So, assuming the gods are not really real (yes, it's up to the individual Seneschals to decide)...

... where did the five new moons come from?

Ideas? Theories? etc...

they could have just got caught in the gravitational pull of the planet over time.

Perhaps the planet is breaking up due to some horrible (perhaps magical) goings on taking place on an undiscovered continent on the other side of the globe?

Or perhaps something with a LOT of mass (and therefore gravitational pull) is passing near the planet every so often. Each pass it rips another chunk off and into orbit. It wouldn't have to be visible to the naked eye, or for that matter, it could be that it is always on the "far side" of the planet due to the timing of it's orbit.

Brandon

I wouldn't put much effort into a "realistic" description of where the moons came from.

The realistic effects of "capturing" another moon would be devastating.

Just because the gods aren't real doesn't mean there aren't some really powerful beings (or forces) out there.
I think what is meant by the Gods are not real is that they may not be as people, the ones following the various religions, believe them to be.
I'm pretty sure, in a world with powerful sorcery and Fey, there must be some God-like beings, capable of causing new moons to appear.
My game of The Riddle of Steel will have some clues as to the reasons behind sudden moon appearance. (Unfortuately some of my players may well read this, so I won't reveal stuff here! Suffice it to say that nothing natural, that I can think of, can cause moons to appear without some pretty cataclysmic effects on Weyreth)

I would have to agree with Valamir and OllyG.. "realistic" interpretations of the hows and whys of capturing moons would be difficult, at best. Such a capture would be traumatic, to say the least.. and possibly catastrophic.

Pieces (large enough to be visible to the naked eye) thrown/torn into orbit would also be hard to rationalize using Earth-based physics..

Hold on here...who said that the gods aren't real?!? Brian's questions proposed an "if the gods aren't real." There's a faulty (and not uncommon) assumption that because in TROS/Weyrth faith is a matter of...well...faith, that there aren't any gods.

I say there are. Of course, that's MY interperetation. On your Weyrth it's up to you.

Jake

The heck with how they got there, my question is, how the hell do you draw up a chart of the tides with that many moons? Aaargh.

--JB

Tides will be insane. It gives the GM license to be completely evil when it comes to tides. I have a suspicion that actually codifying it all would be unnecessary for the vast majority of campaigns. However, you are right, and I'd guess at first glance that it would negatively impact major over-sea trading and exploration.

In fact, the sudden appearance of large celestial bodies in immediate planetary orbit WITHOUT having large cataclysmic consequences is pretty much proof positive that there ARE gods. The churches might have the names and dogma wrong...but some supernatural party was clearly involved.

I'm with Valamir

The question for me then becomes what do all the religions say about this

I know Thayrists are waiting for The Ultimate High Tide that drowns the world so the true god can rebuild everything. The Xanarian Church sees them almost as periodical evaluations. "This one looks pretty, we must be on the right track" / "That one brought floods, we need to improve our faithfulness"

That leaves Druidism, the Islam parallel (i forget the name off the top of my head), Fahal, and a ton of other minor cults.

On the question of tides, I suspect that they would all be manually determined on sight and tracked over the course of generations in a big book like old Farmer's Almanac weather patterns.

I further suspect that Harbor Pilots and Coastal Pilots would be persons of some prestige because it would be those individuals who would know and have access to such information for their locality making it possible for commerce to continue safely.

I'd further conceive of various towns whose fortunes took a nosedive because a new moon appeared and rendered their harbor too dangerous to continue using.

I'd further conceive of various adaptations that coastal trade and harbor masters would come up with to deal with such things. People are pretty ingenious at finding workable work arounds. For instance the early Dutch cargo flutes had decks with open planking allowing water to wash down into the hold where it was pumped out with bilge pumps. As an adaptation all cargo was shipped in water tight barrels called tuns (250 gallon size IIRC). From this practice measures such as the ton and rating ships by tonnage came into being. (FYI water being roughly 8 pounds per gallon gives us the English 2000 pound ton).

I'm envisioning floating docks, harbors that are broad rather than narrow to minimize water depth changes. Floatation tugs to help lift ships over sandbars and things like this...the sort of interesting little detail that makes a world seem real.

Flotation tugs by the way, are a pretty cool thing. Take a pair of small highly boyant boats. Weigh them down with far too much ballast and lash them to either side of the cargo ship. Throw the ballast over board, and the rising tugs help lift the cargo ship high enough to get over the sand bar. Instead of being a technique used occassionally to rescue stranded ships, things like this might become standard procedure for ports faced with widely fluctuating tides.

Anyway...just some random musings.

Or perhaps Astronomy can be used to predict the tides...

Nightmarishly.

"Okay, you want to predict the lowest tide in the next week? Roll MA/Astronomy... you must get at least 5 successes to do so. Why? Because there are SIX MOONS!"

Hey, it would make astronomers REALLY useful to any seafaring types!

Or maybe some group of Fey pranksters is playing an elaborate prank on all of us by using glamour magic to make five new moons appear.

"Hey Lyrintal, those guys STILL think there are SIX MOONS! Ha-ha!"