Pellatarrum: Spring

Ahh, springtime, when a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts not of love, but of running away and hiding, for all the womenfolk have gone mad...

Spring in Pellatarrum, much like in this world, is equated with renewal and cleansing, but for much more obvious reasons. When the great seasonal calendar of the Dayspire ticks out of Earth and into Air, spring arrives with a great whooshing sound as torrents of Elemental Air rush down towards the Material Plane and thence outwards across the land. All of this wind creates a natural vacuum effect, sucking up the dirt and grit left behind by winter's earthfall and blowing it everywhere, which both aids in, and is the proximate cause of, Spring Cleaning.

Unfortunately, all this exposure to Elemental Air often results in mild cases of Insistence to those out and about in it, and the combination of Air Disorder, housewives in a cleaning frenzy, and the first nice day in months frequently results in men fleeing their houses to escape the madness. Unmarried men fare no better, for while the older women fixate on cleaning, the young ladies become suddenly taken with the idea of settling down and having lots of babies in a cozy home.

Lest you think me sexist, males are not immune from seasonal Insistence. Young men are often seized with fanciful notions of becoming sailors, soldiers, or adventurers, seeking fame and fortune in exotic, dangerous locales, while older men either pine for their glory days or seek to recapture them by proxy. Spring is a dangerous time when the old men plan wars, young men wage them, and (hopefully) the next generation gestates in the wombs of fresh ex-virgins.

Raging windstorms, sexual pursuit, and the lure of glorious adventure -- what better way to begin a career?


Halfling Wind-Caravans
The villages at the base of the Dayspire are particularly vulnerable to windstorms in the spring due to the vortexes created by the junction of mountain and plain, and even during other seasons the wind gusts near-constantly down the spire's infinite slopes.This has resulted in most of these becoming halfling and gnome settlements -- their buried homes are immune to all but the strongest of these storms.

Not coincidentally, halfling children from this area are ace kite-flyers, and many have grown up to have stellar careers in transportation. The half-folk have invented a form of sail-driven wagon (a prairie schooner in the most literal sense of the word) which they use to great effect during the spring to circle the Dayspire's impressive circumference. In addition to offering rapid transit for messages and passengers, they also use larger versions of these wagons to deliver trade goods to various markets and ports-of-call which ring the spire and serve as both buffer zones and customs-control for the dwarven city-state beyond.

(If you do not have in your head the image of great halfling-built Conestoga wagons, with full sails and rigging reminiscent of a Spanish Galleon, wheeling around a giant mountain as barefooted land-sailors scamper about the ropes and talking in West Country dialect, I have not done my job properly.)