The Realm Of Vortex

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, "The Hunters in the Snow" (1565)

Vortex is a realm with six months of brutally frigid winter and six months of insufferably humid summer - and there is scantly more than a week or so between these two seasons. People in this realm are convivial and social during the winter months. Villages suffer the cold together, with much fellow spirit. But in summer, people become vindictive and aggressive. Each village is torn apart by multiple feuds. It is a war of all against all until the first winter snows fall.

Spherewalkers should plan their sojourns in Vortex accordingly.

• Virtue: Fearing Shadows, Reversed - Recognizing Safety. This Fortune represents the people of Vortex in winter; communities are united, because people turn to each other for friendship and support.

• Fault: War, Reversed - Effort Misspent. This Fortune represents the people in summer; communities are divided because people turn against each other in petty feuds.

• Fate: The Smith - Productivity vs. Evil Effort. In most years, communities are able to set aside enough food produced in the summertime to feed everyone when the season turns to winter. But what would happen if the crops failed one summer? Would people turn on each other in the winter? Might they even become cannibals? Or would they pull together somehow and find a solution that avoids violence and starvation? Recent auguries have people worried...