Astronomical Observances
by Gaston Saury and Severin Saury
This tome contains a brief collection of empirical observations of Komaran astrology.
If delivered to the Church, this tome is worth **** Church Prestige Points.
Many nuisances vex the modern astrologer. Weather has been the bane of astrologers for ages, cloaking distant phenomena behind a veil of obscuring clouds or spattering the observer with freezing rain, blinding snow, or irritating whirling winds that tear apart one's laboriously-crafted observatories. Equally annoying is the effect of civilization itself: caught in a swirl of city light and noise, it is practically impossible to cultivate the peace of mind necessary to properly observe the stars. Why, the mere light of a city drowns out the stars for miles around, and the cursed difficulties of having to share a flat with a carousing teamster have stymied more than one brilliant mind over the years.
All of these pale before the irritation of having black-cloaked hooligans with armor and swords kick down one's door and declare that one must cease one's life work or surrender one's life. The temerity of it!
Since being driven from my observatory by this very matter, I have chosen to spite my adversaries by continuing my research. Alas, the negative intellectual effects of teamsters continue to stall scientific progress, but the notes I have gathered yet remain to me. These, I publish through an anonymous press, in the hopes that shock and horror causes my assailers to fall in lakes in the dead of winter.
On the Curious Nature of the Cycles of the Stars
For the first twenty-seven years of my recorded astronomical observations, and the thirty antecedent years of my grandmother's studies, the stars have demonstrated a relatively static behavior. Until the year 205, all stars were roughly fixed in position, both with respect to each other and to the night sky in general. Some scholars, myself included, observed a phenomenon described as "wagging", wherein the stars briefly varied slightly from the previous night's position, but this was generally regarded as an atmospheric case, akin to weather, and always corrected itself within a period of two nights, potentially explained by celestial refraction or any of a number of other hypotheses, cf. Lucretia Lorac's Celestial Perturbations.
Then, in 205, a series of sharp celestial motions began, as described in my seminal dissertation The Movement of the Cosmos. Three facts became apparent:
Firstly, the Galaxy as a whole was shifting its locus in the heavens.
Secondly, the Wandering Stars were moving across the tapestry of the Galaxy.
Thirdly, these events all occurred in the night of 4 Waning of the 3rd Month, after a yearly noble gathering at Castle Touraine, along the western edge of Komaru.
I have included my observations on the nature of the procession of the celestial locus in Appendix I of this treatise.
Unmentioned in my dissertation, "wagging" ceased in the years following 205, and no further instances of it were observed until the summer of 211, in the wake of the rise of the organic castle Sunset, north of Castle Touraine. Wagging then became a periodic phenomenon observed throughout the year, on an erratic cycle that I am currently attempting to resolve into a formalizable pattern. See Appendix II for a description of the data I have gathered on wagging.
Appendix I
| Date | Celestial Locus | Celestial Latitude | Celestial Longitude |
|---|---|---|---|
| Before 5 Waning, 3, 205 | None | Zero | Zero |
| 5 Waning, 3, 205 | Shadows in the Dark (*) | 1 North | 2 West |
| 5 Waning, 3, 206 | Darkness that Devours | Zero | 1 West |
| 5 Waning, 3, 207 | Darkness that Devours | Zero | 1 West |
| 5 Waning, 3, 208 | Expectation | 3 North | 4 West |
| 5 Waning, 3, 209 | Current of Days | 8 North | 1 East |
| 5 Waning, 3, 210 | One That Will Be Two (*) | 4 North | 3 West |
| 5 Waning, 3, 211 | Shadowless Sky | 7 North | 8 East |
| 5 Waning, 3, 212 | Unfurled Banner | 2 North | 9 West (*) |
| 5 Waning, 3, 213 | Shadowless Sky | 5 North | 8 West (*) |
| 5 Waning, 3, 214 | Whispering Dove | 15 North | 1 West |
| 5 Waning, 3, 215 | Unnamed | 9 North | 20 West |
| 5 Waning, 3, 216 | Unnamed | 6 North | 22 West |
| 5 Waning, 3, 217 | Unnamed | 5 North | 22 West |
Appendix II
Observations of Wagging, 6 Waning, 3, 205 to 1 Waxing, 1, 218
5 Waxing, 13, 211
5 Waxing, 20, 212
4 Waning, 14, 213
4 Waning, 15, 213
4 Waning, 16, 213
5 Waxing, 2, 214
1 Waning, 24, 215 (+)
5 Waxing, 9, 215
4 Waning, 8, 216
4 Waning, 9, 216
4 Waning, 10, 216
4 Waning, 11, 216
5 Waxing, 23, 217
(*) These appear to by mistakes, either by the printer or Saury. Shadows in the Dark clearly refers to Shadows in Darkness, and One That Will Be Two to One Who Will Be Two. Unfurled Banner and the marked Shadowless Sky are seen in the East, not the West. - Komaru Takanobu, 226
(+) Other than being out of order, this appears to be correct. - Komaru Takanobu, 226