Red Moon Hunt

Originally posted 4-7-2020

 In honor of the Pink Moon tonight and because someone previously asked, and because I love this kind of stuff, I thought I would take it upon myself to identify the nights on Athas for the Red Moon Hunt as detailed in Asticlian Gambit part Three - C

“The Red Moon Hunt is a rite of initiation for would-be Gulg nobles. On the one night of the year in which the moon Ral is alone and full in the sky, a group of slaves, armed with crude weapons, is released into the Crescent Forest, and a group of aspiring nobles is sent in after them.”

The table below was derived from the Merchant Calendar’s program that calculates the times when the moon, Ral, is full and in opposition to Guthay. This is based on synodic periods of 33 days for Ral and 125 days for Guthay, and by calculating the periods when they are in conjunction and opposition to each other. This results in Ral being “alone and full in the sky.” I calibrated the dates to match when the Merchant’s Calendar program has each moon at its first full moon in the year. This table should work nicely with that program. The program is still accessible in the zip file here: http://athas.org/articles/the-merchant-s-calendar I got it to work per the instructions in the readme.

It could be argued that Ral may be full for more than one day, or the day before I have in the table, but I just included the day that Ral was “most full”. So, if you want to use the day before or after the day in the table, go ahead. There also happens to be some years that Ral is full and alone more than once in the year. I tried to make sure that each of the years I included had at least one Ral full-and-alone night.

The table is set for the first 11 years in the Free Year. After which the cycle repeats. So, if you are playing in a year greater than FY 11, just keep subtracting 11 from your year until you get to a number 11 or less and this table will work for it.

There is disagreement in the 2e sources on when the Red Moon Hunt is. Veiled Alliance says: "on a night when both the moons are full" versus Asticlian Gambit says "on the one night of the year in which Ral is alone and full in the sky"

I personally think the info from Asticlian Gambit is more correct, because it comes from Asticlian Gambit which detalis the hunt in full. Whereas Veiled Alliance only mentions it in one paragraph.

Here is a graph for the whole year of Endlean cycle Ral when the moons are full and new.  you can also see other interesting info like when they are in conjunction.

Side note:  Apparently I need to learn how to spell "Ral"

Here is the full 11 year cycle of when Ral is alone and full for when the Red Moon Hunt occurs. There's no exact pattern to it within the 11 years, but it is a mirror image of itself at the 5.5 year mark.

The full 11 years goes out a total of 4125 days (375 * 11)

Update 8/25/2021:

This one is better than the one above