Redsummer
While volcanic cataclysms can be truely devastiating to the surrounding area, their wider impact is often more significant as a global event. Such was the casse with the erruption of Narros in the spring of 340MD. This blew apart the island leaving only fragments of the outer rim that we know today as the Naros Archipelago . The global impact was driven by the stupendous amounts of dust, the pulverised remains of the island, blasted into the atmosphere.
This resulted in the Redsummer - named for the colour of the skies in the months that followed. Across Tarusia and the other northern continents of Challaria, crops failed and famine stalked the land. The following years were notably cooler and saw depopulation of upland and mountain regions. The links between the Redsummer and the Crowpest are still the subject of debate and conjecture.
Whilst no people who look to their history look kindly on the Redsummer, and the term is often used as term of disfavour ("Well, that were a right Redsummer - weren't it!") the legacy varies between areas from a time of want, to civil unreast, extinction of settlements or a harbinger of worse to come. Travellers are therefore advised to be sure they understand it's impact in the area they are visiting before they mention it.
Extract from the Annals of the Duchy for 340MD
In this year did a great disaster befall all the lands of the world. Late in the spring the sun dimmed and the sky took on a reddish hue - such as is sometimes seen near sunset, but throughout the day. News came of the near complete disappearance of the Island of Narros, leaving but a ring of low islands where once a mighty mountain has been. Tales also of great floods on the coasts of the surrounding sea.
With the sun dimmed, the summer was a chill one and crops failed across the land. Famine stalks the Little Kingdoms and the upland areas but the Duchy was spared the worst of this by the bumper harvest of the previous year. Still, men grew cold in their charity for the needs and looked to their larders with concern.
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