What's the Climate?

[Archpaladin Zousha]

I'm just curious as to what the local climate around Cauldron is and where in the world the AP takes place? What's the weather like, the average ambient temperature, that kind of thing. It'll help me figure out where it should be set in Golarion.

[Mykull]

The volcano rises out of a jungle. Cauldron itself is cooler than the jungle because Crater Lake acts as a heat sink and the city is at a higher elevation than the jungle below it. The rains in "Flood Season" definitely paint the picture of a monsoon season. I'd say that the climate is equatorial (not a lot of variation and still warm at night) and tropical (humid and hot).

[DM Fflash]

I personally set it in the Screaming Jungle near Osibu (in place of Sasserine) ... kind of a lost city in the middle of nowhere that built its own microcosm and subculture once founded. Turned Surobar Spellmason into a Pathfinder.

Makes the dinosaurs and monkeys work a bit better, although you have to fib a bit with the other settlements nearby.

[epithet]

I just took the climate of Mexico City. It's a city built in a volcano's caldera that rises from a tropical jungle climate, and I lived there for a couple of months back in the '90s.

[Haakon1]

Mykull wrote:

The volcano rises out of a jungle. Cauldron itself is cooler than the jungle because Crater Lake acts as a heat sink and the city is at a higher elevation than the jungle below it. The rains in "Flood Season" definitely paint the picture of a monsoon season. I'd say that the climate is equatorial (not a lot of variation and still warm at night) and tropical (humid and hot).

Absolutely.

In my Greyhawk campaign, this part of the world is modeled after the early Caribbean:
-- The lowlands are tropical jungle.

-- The plantations in the lowlands are slave plantations, with slaves captured from the nearby jungles, both Amedi (Nordic) and Olman (Central American).

-- Outside the plantations, the lowlands are untamed tropical jungle with predators including dinosaurs.

-- There are also Maroons out there - a historical Caribbean term for villages of escaped slaves -- who plot against Cauldron. The Maroons replace the Hillfolk barbarians. The Maroons are working for Triel for arms and armor for their revolution!

-- Cauldron as a hill station, a refuge from the heat and humidity of the jungle, like the British had in Malaysia and India. Slaves are not permitted in Cauldron, to try to keep Maroon infiltrators out. But Maroons have their ways in and out . . .

-- Cauldron and Sasserine were colonies of the Hold of Sea Princes, pirate/slavers from the mainland. They have only been independent for 5 years, since the Scarlet Brotherhood attacked the Hold of Sea Princes and plunged it into anarchy.

-- The Malachite Fortress has a magic gate connecting to the mainland of Greyhawk, and was taken over my Duergar refugees from the Underdark, where the kingdom of the Ghouls is taking over! The slaves sold from the Malachite Fortress went to a number of places, including the Vault of the Drow.

Loves my Greyhawk setting, and especially "filling in the blanks" to make it awesome for me.