it comes and goes in waves.

The atmospheres of, relative to the Earth, small/low-gravity planets are subject to much greater changes in pressure and temperature and can be much more turbulent.  The air on Roshar would be less viscous than we are used to because there is less gravitational force pulling it down; the extra mobility allowed by this naturally produces much wilder fluctuating weather patterns.  Basically, "mild" weather would be very unusual on Roshar, it would have a tendency to usually be getting much warmer or much colder in relative short alternating cycles.  Kudos to OP for noticing the weirdness and correctly identifying it as a deliberate and important world-building detail.  Differentiating between the benign/unimportant and the intentional/significant isn't always easy in the Cosmere.

Edited August 24, 2016 by hwiles

[Ari he/him]

25 minutes ago, jofwu said:

There's plenty of mentions about how random the seasons are. Keep your eyes open and you'll see a lot more about it. The planet has no axial tilt (and a roughly circular orbit), so there are no seasons in the way that we think of them. They're more like weather patterns.

I think it's a bit more exaggerated than this though... Summer seems to be hot and Kaladin mentions patches of ice on the ground (in one of his flashbacks) during winter. So it's not like they just have mild weather and then summer is "hotter than normal" and winter is "colder than normal". It seems to me that they're talking about significant changes in the weather, and it comes and goes in waves.

Heh yeah I was gonna guess "no axial tilt" was to blame for that, because then the mini-seasons would be down to mostly atmospheric conditions, perihelion and aphelion, (ie. how oval its orbit is) or axial wobbling, with atmospheric conditions usually winning.

[Djarskublar he/him]

Hey... Wierd idea. Since Roshar is smaller, could it have a liquid core? That's still magnetic? That could do funky stuff to weather too. And maybe stuff with axial wobble (which is what I meant by axial tilt earlier I guess).

I don't know enough about celestial objects to say. Help.

[The One Who Connects he/him]

The highstorms appear to follow a pattern (at least somewhat) with the definitive "every other Weeping" and the fact that stormwardens are beginning to be able to predict them.

Is it possible to presume that the seasons may have evolved around them? Or does weather not work that way

[+hwiles]

3 hours ago, The One Who Connects said:

The highstorms appear to follow a pattern (at least somewhat) with the definitive "every other Weeping" and the fact that stormwardens are beginning to be able to predict them.

Is it possible to presume that the seasons may have evolved around them? Or does weather not work that way

I would certainly think that the passing of the highstorms would have an enormous effect on the passing of the "seasons".  The problem is, weather is really hard to predict, even on a really stable and happy planet like Earth.  Throw in a few weird moons, screw with gravity, remove axial tilt, and stir in some planet wide super-storms, and suddenly the idea weather forecasting becomes a silly thing indeed.  It's possible the seasons follow some as yet unidentified pattern, however, since the only mention of them in-book has been to point out how chaotic they are, I'm wagering that Stormwarden's time would be better spent reading tea leaves than trying to forecast the changes in seasons...

[The One Who Connects he/him]

As far as I was aware, they mainly focused on the storms and not the seasons.
But I can't really argue with your post

[hoidhunter he/him]

Something just barley on topic that I found interesting...in dalinar's feverstone keep vision...it seems that the winter has lasted more than 4 months...apparently much longer than usual for current Roshar.  I wonder what exactly caused the change....or if this is just a LONG time ago.

[+hwiles]

1 hour ago, hoidhunter said:

Something just barley on topic that I found interesting...in dalinar's feverstone keep vision...it seems that the winter has lasted more than 4 months...apparently much longer than usual for current Roshar.  I wonder what exactly caused the change....or if this is just a LONG time ago.

Probably the use of fossil fuels...

Real-talk though, that's an interesting catch...one I don't have a quick rebuttal for. It's totally possible with what we know of Roshar as a planet, but the context leaves it ambiguous as to whether it is a benign or significant detail...guess we'll...RFO 

[Massik he/him]

Roshar has more than one moon.  I can imagine the gravitational pulls of each warring with the axial spin of the planet, or perhaps they affect the magnetosphere.

Edited August 25, 2016 by Massik
To add

[Djarskublar he/him]

Wow... The moons, the Highstorms, and maybe a magnetic core that may also be liquid. This place has so many powerful factors going into its weather. If they have wonky things going on with their axis, I would never want to be an astronomer there. Star charting would be a nightmare. (teehee)

 If those factors aligned partially in a drawn out way, I could easily see a four month winter.

Again, any idea if the core is liquid and doing wierd stuff?

[zeppomarks]

Yeah, I forgot about all the moons. with all of those gravitational forces acting on the planet it would make total sense for it to occasionally get pulled away from or pushed toward the sun enough to change seasons. As for the changes being unpredictable, they're probably completely predictable, but the cultural aversion toward predicting the future keeps them from exploring it. They tolerate stormwardens, but only because highstorms are so dangerous. Compared to those, a bit of frost or a sweltering sun probably doesn't seem worth the effort to get all voidbringery and try to predict.

On top of all this, they probably don't have any autumn. Autumn is a result a regular seasonal patterns and is only different from spring because of flora and fauna cycles. If you lived on a planet where plants and animals had no regular seasons to regulate their life cycles on, then there would be no need for autumn.

 

[hoidhunter he/him]

Well...we know that the shifts in its geography are caused by the highstorms...I wanna say that roshar lacks any tectonic activity...but I'm not 100% on that.

[Argel he/him]

FWIW, Dalinar thinks about Earthquakes twice in TWoK when seeing the devastation caused in the visions and  Shallan mentions "earthquake" twice in WoR regarding the shattered plains. That doesn't prove there are plate tectonics though, but it's possible.

[iohn he/him]

I'm pretty sure in his podcast Writing Excuses Brandon confirms that Roshar has no axial tilt. The Song of Ice and Fire series does the same thing except the "seasons" seem to last a lot longer on that world (ie years)

[Darkness he/him]

naw come on, we all know that roshar is built on the back of a gigantic, inebriated greatshell (who is coincidentally the parent of the reshi isles). The stormwardens can only predict the highstorms because of the great hierarchical stormwarden cabal of 702, in which the stormwardens collectively agreed to coerce the greatshell in different directions with soulcast food. They control the 'seasons' using the same method, because Occam's razor.