The Festival of Summer

Among the seasonal festivals that have arisen to honor the four Elder Gods, there is one that stands alone for its hype, attendance, and historical significance. When the bells of Dalaska and Resta City signal the first Chaotic temple sermons of the summer, a week-long festival is held in honor of Chaos. It takes very different forms whether its celebrated in Heron or Resta, but one thing is consistent with both versions: a tournament that draws warriors from across the country to compete for the ultimate prize. In the case of Heron, champions have traditionally received a valuable gift from each of the three houses, while those who participate in Resta's tournament compete for a rare honor called the Royal Boon-- the right to make any reasonable wish of the monarch. The purpose of the tournament isn't hard to guess, for Chaos values strength above all else and competition as a motivator for greatness.

In the First Age, during the Brokamac Clan's occupation of Coronos, the Pyrisians would host gladiatorial games pitting the locals against their own champions. To the Pyrisians, these fights were a test of honor; both their own and that of their new subjects while the Coronosians saw it as a constant attempt to assert the Brokamac clan's dominance. For many years, warriors of both peoples fought against each other for both glory and the Pyrisians' entertainment, with the eastlanders being motivated to win by promises of comfort and luxury to the champions. In this, the lesson the Pyrisians meant to impart to the Coronosians wasn't always clear. The Brokamac meant for their subjects to learn that only in strength can one live in comfort and safety, but they instead began to value the thrill of competition itself; in their minds, great satisfaction is owed to those who strive to be the best. 

This tradition ended when the Coronosians discovered magic. With the ability to stand on even footing with even the Brokamac's pyromancers, they won a greater share of their matches until the Brokamac clan leader, Ivan the Relentless, called off the games to spare his warriors further embarrassment. Many years later, the liberated state of Coronos merged with their southern neighbors to form a newer, stronger kingdom. This was followed by a stern proclamation to the people of Heron that the newly formed Kingdom of Resta was ready for any further threats from the north. The lords of the Piers, Crowmont, and Karn clans responded to this challenge not with aggression, but with an invitation: one more tournament held with Resta and Heron's greatest champions. The Restans accepted this invitation and offered the grounds of their newly built castle, Sunburst Keep, as the arena for the competition.

Historians from both countries agree that the tournament was a political maneuver meant to demoralized the newly unified country. While the Heronites had recently undergone a series of reforms that promoted isolationism over the imperialism of their ancestors, they saw Resta's proclamation as a threat and wanted to prove that this nubile giant could fall. The Malorans who controlled Resta's throne at the time were well aware of this, but doubled down on their insistence that they would no longer feel threatened by the north. But in a strange twist of fate, neither country was able to prove their point when the tournament ended in a draw between the first phoenix spellwarrior, Gaius Maloran and Altan Karn, the last surviving pyromancer of the First Age. 

Since the end of this tournament, the Heronites and Restans went their separate ways in amicable terms. The mutual respect that resulted from the tournament's result has stabilized relations between the two countries for the entirety of their respective existences. While their cultural differences cause them to keep each other at arm's length, their acknowledgement of each others' strength has foreclosed any potential hostility. At first, this tournament was a yearly tradition for which both countries traded the responsibility to host. Over the next decade, however, it became clear that the two cultures each valued something different about this tradition. So, each country formed its own version of the festival, offering praise to Chaos in their own distinct ways.

In Heron, the trappings of the Summer Festival are rooted in the theological purpose of the original tournaments. For the whole week of the festival, temple services are held every hour, which encourage attendees to reflect on Chaos' will for mortality. The tournament is the center of the festivities and encompasses four days out of the week. Games are held for children as well, including toy swordplay, archery, and wrestling. These allow children to prepare for the main event when they are old enough. The festival is catered with many of Heron's summer staples, including rabbit stew, sausages made with pork and smoked venison, fish cakes, and bread bowls. 

In Resta, the Summer Festival embraces the competitive nature that their Coronosian ancestors found in the original tournaments. While Resta's own tournament, the RGT, only encompasses the final two days of the festival, the other five days are devoted to various other athletic events; namely track and water sports. One of those days is generally devoted to experimental events meant to expose spectators to new sports, such as the freeform cycling race known as Blitzroll. For everyone else, Resta's summer festival is a lure for the bounty of firecrab one can eat there, whether its deep fried, packed into sausage, or diced into chili. Various other forms of seafood, as well as the fruits of Blackstone Farm, can also be found for those who can't handle the spice of firecrab.

The beginning of summer is a time of praise for Chaos for giving people the strength to be frequently become better than they are. While this virtue takes two vastly different forms, the lesson is clear: when this festival comes around, everyone is in for a bounty of hearty food and gripping entertainment.

The Confectioners' Menagerie

Travelers to the Restan-Galean border city of Freedom's Reach, beware! During the final week of Ames, every citizen is inclined to look over their shoulder at all times and even the most reclusive will try to avoid being alone. Their behavior changes completely, which always seems to put off visitors, but they do so only out of fear for their own safety. For reasons that remain a mystery to all, people are known to occasionally go missing from the city at night. There seems to be no consistent frequency or prejudice for these occurrences; Restans and Galeans alike of all sorts have proven to be vulnerable. In some years, this may not happen at all, but it has been known to happen up to five times during one particularly traumatic year.

3E6. That was the year of the last spring I dared to stay in Freedom's Reach. It is certainly a harmonious and colorful place to live for most of the year, but after the week we had taken to calling Dark Ames. I was 22 back then, and had thankfully only seen three eventful years of this apparent curse. The disappearances had already been happening for five years, which lead many of us to believe that they began with something that happened during the Archknight Rebellion, but no one has any idea what. It's not like anything meaningful happened in Freedom's Reach at the time. The Archknight and his band passed through quite uneventfully, in fact. Everyone seems to be in the dark about the connection between Dark Ames and the Archknight Rebellion, but I'm certain it's out there somewhere. The problem, though, is that no one with the knowledge and resources to get to the bottom of this could be bothered to look into it initially. The spellwarriors would tell us that since it didn't happen every single year, we couldn't be certain that any magic was actually at work here. No experts from Galeon's end seemed to take the problem seriously either. The official position on both sides of the border was that since the disappearances had no pattern, we couldn't prove they were even related. We were on our own.

That was until that fateful year. We had all thankfully been spared the year before, so the tension that we had become accustomed to wasn't as heavy. After four days, everyone had grown tired of talking about it and just carried on with our safety rituals in silence. On the night of the fourth day, the first person disappeared. But he was a drunk tourist bound for his home in Beldor. He wasn't alone when he first passed through on his way into Galeon, but he was leaving alone. Perhaps this wasn't a Black Ames disappearance, we thought. Maybe he just stumbled back onto the road at night without thinking and would wake up embarrassed somewhere between here and Palon. We tried to stay calm, telling each other as firmly as we could that it wasn't happening again.

An 8-year old girl from the Galean side was gone by morning.

With a new day came newfound certainty that the curse was in effect once more. I stayed close to my friends for the rest of the week, knowing that there was only thing that each of the previous victims had in common. No one was to be alone. There were five of us together in Laurel's house and we had bought a treasure chest of drinks and snacks with the plan of whiling away the rest of the week playing games inside her fortified den. As the night ticked on, however, we had gotten a little tipsy and began to fool around. It was around that time when John crossed a line with Amir. Little Amir had always valued his space and John had been the most drunk at the time so he was acting more chummy with everyone than he normally did. He got angry when Amir began to back away. John started yelling at Amir, demanding that he admit that he wanted him to do what he was doing. An argument ensued during which John pushed Amir over. A hush had fallen over the room when he hit the ground. Suddenly, he was back on his feet and storming out. I was nearest to the door, but I was too stunned to stop him from leaving. If I had, I might have stopped him from being the third to disappear.

The rest of the night had been spent picking apart what had happened with John and Amir. We put him to bed and locked him in the guest room until we could decide what to do with him. Laurel and Akiha spent the better part of Black Ames' penultimate day arguing over whether John should get to hang around. Laurel was disgusted with him and wanted him out of her house, but Akiha tried to argue that he would be alone and therefore vulnerable if he left. It was hard to argue with either, to be honest. I didn't feel safe around him anymore, but was that any reason to condemn him to potential death? Not wanting to be dragged in to the argument, I ducked out as soon as I woke up late in the morning to visit my sister and her family.

I was happy to see that Marie and her children had been safe so far and the five of us spent a rather pleasant afternoon together. Unfortunately, I never really got along with the Galean woman that she had recently got married to so when she got home, it became clear that I wouldn't be riding out the rest of the week with family. So, I returned to Laurel's with a heavy heart, hoping that she and Akiha had already sorted out their argument. But along the way, I ran into Akiha, who told me that Laurel had gotten tired of arguing with her over John and sent them both away. The two of them had gotten separated, but I could tell that Akiha wanted to find John. I couldn't very well leave her to try alone, so we searched together for nearly an hour before finding him... and something baffling.

John had been sitting against a brick fence and staring at the moon in a fugue state when a sticky, looking tendril scooped right off the ground and began to pull him through the air. We tried to chase him, but whatever had him moved faster than humanly possible. We followed the drops of goo that had dropped from the tendril in John's struggle, but the trail seemed to end at a hill just outside the city, directly to the west. It took me a few minutes, but I managed to find footprints that seemed to lead down the southwestern side of the hill. We wandered through the borderlands until we nearly walked off a cliff. At the edge, we saw what appeared to be a bunch of people standing together, but slightly apart just a bit further to the west. 

When we crept up to these figures, however, we found out they weren't people, but statues of people. They seemed to be carved in almost lifelike detail of something partially translucent. They appeared in countless different colors. The nearest was red and seemed to depict a short, thin man. Thinking he looked like hard candy, I pressed my hand to the statue. It was sticky. Certain I must be crazy, I licked one of the fingers of his outstretched hands. It tasted like strawberries. I had been about to report this to Akiha when she suddenly began to back away from a yellow statue nearby, which depicted a beautiful, somewhat familiar woman. She pointed out the bracelet carved into the statue's wrist and told me that she made it. I looked closer and saw the distinctive charm that Laurel was known to wear. 

I suddenly began to look closer at the strawberry man in front of man. His arms were outstretched and one leg was bent. It almost looked like he was treading water. When I studied the face more closely, I saw the same face that I did when Amir fled from John. There was a lot of fear in his expression, but also pure agony. Akiha and I looked together and nodded in mutual understanding. We had found where the people who had disappeared from the city were being kept, and their fate was beyond comprehension. Whoever did this must have gotten to Laurel before we found John, but where was he? None of the dozens of statues that were arranged in this horrible display looked like him. Eventually we found a copse hidden among the trees at the edge of the cliff and argued for several minutes about going in. 

We agreed that it didn't seem to matter at this point whether either of us was alone, but we were too scared to split up now. So, we slipped into the copse and crept between the shrubbery in silence, following a sweet smell deeper in. We finally found a decrepit cabin, a shack more like, that had only the dimmest of light escaping its solitary window. When we looked in through the window, what we saw made us run all the way home. Inside, there was a large, bubbling cauldron with what appeared to be a thick, green fluid. We then watched in horror as John was lowered into the cauldron by a chain latched to a shackle on his ankle. He kicked and screamed wildly the whole way down and managed to catch the lip of the cauldron. But the hot metal burned his hands and he quickly lost his grip. We didn't see what happened next, but I'm sure it was something we should be glad not to have seen.

Akiha spent the last day of Black Ames hiding in my house, fearing any possibility of having been followed. I kept my airwave transmitter ready to call for help at a moment's notice, but we made it through the day without anything else bad happening. Afterward, I called the spellwarriors and tried to lead them to this menagerie of candied people, but the copse, the shack, and all of the statues were gone. I had to let them into my memories to confirm that I wasn't making any of this up, but there weren't any closer to finding whoever did this than they had been before. 

At least this got the peacekeepers on both side of the border to take us seriously. The spellwarriors and HDL have returned every year since then, but they still have yet to figure anything out. I hear they've had some casualties themselves, but I wouldn't know. Akiha and I both left Freedom's Reach that summer. Seeing how all of our friends have suffered, the lives we had before seemed long gone, so we both retreated for safer ground. Akiha moved to Rashara while I returned to my hometown of Beldor. I might return some day to visit my sister and the friends who remained in Freedom's Reach, but I will never again set foot anywhere near there during the last week of spring's final month.

The Aurora Festival

While the waning of the brutal winter season is a cause for joy all on its own, the Spring Equinox signals the start of one of Heron's most beloved festivals, celebrating the arrival of a phenomenon the Heronites consider to be sacred. The Aurora Festival lasts an entire month, and is notable in particular for bringing even the least devout Heronites to temples across the region. Sermons during this festival take on a different flavor than they do during the Festival of Chaos. Rather than emphasizing the virtues of austerity, discipline, and obedience, services encourage templegoers to show gratitude for the natural wonders the Gods have provided for them, and to revel in their connection to the environment around them. For many, this serves as a time of healing after being forced to survive Heron's harsh winter.

The Aurora Festival is said to have originated in northern Karn Territory, not only because this area is where the Pyrisian Aurora features most spectacularly, but because many of the festival's customs seem to be influenced by the culture of the region. The Karns have often been referred to as the Lords of the Stars and Sky, after all. During the Aurora Festival, revelers bundle up and spend time gazing upwards into the darkness, waiting for the aurora and sipping dala tea. It is customary that for an hour every night, all torches and outdoor lamps be completely darkened, so as to increase the visibility of the phenomenon. During the day, the festival tents serve largely as venues for storytelling and simple theatre performances.

In the last few decades, the Lords of Heron, in a tradition begun by a former Lord Karn, have used the Aurora Festival as a time for the noble families to meet in Dalaska and celebrate as a group while working out any pressing diplomatic matters; particularly those that relate to Heron's natural environment and its protection. 

The Festival of Spring

As each new year dawns, young floral sprites emerge from their seedlings while their older peers return from a winter spent in human form so as to survive the cold. It is during these first few weeks that people begin to join the fey in arranging the Festival of Serenity, also known as the Spring Festival or Festival of Spring. As the third week of the season begins, people flock to Orion's Trinity Square and Resta City's Gilded Keep to commune with the local fey in gratitude for their contributions to the lives of mortals. As the bridges between mortal and fey life, the floral sprites play host to all manner of celebrants, serving tea and sweets while serenading them with their otherworldly voices and playing hide-and-seek with the children.

This tradition dates back to First Age Terris, in which the first bond was formed between elves and eversprites. When the lenoff and dwarof clans still clashed over a forest that was very much considered Crane's experimental region, the fey creatures he designed suffered the most. The ancestors of the dwarves in particular once hunted them for sustenance. It was the lenoff clan's peaceful coexistence with the fey that ultimately led to their dominance over the forest. While the dwarof were driven deeper into the earth, the lenoff shared the surface with these creatures in joyful harmony. It is said that this cooperative relationship between races was what initially drew Serenity's attention when she first laid eyes on Comalan.

The relationship between elves and the fey became the basis for Serenity's growing sympathy for the creatures that Chaos and Crane created. It is for this reason that the protection of magical creatures became enshrined in the Doctrine of Tranquility, marking any sin against them as the most grievous. This association between Serenity and the fey carried over into Resta's traditions when its citizens began to welcome Serene worship. This is the source of the floral sprites' role in the holiday.

When the floral sprites were first discovered in Coronos, they were met with indifference until their magical transformations were discovered. This began the practice of capturing floral sprites and other fey creatures by mages wishing to study their magical properties. Seeing humans as far too violent to approach, the fey began to go into hiding. The positive association between humans and elves caused this mistrust to extend to elvenkind as well and, as a result, mortals went for over forty years without seeing a single magical creature.

When common knowledge of the fey began to refer to them as extinct, an acolyte named Beatrice Whitetree made the first contact between humanity and floral sprites in decades. By then, Coronos and Necros had become Resta and Serene worship had become common in the region. This acolyte was among the first Blackstone Monastery trained in the Tranquility Doctrine, which made her encounter in Flora Field a most fateful one. While wandering among the flowers, she began to feel sick with an allergy to one of the flowers there.

Despite their fear, the sprites were unwilling to watch a human die. It was for this reason that they came out of hiding to heal Beatrice. When she came to, she told them stories she had learned in the Monastery in gratitude. Displaying her faith in Serenity reminded the sprites of the elves who once showed kindness to the fey and convinced them that humanity had changed. With Beatrice as their advocate, the floral sprites formed a connection with human society, offering their magical knowledge in exchange for the right to exist in peace.

This new arrangement brought the fey back into the light of day all over the continent and a festival was declared in Tanis in celebration. There, the elves and fey ate and drank as peers for the first time in a raucous party that created lasting memories for all involved. The floral sprites who attended this first festival introduced it into Restan tradition the very next year. This event has become far more restrained in recent years than in the first celebration, but the significance remains the same. The Spring Festival is a yearly reminder that the differences between mortal and fey only have to divide those with room for hatred in their hearts.

The Triangle Festival

Galeon's Triangle Festival is a holiday that none outside of certain niche communities ever believed would turn into a national celebration embraced by the general public. The name encompasses the entire purpose of the day, which is, of course, to celebrate a particular geometric shape. Customs on this holiday include eating triangle shaped foods, wearing triangle based costumes, and, of course, ruminating on the incredible mathematical properties of the triangle. It is common, in major cities, for the day of the festival conclude with the demonstration of a newly created magical sigil; an obvious nod to the importance of geometry and mathematics to the craft of calculating sigils. In Rashara in particular, the festival has taken on a particularly artistic bent, with enthusiastic participants all working hard to create the most spectacular triangle based piece of artwork, or perhaps to put together a stunning triangle-inspired clothing ensemble.

The festival originated in Savasorda, Galeon, a town with a large population of mathematicians and astrophysicists. Naturally, this whimsical tradition then spread to Gienah, FAE, and certain enclaves in Rashara; all places where trigonometry enthusiasts can be found. In the past few decades, however, the popularity of the holiday has increased dramatically. The sudden surge in celebration of and subsequent interest in triangles has generally been credited to a mathematics student at FAE, a Terran immigrant, who celebrated the holiday by baking triangle-shaped pastries with a particular poppy seed filling and dressing up in a large, triangle shaped disguise. Other students at the academy were intrigued and delighted, and the festival began to spread from FAE outward. As a result, not only has the festival grown, but it has come to signify the positive relationship between Comalanian Galeans and Galeon's Terran immigrant community. 

The Day of Tranquility

Every year, sometime in the opening week of the month of Amora, flocks of doves can be seen flying over Resta, particularly close to its three borders. The best place to see these birds is from the Towers of Tranquility, which are garrisoned by some of Resta's finest soldiers at the start of every year. The sight of these doves signals the Day of Tranquility, a Restan national holiday which forbids any aggression. The only exceptions to this tradition are the Honor Guard in these Towers, who carry the duty of protecting Resta from anyone who would abuse this holiday's call for nonviolence. From the towers of Lakewatch, Highland, and Northcoast, the honor guard is positioned to squash any violation of this annual rite whether they come from across or within their borders.

The spirit of this national observance is arguably both Chaotic and Serene, but the actual events that inspired it have fallen by the wayside in the eyes of history. But ask any of the most informed followers of The Doctrine of Shadows and they will tell you of the first human to openly worship Serenity. Her name was Abigail Marle and she was a child living in western Necros in the dawn of the Second Age. With the border to elven lands so close by, she met many elves who would cheerfully profess their love of Serenity to her. Over time, these discussions began to inspire and influence her own view of the world. At the time, Serenity was seen as an elven god and her devotion to the Doctrine of Tranquility an act of heresy against her own creators. Because of this, Abigail suffered deeply for her beliefs at the hands of her eastland peers. Despite this, she held firmly to these beliefs in the face of ridicule and disdain until she was of an age to travel. At the age of 16, she set out for Terris in the hope of finding religious fellowship among the elves.

But her hopes were dashed before she could even cross the border. As she began to circle Lake Whitetree, she came across a band of elven wanderers. Driven to desperation by Serenity's recent retribution, the elves mugged her and left her for dead near the lake. She survived this beating, bruised and dejected. Once she limped back to civilization, she heard a rumor pointing to another hope: a commune had formed in Eastern Coronos that advocated for the acceptance of the Serenity's Doctrine. Still hurting from her experience at Lake Whitetree, she set off for Coronos in earnest.

But when she found where this commune had been located, she found the place littered with horse tracks and the splintered debris of a devastated camp. She looked to the north and wept for the unfortunate seekers of peace who once lived here. Whether they were slaughtered, dragged into Pyris as slaves, or dragged back into Coronosian society, it all meant the same to her. The Doctrine of Tranquility had no place in this world. Utterly defeated, she decided to return home, but stopped in Foldo in time to hear one more inspiring rumor. In the south, the Council Republic of Eris had been overturned and its citizens were forming a nation of absolute freedom to replace it.

This was Abigail's longest journey yet, but for the hope of basking in the glow of Tranquility among friends, no destination was too far. So, she crossed all of modern-day Resta on foot in the hopes of reaching the newly instituted nation of Galeon. But as she entered Necros' southern highlands, she found her path buried in an impassable rockslide. It was at this point that she slumped to the ground and beat her fists against the road in frustration as she wept. She was content to wither away on the spot, but she was discovered by other travelers not long after she had fallen asleep, her face sticky with dried tears.

The travelers took her to their home village of Solan and nursed her back to health. These people, brave adventurers all, listened to her story in earnest and was moved by her pain. In her drive to see her beliefs validated, they saw strength worthy of any Chaotic and in her turmoil, they saw nothing but exhaustion. It was for this reason that these Chaotic adventurers took Abigail under their protection, promising that although they couldn't share her beliefs, she was entitled to her dream. As she traveled with this band, she was given safer opportunities to share the Doctrine of Tranquility with the people she met. It was through this advocacy and the support of her Chaotic friends that she was able to convince the Blackstone Monastery to adopt the Doctrine of Tranquility as one of its principles. As the lands of Necros and Coronos became one, this essentially endorsed Serene worship as one of the founding principles of Resta.

Shortly after the realization of this dream, Abigail was stricken with a sudden illness that claimed her life. She was buried in the Temple graveyard of her home village, which would eventually be redubbed Amora, the Sacred City of Serenity. But that was many years later, and at the time, her companions felt that she had not been honored enough. So they gathered as many people as possible among their acquaintances and the people Abigail had inspired to build three towers in her honor. These Towers of Tranquility were built in each of the three places that Abigail believed her dream to have died. Lake Whitetree, the place in which she was hurt by the elves she sought to join, was where Lakewatch Tower was built. They built Northcoast Tower on the ruins of the devastated Serene commune in northeastern Resta, and Highland Tower was erected by the road into Galeon with the very stones that blocked Abigail from crossing.

So began this yearly tradition of absolute tranquility, protected by the hands of brave warriors who sympathize with the long-forgotten desire of the first Serene cleric. The reflection of this sentiment with the feelings between Chaos and Serenity blesses this day with a powerful magic. Followers of Chaos who remain devoted to protecting the law of this holy day find themselves empowered with the strength to hold off dozens of people single-handed. Meanwhile, those who make it through the day in complete observance of this law are said to be more lucky in the spring season.

Galeon's Festival of Winter

While Galeans also celebrate Salica during the winter season, paralleling the Festival of Winter in Resta and Midania, they have a unique set of traditions and folklore that differ greatly from the well-known Restan holiday. 

As with the Restan Festival of Winter, Salica’s Festival in Galeon is a time of hot food and drink, festive decor, song, and general merriment. It is common to see colorfully costumed theatre productions occurring in town squares, or groups of revelers drinking and breaking into song. As Salica’s holiday it is, of course, a time to embrace one’s emotions and celebrate that which the goddess gave us. Most major cities in Galeon host large celebrations, but many trek to one particular place — Moon Lake in northern Galeon — which has the largest Salican population in the country. The main attraction of the Moon Lake festival is a spectacular play portraying the traditional folklore of the holiday, complete with beautiful displays of storm magic performed by the Salican clerics who live there.

The folklore behind the festival is of entirely Galean origin. Rather than remembering King Dolph, it celebrates one of the country’s most honored heroines. The story of Zan dates back centuries, and celebrations of her heroism and bravery can be traced back almost as far. 

The tale starts in the fertile piece of land that lies in the center of where the Galean River (known by Restans as the Clearwater) diverges — a town now known as Zaniah. Most denizens of this town worked hard to cultivate their crops for themselves, and for the cities down the river. The people lived fulfilling, happy lives, and the land and rivers were kind to them. That is, until it suddenly dried up.

The people lamented for the crops that would inevitably die, and the people who would not have enough food to eat, and sent scouts out to try and discover the cause of the sudden drought. The scouts did not return, but the people had no time to mourn, as the sky suddenly grew dark with smoke and soot, lit only by small embers that rapidly grew in number. A large beast of flame suddenly emerged from the cloud, setting ablaze several homes on the edge of the town. The people would soon learn that the beast had been summoned at the behest of a power-hungry warlord from Resta, come to claim control of the river and its supply lines into the rest of Galeon. 

Many tried to strike down the beast, and some even tried to sneak past in order to attack the man directly, but nobody was strong enough to defeat it. As the village continued to lose hope, a woman who had lost most of her family decided to try a different approach. Zan, a woman of the Salican faith who tended to an orchard of pomegranate trees, began approaching the camp. Tears streamed down her face, and the frail demeanor she moved with caused the beast to disregard her, as it did not see her as a threat. She reached the tent of the warlord, showing the guards the basket of pomegranates she carried, claiming they were a gift, and that she had come to personally inform the man that her town would be surrendering. The warlord found her pretty, and bid them to let her pass into his tent. 

Zan smiled coyly at the wicked man, setting down her basket and taking his hand, causing him to feel an inexplicable rush of affection and trust towards her. She bade him to come back to the village with her so that the people could make their offerings to him and swear their fealty. He felt the urge to believe her, and so he went, leading her safely past his guards and the flame beast. 

The people of the village finally looked upon the man who had taken their water and burned their homes, and this is when Zan let her true power be known. The storm mage harnessed the anger of her neighbors and struck the man with a powerful bolt of lightning, killing him instantly and sending his guards fleeing. The flame beast charged towards Zan and the villagers, but the woman then harnessed the sadness the people felt after losing their homes and people, causing a massive downpour that doused the beast and tore away the dam, restoring the river and saving the village. 

Galeans glean many messages from the story of Zan, the main one being that emotions are healthy and productive, and that even painful feelings can drive people to positive action. In remembrance of Zan and her actions, pomegranates and pomegranate confections are commonly eaten during the Festival of Salica. One archaic tradition that has been largely abandoned by modern Galeans held that anonymously gifting someone a bushel of pomegranates during the time of the festival was considered a curse upon the recipient and a sign that someone wished one ill-will. Nowadays, people will occasionally do this, but only in jest.

Tey Bola ul Handeen

Long ago, at the very edge of the forest, explorers from the Tanisian underground attempted to settle the edge of their territory, hoping to establish the first above-ground village the elves had built in centuries. The settlers of what would come to be known as Plains Sight Village for its proximity to Resta faced a rough start. Lacking the support of the elven cities and facing the once unchallenged threat of the forests and wildlife, the elves of Plains Sight quickly found themselves ill-equipped for survival away from their cities.

In the spring of their first year, the elves fell victim to wolf attacks. A large pack swept through their village, tearing into dozens of people. It was only through the timely intervention of a pack of Restan adventurers that the beasts were driven out of the village and all but a handful of the villagers survived. Desperate to keep themselves safe from future attacks, the elves hastily agreed to trade most of their food for weapons to repel the wildlife. While they eventually had no reason to fear the animals, they struggled to replace the food they had given up. While they could grow more, what they had could only last them through the fall.

Desperation began to set in during the final weeks of fall, when the last of their meager supply of food had begun to dwindle. Although they had pulled in a successful harvest, they had not managed to plant enough to last through the winter. The villagers' troubles were compounded with a raid by bandits who sought to take advantage of their vulnerability. Although the elves managed to rout the invaders, the carnage they brought had devastated most of the supplies remaining in Plains Sight.

It was during a time of peak starvation and distrust in humanity for the villagers that a bishop from the Restan city of Amora traveled into the village, hoping to rest before a long pilgrimage to each of the elven temples. Introducing himself as Nicholas Whitetree, the kindly old man was understanding of the suspicion the elves met him with. Recalling his training as an acolyte, he listened to the village's story and offered his words of sympathy. When he left the village, however, several people noticed that he had left in the direction from which he came.

Bishop Whitetree returned a week later with a caravan loaded with supplies from Amora. He had brought food and tools that would help the villagers to live through the rest of the year, including additional construction supplies that they used to enhance their fortifications. After a hard year, this unexpected act of benevolence would have been overwhelming to the people of Plains Sight on its own, but the bishop's bounty also included gifts of books and toys for the children. So it was that the elves of Plains Sight spent its first week of winter in celebration for the first time after a hard year.

The citizens of Plains Sight bid the priest a fond farewell as he left to finally begin his pilgrimage. They promised to never forget his kindness and vowed to repay it by spreading his good will to all. So, in the village's second year, the elves made use of their improved fortune by crafting various toys and trinkets. They then spent the next winter distributing their gifts throughout the cities of Tanis, as well as the nearby Restan towns. They did this all in honor of their savior, who they called Tey Bola Ul Handeen, which means The Father of Giving in the language of the ancients.

While the villagers spread word of the Bishop's legendary act of kindness, he continued his pilgrimage through the cities. One day, on the third year of his travels and the second year of the villagers' growing tradition, he met one of the elves he had spoken to on that fateful day and told him this.

"This money, these supplies. I gave them happily to you because they meant almost nothing to me, but everything to you. It is the will of Serenity to bring hope to those who need it and comfort to those who seek it. For every person I saved with my paltry act of grace and for every smile you have created since, Serenity looks upon us all with joy."

From that day on, the Bishop's message changed to include the tale of the elves who responded to his charity with a yearly tradition of spreading good will in his and Serenity's names. It is because of this that the traditions of Tey Bola Ul Handeen have become a national festival for the people of Tanis. For the first month of winter, all elves craft toys and works of art and offer them to others for the purpose of celebrating the potential good will of mortal kind.

The Festival of Spirits

Celebrated in Heron, the two week-long Festival of Spirits is considered by many to be one of the most important regional holidays, despite its relatively non-religious nature. Non-religious, and certainly non-Chaotic, the festival is a time of merriment and debauchery, featuring endless festivities, rich sweets and beverages, and many activities that would be considered highly improper at any other time of the year.

Even the most devout of Chaotics see the value in the Festival of Spirits. Superstitious types claim that its purpose is to both scare evil spirits away from Heronite settlements and purge them from within the peoples' own hearts, ensuring the community's safety as the nights grow longer and darker. Some take a more pragmatic view, however, seeing the holiday as a way for people to indulge themselves and warm their souls before the desolation of the cold Heronite winter. 

Whatever the origin of the festival or its intended purpose, revelers see the festival as an excuse to indulge in fantasies that would be highly unacceptable in Heronite society during the rest of the year. However, while the spirit of the holiday holds that things that people do during the festival should be completely forgotten once the festival ends, this obviously doesn't always apply in practice. It is common for revelers to wear masks to hide their identities, especially when engaging in behavior that might cause their communities to cast judgement on them. Guards are forbidden from arresting people during the festival for behaviors that might be considered obscene or blasphemous if they do not directly cause harm to another person, so the function of the mask is largely a way to avoid any social fallout of one's actions.

There are many stories about the Festival of Spirits, but one recent example of someone embodying the true spirit of the festival was a brothel in Eydisthorpe who suspended business as usual and opened their doors, for free, to people who wished to spend the festival with lovers who they would not normally be seen with in public, single folks who wished to engage in liasons with people of the same gender, and those who sought to present and dress in ways that contradicted Heron's strict norms surrounding sex and gender. Knowledge of the private party was spread by word of mouth, and the brothel was guarded by a pair of Salican clerics whose sole charge was to keep out those who came with ill intentions towards the revelers. This practice has become a yearly tradition, and one that causes little fuss due to the hosts' care in protecting the identities of the party's attendees.

The Festival of Autumn

At the end of each harvest season, it is common to see a flurry of pamphlets circulating the cities of both Resta and Galeon which detail many points of physics, microbiology, zoology, botany, and agriculture. While the point of this is lost on travelers from other countries, the adherents of Crane's Doctrine of Knowledge recognize these as signs of the yearly Autumn Festival, also referred to as the Festival of Crane. It is at this time of the year that people are encouraged to learn more about the world around them and mortalkind's place in it. The Autumn Festival is both a celebration of a successful harvest and a reminder of the consequences of ignorance.

The festivities center around a science fair catered by a seasonal feast of the year's harvest. Pumpkin, cranberry, and apple dishes are the main attraction, as well as the proteins of farming livestock such as chicken and beef. In Resta, the fair takes place in the capitol Courtyard, like any of the four seasonal festivals, where science projects are put on display between the food carts. These projects are judged by a panel of Crane priests and, in Resta, the monarch awards the most enlightening and insightful presentation with the Royal Boon. This immeasurable honor, which also is awarded to combat tournament winners from the Summer Festival, allows the recipient to make any request of the current ruler of Resta which falls within their power provided that such a wish does not pose a detriment to the royal family or Resta itself.

The Galean version of this festival, however, is wildly different. For starters, the festivities take place in every city rather than a single capitol. Furthermore, while they remain committed to the agricultural roots of the festival, Galeon's citizens have instilled a sense of progress into the festivities by also focusing on technology as a tool for mortalkind's improved relationship with the planet. There is some debate as to whether this is a good thing, as marvelous feats of engineering often overshadow the hard scientific work of other participants. Finally, the award for the best project carries less weight, as the people of Galeon are more motivated by curiosity than Restans.

The traditions of the Autumn festival date back to the early Second Age, not long after Resta's founding. The Blackstone family farm was struggling to rebuild after the plague that ravaged the merging lands of Necros and Coronos. It had already suffered through three consecutive harvests with disappointing yields. As a result, they struggled to even produce enough to feed their animals. They prayed to every god they could think of to keep the bellies of their livestock and countrymen full to no avail. This led the family matriarch, Lara Blackstone, to critically examine the land and their techniques. Through her efforts, she had discovered a residual pathogen from the plague that had crippled the land and killed their plants. This began a long winter of digging up every patch of land on the farm and treating the earth with a chemical that was known to render the pathogen harmless. 

The following year, the Blackstone Farm had its first truly successful harvest in a decade. As the Blackstones and all of Resta celebrated this new bounty, Lara gave a message to her people that informs the spirit of the Autumn Festival. The Gods gave life and form to the planet, but they cannot manage every aspect of people's lives. Instead of praying to the gods for sustenance, it falls to the people to develop an understanding of the workings of their world so that they can solve their own problems. As the Doctrine of Knowledge demands intellectual improvement, this message resonated with its adherents in particular. The party that followed is known as the first Autumn Festival, a tradition that is repeated every year in which there is a successful harvest. Since then, the applications of science to the continued survival of mortalkind has become a more and more critical focus of Autumn. So it is that Fall has become a season of study and reflection on the failures of those who waited for the Gods to bless their problems away.