Of course, as it was the end of the *first* Great Cycle, it's possible that most people thought it wouldn't be significantly different from a regular turn of the Cycle; except for some powerful seers that may have managed to cut through the "fog" that the disaster probably caused in their visions. One could easily imagine some doomsday cults having cropped up, thinking that the end of the 17th Cycle would be the end of Dragerea (which, of course, was almost true), but that they would be ignored by the "sensible" masses. By the time that the 2nd Great Cycle ends, the empire will presumably be better prepared for something cataclysmic to happen. Which simply means that whatever actually does happen will come from a completely unexpected source, ensuring that their planning was for naught (or perhaps that some misguided preparations for a disaster are what lead to another disaster). Of course, there aren't many people besides Sethra who would expect to live through more than a couple of Cycles, let alone a Great Cycle, so it's possible that the people at the end of the 2nd Great Cycle won't think it's that big of a deal, just as we aren't as worried about possible epidemics as we could be if we look back at what happened during the Black Plague. Continuing this out to the ridiculous future, one imagines that the end of the first Great Great Cycle (17th Great Cycle / 289th Cycle) will be really bad end-of-the-world type stuff. Charley Andrew Joubert wrote: >It makes me think of our own cycle of leap years. I'm sure a lot of >people are unaware that every odd number century year 'should' be a leap >year, but isn't (in other words, every 200 years we skip a leap year. > >Mind you, I'd expect *Adron* to know if it was something that basic, but >you never know. > >>i was under the impression that when adron tried to force a change in the >>cycle, he would have succeeded >>except that he missed one thing.... this was a 17th cycle, aka a Great >>Cycle. 17th full cycle of 17 house cycles, >>which gets a reborn phoenix to symbolize the beginning of a great >>cycle... just me though. i've been known to >>be wildly wrong.