The Long Autumn

The Long Autumn is a grim and random seasonal phenomenon that occurs around every several thousand years.

Known Long Autumns
There have been at least one Long Autumn that has happened for certain, though many believe that as many as three other long autumns have occurred in the world. Many simply say such beliefs are superstition, and that the Long Autumn was nothing more than an odd occurrence that held the same effect as a famine or a plague.

What Is A Long Autumn?
A Long Autumn is a seasonal phenomenon that occurs roughly every couple thousand of years. Some say the first Long Autumn lasted a century, the more recent ones such as The Third Long Autumn lasting only five and a half years. Long Autumns are known to plunge the civilized world into darkness, despair and chaos, as no harvests grow and food and supplies dwindle like kindling in winter. Sunlight dims and the world darkens to a seemingly eternal miserable and wretched grey.

Other odd aspects can be mixed with foul weather, such as ruthless and roaring seas that are uncontrollable, storm clouds that are dark and swollen with rain that floods many a valley, drowning all who dwell there. Tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts and floods all occur. The Long Autumn usually gives way to a very short winter, which then turns into an unsteady summer that gradually gets better by the year. Long Autumns tend to only affect the northern area of the world, with some saying that The Lush Continent was destroyed during a Long Autumn, though if that was the case it would be strange that The High Continent was barely affected.

The First Long Autumn
Nothing much is known about the first Long Autumn except that it was the first of the phenomenon. Some say that it occurred back before when Dragons scoured the earth and the faerie kingdoms of old were squabbling over dynastic feuds. Some say it is what birthed the succession of men as the rulers of the earth, while sending all the faeries into the nothingness of Nowhere.

The Third Long Autumn
The third Long Autumn is what many suggest was the only other known Long Autumn, the others being shrouded in superstition and myth. The third Long Autumn occurred two hundred years before the Conquest of King Cyvil Rand.

Crops never grew into their fruition come summer time, and The High Continent became a starving mess of chaos and corruption as panic seeped in. The third Long Autumn lasted five and a half years, killing several million people, severely weakening House Goldwater most of all.

The Fourth Long Autumn
Currently, many believe that a fourth Long Autumn, (or simply a long autumn in general) is occurring or just beginning, starting in the red year of 1119.