The Skystone

"As the Skystone turns" is a common saying through the Valley. None know what lays beyond the strange husk, but all are aware of how it effects their everyday life. However, in the far-eastern portion of the valley there lies a white mountain that appears made out of the same material of which the Skystone is made.
Those who chart the Skystone's turning believe this to be true, because once every cycle a large crack, oddly round, lines up directly above the mountain.

Between earth and the heavens stands a husk of semi-translucent stone latticed through with holes and cracks. These holes are most plentiful over land; seafaring vessels who travel far from the coastline report that they almost vanish completely. It is generally agreed that the sky was once wholly undamaged, and these cracks were formed through interactions with outside forces. There is, however, a good amount of disagreement about whether this interaction was divine.
The sun is visible, passing from crack to hole as it travels behind the sky, as are stars. However, constellations are not universally known, given that the view of the heavens beyond the sky is severely limited by where you are on the continent. Instead of navigating by the stars, travelers carry detailed drawings of the sky, tracing their location based on what patterns they can observe and what time of year it is. The thickness of the Skystone varies from region to region, with some learned people estimating that some places are over a mile thick.
None know what the outside of the Skystone looks like, but many believe there is a whole other world floating just fifty miles above the planet's surface. The Skystone figures prominently in most religions, although some treat it as a natural occurrence to which little thought should be given.

Localized Phenomena

Occasionally, streams of water seem to fall from cracks in the skystone. No one knows how this occurs, but given how it often happens above deserts, or what would otherwise be deserts, some attribute this blessing to a deity of some kind. Rarer, thankfully, stones are known to detach from the Skystone and plummet to earth. These seem more random, but it is seen as divine judgment when someone or someplace is struck in this way.
Some light filters its way through the semi-translucent stone, but most streams through the many cracks that litter the surface of the Skystone. Because of this phenomenon, some areas have two different kinds of seasons. The first is the common winter-spring-summer-fall cycle, but the second is the Sunlight-Darkness Cycle. This is caused by the Skystone's lack of cracks in some areas. When such an area appears on the horizon, those underneath know that the next month or so will be dark and gloomy and that crops will have difficulty growing without strong sunlight.
Snowfall is dense and weather is bitter cold when Winter and Darkness coincide, as they do every three or four years, and it rarely melts until late spring.

Type

Planetary Orbit