Why Seasons Exist…And Why Zeer’s Are Different
And why its an important facet to note for your world and the passage of time there…
Why do seasons exist? Many people will answer “because the Earth is closer to the sun in the summer.” Which is incorrect. There is a logic there, just not the right one. In fact, during the Northern Hemisphere’s summer, our planet is further from the sun. Though the distance barely matters.
What does matter is the angle.
Other people will tell you “because Earth rotates on a tilted axis.” This is the correct answer. The poles of our planet do not align straight up and down perpendicular to our orbit around Sol, but rather lean at 23.5 degrees. This axial tilt means that as Earth is orbiting the sun, first one hemisphere angles more directly towards the sun, and then the other. When a hemisphere is “leaning towards” the sun more directly more energy is concentrated per square meter of surface. More energy = warmth = summer. The hemisphere that is “leaning away” from the sun experiences winter, with solar rays hitting at a shallower angle spreading energy thin. This one geometric fact cascades into basically everything else about how life is experienced on Earth.
What Seasons Actually Do
There are lots of obvious effects, especially the further away from the Equator you live: temperature swings, day length, the quality of light in October versus June. You can feel these data points throughout the course of a year. But seasons aren’t just weather. They’re the original clock on which first biological and then cultural time have been running.
From an ecological standpoint, seasons create life cycle pulses. Think plants blooming in spring, fruiting in summer or fall, and going dormant during the winter. In the same vein, animals breed, migrate, and hibernate to match the pulse of when food is available. The entire system is synchronized; each layer in time with the layer below it, and all of them aligned with the axial tilt.
For cultures around the world, seasons were the first calendars. Way before anything like atomic clocks and GPS satellites the reliable rhythms of the year, indicated by temperature, day length, migrating animals, seasonal flooding, etc, told us when it was planting season, growing season, time to harvest, and then winter. Every agricultural civilization throughout the history of Earth has organized its significant events such as festivals, sacred days, tax collection, even marriage seasons around these annual cycles.
Let’s look at the solstices and equinoxes. The longest day of the year, the two days with equal light and dark, and the shortest day of the year. These have become the most spiritually charged moments on the whole calendar precisely because of their ecological importance. If you look at mythologies from around the globe, stories about seasons are amongst the oldest. Persephone’s descent into the underworld causing winter, and her return causing spring. Osiris dying and being resurrected being connected to the flooding of the Nile. The “birth, death, rebirth” narrative is so common because seasonal variation (even at the equator) is a global phenomenon. Without axial tilt, you don’t have any of that.
Zeer Has No Axial Tilt
Yep, that’s right. There you have Zeer orbiting its orange dwarf in a nearly circular path with perfect posture. No lean, slouch, or wobble. And, you guessed it, no axial seasons. At no point throughout the year is one hemisphere angling away from the star while the other leans towards it. This translates to no solstices, and no equinoxes. That amber sun just rises and sets at pretty much the same angle every day, every year.
So if you just so happened to take an extended vacation to Zeer and were waiting on Earth-like seasons to happen you would be waiting a very long time, and be ultimately very disappointed.
BUT…
Zeer is NOT a world without seasons. It just uses an entirely different mechanic to get there.
The Ten Seasons of the Great Year
If you’ve read any of my other articles, you will probably have a sense that I really don’t look favorably on “hand waving” as a strategy to world build. It’s fine. I’ve read tons of books and series where nearly everything is hand-waved into existence. I enjoyed them thoroughly. But I would be lying if I didn’t admit to suffering a certain degree of frustration when the worlds make little sense (Absurdism aside, I understand that that’s the point). And as a fantasy writer it is virtually unavoidable to do this at some point to add that sparkle and shine to your world that indicates we are stepping off the garden path of reality and into something fantastic.
This brings us to the first deliberate steps away from real-world physics and towards the deeper architecture of Zeer.
As a reminder, Zeer is a hexaverse. Think “pocket universe and multiverse had a baby that has a few specific, contained faces.” Six versions, or dimensions, or planes of existence intimately and physically connected to one another, but each with its own affinity for one of the 6 Primary Elements.
The Primary Elements are more or less the primordial ingredients that make up the whole reality. The bits that have worked their way into Zeer’s magic system is sort of like the “extra bits of clay” leftover after sculpting the main event. Each plane contains bits of extra clay from each color, but has more of one color than the other five.
Stars in the hexaverse don’t just emit light and heat. They also emit elemental energetic frequencies (extra clay). This looks like an oscillating pattern. They start at the lowest energetic point (Dark), climb to the highest energetic point (Light), and descend back down to where it began. The length of time these oscillations take varies by star. For Zeer’s star, the full cycle takes around 1,010 Zeer days, or a just a smidge under eight and a half solar years. Some Zeeran cultures refer to this as a Great Year.
The seasons in order (these are working names, not what in-world cultures would call them):
Dark - the nadir. Midway through the Dark season the star’s energy reaches its lowest point on the oscillation. Things cool, air feels heavier, growth stills. This is about as close to a Zeeran winter as you’re going to get. It doesn’t necessarily mean “snow and ice,” but there is a pervasive sense of weight and quiet that settles over the planes as they draw inwards.
Ascending Earth - things start stirring. The energy frequency has reached a new bandwidth. The world isn’t exactly “blooming” yet, but there is definitely a shift in the vibes. A lightness that signals energy returning to the world. Vitality is on the way.
Ascending Water - think “spring rains.” Moisture is surging, life starts to erupt in new growth. Temperate zones can begin their planting season.
Ascending Air - there is a certain “quickness” to the energy. Winds pick up, more storms, as well as a certain brightness and restlessness. Life on the move.
Ascending Fire - we’re on the crescendo before we hit the peak. Lots of heat, season fires spread. Life is full of passion and drive.
Light - the energetic zenith. The star’s energy peaks. This is Zeer’s version of summer, the warmest, brightest season. Light seems more present than physics alone would suggest, because in a way it is.
Then the descent: Descending Fire, Descending Air, Descending Water, Descending Earth, mirroring the ascent, but with a fundamentally different character. Instead a sense of expanding outward, now there is a sense of drawing inwards. Ex. Ascending Water and Descending Water both bring increased rainfall, but the register difference is like that between “spring rains” and “autumn rain.” Very different vibes
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The Great Year Matters More Than the Solar Year
Zeer orbits its star every 119 Zeer days. But without axial tilt, that doesn’t really mean anything to the organisms living on the planet. The solar year is an astronomical fact, not a lived experience. This is unlike on Earth, where axial tilt makes it felt.
Zeeran life has instead evolved to track the 1,010-day energetic cycle, or Great Year. All of those rhythms such as agricultural cycles, migration patterns, and sacred calendar events, all of that is keyed to the energetic pulse of the star rather than its position in the sky. The Great Year is time experienced; the solar year is just…math.
This single difference between Earth and Zeer is single-handedly responsible for producing fundamentally different relationships to time, cosmology, and the natural world. A visitor from Earth could recognize the patterns given enough time, but the outcomes, the vibe, the structure would be inherently different.
Hand-waved? Yeah, kind of. But hand-waved with the kind of structure and intention that cascades into real, quantifiable effects. What kind of cosmology would evolve on your world without axial tilt, or another way of manufacturing seasons? Would constellations play a more important role on such a world? Maybe the people of your world already have a fundamentally different relationship with time than we do here on Earth. I would love to hear about it. Please let me know what you’re working on/thinking about in the comments!