Moon Cycles

Rulainn has four commonly seen moons, and a fifth that is believed in as a legend but rarely seen. Their cycle is random, as the individual moons are pulled in and out of the ethereal plane. They orbit each other and Rulainn, the push and pull of gravity weakened or redirected as they cross the planar veil.
Names have changed between societies and ages of course, but in the Third Age, the moons were named and described in the fashion of Orodromic religion. Diam, the largest moon, has a bright white face. It was associated with all things gainful: bounty, harvest, growth, money, and so forth, both in material and magic. Smaller Pala shines with a comforting and soft deep blue, revealing hidden and lost things, and making many types of augury more clear. Cor glows red, emboldening passion, warmth, and vigor. On the rare nights where only it lit the sky though, that red became ominous as passion became bloodlust, rage, and terror. Finally Trebol, the smallest of the moons, empowered the natural places most strongly. It highlighted everything that was wild and primal, mysterious in opposition to Pala's clarity. Trebol is also unique in that smaller reflections and hard lines can be seen across its faces, which were confirmed to be massive gem formations.
When all four moons shone in full, the shroud between the planet and Ethereum was thin- so thin that there was barely any hindrance to the flow of the differing energy types. And as these planar energies clashed and mingled, they were almost opposite states of the same thing. Like a warm front clashing with a cold front, when the four moons broke down the barriers between the star and dream magics, the energies would clash and roil in storm of energies. Of course, these magic atmospheric disturbances were invisible to human eyes. Violent magic storms stirred and warped pooled magic, but only for as long as the moons kept the veil thin for a night at a time. With even these short bursts of disturbance, the effects upon nature were profound, if poorly understood. On the nights of full moons, increased numbers of horrific creatures thought to be from legend and folk tales would be formed, mutated and spawned by this mixing of energy. Ghosts, vampires, lycanthropes, hags, and other monsters would cross over from Ethereum or be created from the magic left in the material world.
After the calamity that ended the Third Age, the moons no longer followed their predictable paths across the night sky. When the dark ritual pulled the fifth moon from behind Diam, the combined light finally cut completely through the veil between Rulainn and Ethereum. This small black moon, dubbed Brome, bore holes to the ethereal plane wherever its dark light touched, while simultaneously agitating and amplifying the effects of the churning planar energies. As the five moons whirled in the crazed orbit caused in the changes to gravity, they spun in and out of Ethereum. Each time a moon crossed the veil, its gravitational pull changed on the other four moons. Even now, several thousand years after the event, it is impossible for the moons to fully stabilize their orbits, as at any point, any of the five could be pulled into or out of the material plane, while still revolving around each other. Where once the moons could be relied upon and perfectly predicted in their comings and goings, they now appear or disappear randomly, sowing all sorts of chaos when the wrong combinations are present. Strangely, Brome almost always resides in Ethereum now, even as it careens through the paths of its four siblings. Even in the chaos, sharp-minded astronomers can find the occasional omen for the coming moonscape. Once such event, and perhaps the most widely known, is referred to as “the Blink”, where over successive nights, Diam, Pala, Cor, and Trebol each appear in a thin crescent, just above the horizon. Most of the time, given this sign, people have time to shelter before the Mournival, when the moons all appear in full, thinning the veil to Ethereum and seeding chaos across the land. The only times more feared are when Brome also appears with the Mournival, guaranteeing a wave of ravenous spirits and monsters. Rarer still, and thoroughly more dreaded, the mythical time when Brome is said to appear alone, the Trickster's Moon. Although no survivors of such an event have been encountered, partial written accounts do exist of such times, but are invariably cut off abruptly, usually part-way through words or sentences.