The turnings

The four moments each year at which the Game turns — the two solstices and the two equinoxes — kept by the sun, which no one owns.

A turning is a moment, not a span. It happens at the same instant everywhere on Earth and lands on whatever calendar date that instant falls on where you are. Four of them a year: the March equinox, the June solstice, the September equinox, the December solstice. The span between two of them is a Season.

They are load-bearing because they are the shared clock. There is no centre issuing a calendar, no authority that could be petitioned to change the dates, and nothing to argue about: the turnings will keep coming whether or not any book prints them. That is exactly why they were chosen. A clock that belongs to a person or an institution is a lever; a clock that belongs to the sky is a commons. Every edition of the Little Book carries the next eight turnings, and a Circle with fewer than two left on its card is due a new edition — or can simply look at the sky.

In the Game, the turning is when the season's four things are done: count the Scorecard, tell the best story, choose the next Quest, fill and send The Season Sheet. Many Circles make a meal of it; some gather with the other Circles of their ring at one table, which is where sheets can be handed over face to face. Proposals travel up the sheets and are gathered at each turning, so the turnings are also when the shared rules and cards may change, by edition. In the System, a hard discipline attaches: temporal markers — the solstices and equinoxes — are never milestones. A turning does not make a deliverable due; it is when the body counts, not when the work is owed.

The turnings are also the Calendar's four solar anchors, and where a community gathers at its largest. Equinoxes are balance; solstices are extremity, the year's deepest dark and brightest peak, and the turning toward the other.

Also called: The four turnings · solstice and equinox · the turning Stands on: Time · Rhythm · Earth · Cosmos Opens onto: Season · The Clock of the Game · The Season Sheet · OmniSpection · Temporal markers apart from milestones · The edition · The LIØNSBERG Calendar · Celebration In play: table · Home · beyond Sources: The Clock of the Game (Little Book chapter, current best understanding; the table of the next eight turnings) · The LIØNSBERG Operating System §9 and §18 (draft v0) · The LIØNSBERG Calendar (Card, written) · Seasonal OmniSpection (root page) · lionsberg.wiki: The Clock of the Game Open: The Clock's table of turning dates is per-edition and ages; it carries eight and must be renewed, which is stated but has no owner. · The Calendar Card adds twenty-four lunar inflection points beside the four solar turnings; the Game's clock is solar only, and no page says whether the lunar points bind anything.