Discussion Seasonal Variation in Lustria

Do storm patterns move the direction (West? I think) that they do on Earth? Does LUSTRIA have a huge mountain range on its "Left" coast? Is it solid and contiguous like the real-world Andes?

If not expect differences; if yes the weather should be very similar. (The unmodified, non-Slann-regulated weather at least.)

But there may be a Lord Th'un'Dyr Rayn'Maquayr constantly cogitating upon the matter...

 

For quarrying stone the rainy season is probably a hindrance.

For building anything out of stone (doing masonry) the rainy season might be a problem.

This is informative: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_wind_patterns

[[will add more...if I think of some]]

 

I have only been to a rainforest once (Belize), and unlike a desert (which I have been to the middle east) which is also very hot, the rainforest was incredibly humid. And I was there during the dry season, so I can only imagine the humidity during the rainy season. Some other pointers:



Amazon rainforest receives 6 to upwards of 12 FEET of rain a year! Almost four meters of rain! I can only imagine the amount of flooding that happens during these periods. In some parts of the rainforest kids go to school on boats instead of cars, so I can only imagine that in some parts it would be easier to get around in boats for half the year. Also in areas of heavy vegetation it gets very dark due to rainfall, so that could certainly set the mood (see pictures).



The Amazon river can rise up to 40 feet during the year, so many people live in houses adapted for flooding (aka really high stilts). I know the Mayans built canals to help with flooding or even to water crops, so that could be a way to prevent temple cities from floating away.

Flooding seems to be the main obstacle during the rainy season; washing out jungle trails, roads, houses, or anything else that gets in its way, so navigating without a boat would be difficult. When the water is really high, it brings the river level up higher into the canopy’s of the trees, so it’s easier for a canoe-traveller to spot more arboreal wildlife such as tropical birds, monkeys, fruits, or flowers. I think it’s safe to say that flooding is the main problem any would-be temple robber would have to deal with. It seems like the dry season would be the better time to mount an expedition. Good thing the Lizardmen are aquatic.

Dry season still gets heavy rain, but not as much flooding because there isn’t as much water coming down from the Andes mountains to flood the rivers. Lots of mud near the riverways, which means it’s easier to come across ground-dwelling creatures such as snakes or small lizards. Lots of migratory birds during this easer too, plus thousands of spawning fish. Also lots of mosquitos during this time though… its easier for bugs to spawn in stagnant or slow-moving water than a giant rushing river. Any troops marching through the jungle in the dryer season would have swarms of visitors to plague them instead.



Just some stuff to think about!

 

Also found a list of survival tips for surviving in the rainforest (paraphrased a bit of course)


Tips to survive in Lustria:

Step 1: don’t go to Lustria, or else you will die.

Step 2: if you must go to Lustria, make sure you only boil water before you drink it, or else you will catch a disease from a local stream or river and die.

Step 3: don’t eat anything unless you have cooked it well first, or else you will get food poisoning and die.

Step 4: Wear long pants and a long sleeve shirt to protect from insect bites and rashes from contact with certain plants. If you touch a poisonous plant or get bit by the wrong insect you will die.

Step 5: Wear good boots and keep your feet dry. If your feet get wet they will eventually develop an infection and then you will have to get amputated. Then when you get left behind by your comrades you will die. Also check your boots before you put them on to make sure there are no venomous creatures inside, or else you will die.

Step 6: don’t touch the wildlife. Especially the creepy crawly ones, the brightly colored ones, or the ones that hiss at you. They are probably poisonous, and if they bite you, you will turn red, swell up, and die. Or it might just eat you.

Step 7: Travel with a guide and avoid going into remote regions on your own. If you get lost you will die.

Step 8: don’t steal sacred plaques from any lost temples you come across, or else the lizardmen will come after you and take you out with a blowpipe. Or eat you.

 

That is the best paraphrased list for survival I have ever read! Could be the entire plot of a short story!

 

I'd think the easiest weather for a Terradon rider would be the very end of the dry season. Nothing would attack them, because a hydrated Terradon will outrun a dehydrated anything. Also, an animal mustering the effort for a pursuit would be highly unusual, Especially when theres surely some corpse somewhere that hasnt been scavenged yet.

The worst time for a Terradon would be mid-rainy season. The rain (which I assume would be torrential) would throw off any delicacy from flying, even briefly hovering would be an effort. The larger, more predatory flyers could easily sneak up and attack as hearing would be impossible. Even seeing them would be hard as the rain distorts and reflects light.

A scout would be best in the wet season. A small blue skink in torrential rain? No-one would see anything. Footprints would vanish almost as soon as they were created. Scents would vanish - or worse, be dragged away from the skink to lead would-be hunters far away from it.

The worst season for a skink? The end of dry season, when Mama Carnosaur or Mama Dread Saurian is looking for something, anything to feed their children. Scents stay put. Plants die - no cover for the skink. It would be safer staying inside the temple-city.

Warmbloods? Midway between Dry and Rainy, and whatever they do, do not let them stay in the jungle when the heavy rains come, or all the rains stop. They'll be dead in hours - drowned in mud, or water containers destroyed by insects that can smell the water that they're carrying, and want in on it.

 

I live in a sub tropical area (Brisbane) The remaining shreds of rainforest in my local area cling to the tops of low, ex volcanic mountain ranges - mostly because they were harder to clear for farming, so they survived long enough to get protected.

North Queensland tropical rainforest also tends to be high altitude (relatively - the highest point in my state is 1622 metres. We are almost a bad as Florida) anyhow, the areas are high rainfall, but also well draining. The streams can get dangerous to cross, and the tracks might be ankle deep during downpours but they don't flood as such. Lower altitude, flood plain and swamp land supports different habitats, but there are some tall tree habitats which you can canoe through, in season. If you like mosquitos and crocodiles.

Aside from likelihood of rain and temperature variation, I expect to see seasonal changes in the wildlife I can see in my local forests. More snakes and other reptiles finding a patch of sun in spring and summer, crazy foot long crayfish going for long hikes away from water in summer. Different flowers and fruits in their season will attract different sets of birds and tree climbing mammals, and presumably their predator species. We frequently come across the scraps of a bird or mammal feast on the track - just feathers and fur usually, but there was that picked-clean possum skull one time... And then I heard a clicking sound and saw three laser dots...

Did you know that crows make the actual Predator clicking sound from the movies? We hear it all the time when we are walking in deep forest. I assume we don't get "harvested" because Aussies don't carry guns.

Anyhow - some local habitat

• Rugged steep terrain, big rainforest trees clinging on, undergrowth you can see through, but is hard to push through ( tangle of thin vines, many with thorns) expect to bleed. And get land leeches.
• Flatter terrain, big trees, much more orderly canopy. Undergrowth can be sparse enough to just walk through, my favourite is the Bunya Mountains which have a carpet of foot high ferns. Expect to get covered in ticks.
• Rainforest edge, head high grasses you can hide a velociraptor in plus thorny vines. Bleeding gauranteed. And ticks.
• Coastal mangrove forest / swamp. Too sloppy to walk, too thick to canoe. Biting flies and mosquitos. Zero sources of fresh water.
• Paper bark swamp - too sloppy to walk, really fun to canoe when the water is up.
• Heathland. Thick, scratchy shrubs up to three metres tall. Visibility 2 metres. Forget walking in it. You will bleed and none will find your body because of the effort required to look for you.
• Remnant "dry" rainforest / vine jungle. This is what most of my area was before clearing for farming. Hard to traverse, hanging vines up to arm thickness, quite dusty and dry away from water courses. Lots of animal trails where critters up to wallaby / small kangaroo size use the same routes everyday.
• Regrowth in rainforest. When big trees come down they leave windows in the canopy. The very thickest undergrowth plants battle for the light. They are often the most aggressive as well. Giant stinging nettle (which urinate on poison ivy) and lawyer vine (wait-a-while) make these areas difficult and dangerous to traverse.
• Dry forest regrowth. Logging for commercial timber gives access to pest plant species, particularly lantana, which is a mess of slightly thorny, slightly crushable thin branches which can sit like a mat up to four metres deep and stretching for hundreds of metres. Normal traversing technique is to get a run up, jump as high as possible and scramble on top to crush a body length section down to a height that the rest of the party can step over (like laying on the barbed wire in WW1). If it isn't so thick, walk backwards using your back pack as a ram. Bleeding will happen. This stuff is everywhere. Alternative uses - a rock climbing friend and I have climbed up a small cliff and repeatedly stage dived onto the lantana mat for a soft landing. We bled.

I know this isn't what you were seeking, Scalenex, but the traversing hazards are worth noting - on a big hike, something that looks clearer to walk can turn into a sticky trap, and anything with a tough hide or the ability to drop to a quadripedal gait can move through these terrains much faster than a human. Just about the only hazard worth climbing a tree to avoid in my state are wild pigs (BIG tusks) and I have never been in a habitat with pigs where there were climbable trees (rainforest and open forest trees branch high up, heathland trees are too skinny and small.)

If you want to explore lustria, probably use the rivers as highways, but be aware that snakes hang in the branches over the edge of the water (that's what they do here). You are also vulnerable to flying predators and river monsters, but at least you can move quickly. Once you are on foot, expect to have a maximum speed of a half mile per hour, and that everything that would make a meal of you can move a lot faster than that. Your position will be constantly betrayed by the activity of birds, no matter how sneaky you are. Unless you are in deep deep open undergrowth forest.

That is where I would expect to find LM patrols with pointy sticks.

 

Wow thanks for the descriptions! I will be using this for future reference.

Found one good tidbit about piranhas: apparently piranha attacks on humans tend to peak during the dry season, when the water is lower, food more scarce, AND there is a heavier concentration of fish in the water. Just one more thing to be wary of...



Go ahead... have a drink in that pristine jungle river. I am sure these guys aren't lurking under the surface...

 

Pfft, 1 in 3 species of piranha are veggie anyway. The things to watch out for are the animals that look harmless. Because Nature is great at lying and sudden jumpscares.


*sticks head in river*
*bubbly screams*

 

There are many ways to die in the warhammer world anyway, so they aren't worse off than other races I think.

It could still be dangerous for Dameons and Skaven to try a raid in the wet season if the Skinks use Razordons and Salamanders. The Daemons and skaven might be harder to find, but also easier to surprise, but Lustria is still hometurf for the lizards, so I bet they would have the advantage anyway, I just guess the Skinks and Kroxigor might play a bigger role in fighting in the wet season compared to the dry season.

 

So what if the rainy season was attributed to the Old Ones giving the lizards good-luck omens. This period would probably see most of the lizardmen's religious practices in their prime, as the first receives and obeys the gift of rain, and show off their appreciation for it. Skinks and kroxigors will probably pray the most due to how aquatic they are.

I also like to think the dry season would then be characterized by fulfilling the duties that were hard to do during the wet season, and giving back to the Old Ones through hard work...

Just a thought

 

it could be that they divide the year much the same way that India used to, based on both rainfall (wet/dry) and temperature (cool/hot). now, india's system used 6 seasons for partly religious reasons, but you basically went from cool dry to hot-dry to hot-wet to cool-wet.

 

i would assume that for ships crossing the sea to and from the old world, the big factor would be the location of the trade winds and the location of currents. presumably these would be reasonably close to what we have IRL, though Ulthuan would obviously cause a few changes.
since the main trade winds lie along the equatorial regions you can be fairly certain of using them year round, though there is poorly studied changes in exact courses and strength of the wind depending on the season. since sailing and navigation would not be an exact science in the warhammer world, this probably wouldn't be too big of an issue, but it may well encourage ships crews to avoid certain seasons when planning trips. especially given some seasons are going to be more prone to bad weather even in the tropics.

 

Is that why they take skaves? Snag some Bret farmers, make them grow Nagggarothian Onions??

 

Do they have bases on what would be the Pacific coast? I thought the Dark Elfs were confined to the East side of the continent. Bounded off by the mountains or by Lizardmen territory.

But I don’t know the fluff that well.