One of the weirder aspects of the cosmology is that apparently the Ascians need to unbalance a shard in a specific manner, while also causing the same (type of) unbalance on the Source, or at least a close attempt thereof, in order to create a Calamity.

The Source unbalance doesn't have to be huge or dramatic, since it will feed on the effects from the unbalanced shard anyway, but it does seem like it has to actually exist, and be close enough to the same aether-state as the unbalanced shard.

Which means the Ascians have some means of quite impressive project management, to line these up well enough to cause seven Calamities and almost an eighth.

I can just about imagine Elidibus trying hard to get everyone on the same page with SMART and Gantt charts, and the ominous meetings they have are basically their versions of daily scrums, and there's a Kanban board languishing somewhere on the moon.