event: a gentle festival

[thestewards]

we're all just working pieces trying to fit somewhere
We wander 'round in circles and we talk in squares

► The OOC plotting post for this event can be found here.

► Direct all questions to the mods at this link.

► All NPCs except for Queen Fayura can be met at this event. Use their top-levels in the plotting post if you'd like a thread with them for this event. For your convenience, you can reach out here: Allairavar, Verim, Loren, Niall, Grejor, and Raya. They may choose to wander into your threads should you not plan anything out with them, too.

PARTY PLANNING
Dawn arrives and brings with it another group of Strangers. Unlike the first group, you wake to a comfortable bed and cheery birdsong. Unlike the second group, you are expected. As you rise, a vase with spring flowers appears on the table beside your bed. Tucked beneath the vase, you find a message of welcome inviting you to join the Queen and her residence for breakfast.

Following directions given by footmen throughout the residence’s winding halls, you make your way toward breakfast, only to find that breakfast is a beautiful disaster.

Maids and footmen rush around you, choreographed by a red haired witch standing on a chair in the middle of the entry hall. She wears an apron and a look of fierce concentration. Beside her, a list floats in the air. Pinned to her hair, her Tiger Eye Jewel flashes and swirls with power. You suspect you should just sneak out, but she’s too observant.

“You there!”

You freeze. Maybe you had a mother with eyes in the back of her head who always knew where you were. Maybe that was a teacher or some other kind of mentor. Regardless, you know this voice. You know this tone. This is a person harried and pressed, and she probably doesn’t care that you haven’t eaten breakfast yet.

“Yes, you! Stranger!”

You turn toward her and abruptly find your arms full of banners. Closer inspection will reveal each flag sewn to the cord bears a different symbol: one for the Guilds (a hexagon with circles at each joint), the Ebon Council (a pair of Jewels side by side), and Fayura’s Court (a strange, spiraling spear against a mountain peak); a sun and a moon; a cloud flush with rain and lightning; and a sprouting plant.

“Make sure those get hung on the eaves outsi—no, I haven’t seen the Lady, Carlisle, but if you—”

A Blood male has distracted her, but you’re left with the distinct impression that if you don’t hang these banners, the Head Housekeeper will hunt you down (you would be correct). Not to worry: you’re not the only Stranger living in the residence, and it takes you little time to locate someone else with an equally bomb-blasted look on their face to help you help the residence prepare for the spring festival! There are flags to be hung, simple breads to be baked, stalls to be built in the Bazaar, and so much more. Your hands work, and so you work.


HOPE BLOOMS ETERNAL
At sundown, the festival begins in earnest: people take to the streets in every section of the city, pouring into the Old Town Bazaar with rosy cheeks and broad smiles. The spring festival will last for the next six days. Three days to celebrate, and three days to work.

All around the city, banners hang from and between homes and businesses. Some fluttering banners bear flags emblazoned with only the Guilds’ symbol or the Council’s or the Court’s, and there are far more Guild banners than any other—a result of the Strangers’ providing support to the Guilds no doubt. But mixed among them are flags bearing both the Queen’s mountain, too, just not as many, and the only place the Council’s flags hang are over Blood homes.

As you make your way through the Bazaar, you hear…

A young landen man: I’ve heard the Queen is going to honor the Earth Mother and Father Sky during planting in a few days, and—
His companion, an older woman: The Blood honor only death and their Darkness. What does she care for our beliefs?

A Blood farmer: …kind of gift. Don’t quite know what to make of a Queen giving anything.
A landen farmer: Anything to help the crops grow. The Guilds mean well, but the land is overworked.

An excited little girl: —ride the unicorn, mommy! There’s a unicorn and a dragon and a centaur and a—

Near the pavilion at the heart of the Bazaar, the landen Guilds have erected technological wonders. A carousel of glittering bronze and metal lights up the night with rainbow colors. Music spills out of it, cheerful and bright as its three rings turn in lazy revolutions. Unicorns and dragons and centaurs and mermaids stand as mounts for the young and old. Nearby, the Elektriline Guild prepares a light show, projecting fantastical shapes in dazzling colors on the sides of buildings and into the night sky itself. Around the park to the south of the Bazaar, the Transport Guild has set up a racing track for unicycles and tricycles.

Booths with games line the streets. Knock down the glass bottles! Throw the ring around the spoke! Win prizes to dazzle your loved ones and delight your children!

While food has certainly been scarce, the bakeries and charcuteries have brought out their best fare at surprisingly reasonable prices. This is a time to celebrate the end of winter and the beginning of spring, and celebrate the city will.

While the Blood dress in nice clothes, the landens bring out costumes. As is tradition, some dress as Father Sky, wearing crowns of gold and flowing robes of white. Others cloak themselves in the vestments of Mother Earth: wearing costumes of green and brown, painting vines over their faces to disguise themselves and crowning themselves in garlands of crocuses and tulips. Whispers through the Bazaar say the Queen is among them, disguised as Mother Earth.


SOWING THE FUTURE
The fourth morning of the festival, the entire city rises with the dawn. Over the past three days, a strange rumor wound its way through Draega: Fayura will join the planting to give a gift unique to the Queens of the Blood.

Members of the Ebon Council and the Guilds organize groups, directing the bodies of the entire city to go to this farm or that as they step out from behind Draega’s tall, protective walls. But before you are dismissed to help till the land or plant grain seeds, you join a larger crowd at a nearby farm. The Blood airwalk, standing above the landen crowds to gain a better view.

At the head of a recently tilled field, Queen Fayura stands with a landen farmer. He grasps his hat, wringing it fiercely in his hands as her Steward, Master of the Guard, and Consort stand guard behind her. Dressed in greens and browns, crowned in a garland of crocuses that drips dried stalks of wheat down her hair, she kneels before a bucket. She calls in a knife. When she speaks, she doesn’t raise her voice, but Craft projects it across the assembled onlookers. “Blood sings to blood. This is a gift: freely offered,” she says. “Freely given.” Bright red blood blooms across her palm as she drags the blade through skin. Vanishing the knife, she closes her fist and squeezes, allowing the blood to fall into the bucket of water and mix with it.

Her Consort heals her wound when she holds out her hand, and then he steps back. She rises, picking up the bucket and taking hold of the ladle on the ground beside it. Her voice lifts in song. Though the language is unrecognizable, the melody is beautiful and full of the vibrant hope of spring. She sings as she walks along the furrows, sprinkling bloodied water on the land. Blood and Strangers alike feel the pull of magic as something in the earth itself unfurls, shuddering awake at the call of the Queen’s blood.

For the next three days, nearly every man, woman, and child in Draega assists with the planting. Children do small, simple tasks, and the older children watch over the younger ones. The adults drag plows through the warming land and spread seeds in the furrows the plows create. Queen Fayura visits each field in turn, and planting doesn’t begin until she’s sprinkled her water over the earth. Throughout the day, her vibrant song echoes around the city, and a few Blood girls, too young to yet wear a Jewel, take up the song and hum along with it.

You would do well to help the farmers. You may not have a strong arm or strong back, but there’s planting to be done and people to organize, feed, and care for.


AIR TIME
Whether you catch the news on a Far-caster in the city or you’re spinning the dial on your own device, you’ll hear…

etiquette with evandra and aren
[Evandra's voice is a little bit rough and a little bit husky, the kind of voice that gives bad ideas to young men and headaches to fathers.] …do we make of a Warlord Prince’s reaction to his Queen’s blood?

[Aren, whose voice is typically chipper and bright, sounds today much more seriously than usual.] It’s a dangerous thing. Elemental, you might say. Like a storm. Every Prince is dangerous when his Lady’s blood spills.

[Evandra:] So, are we in danger when the Queen does whatever ritual she’s doing?

[Aren:] No. The Blood put great importance on, well, blood. It’s the memory’s river. Power sings in blood. It carries strength and Craft. I’ve never seen a Queen do anything like this before, but her Princes—and her court—treat it like ceremony. And it probably is.

the weather
[A soft-spoken man’s voice rumbles out of the Far-caster. He’s pleasant to listen to, with a soothing cadence to his voice.] …continued rains with intermittent sunshine over the next few days as the days grow steadily warmer. Remember that rains coming out of Askavi are dangerous to your health, and salves for lesions from exposure can be purchased from the Medicos at…

the news
[Garret speaks at his brisk pace, hurried and harried as though he has too much to say and not enough time to say it.] A new development in the story of the young landen man who shot and killed Councilwoman Vera last month: the Strangers have influenced the Queen to bring together a Tribunal not of other Queens—

[Wilt, as usual, is put upon and nasally.] As though there are many of those to go around.

[Garret, continuing as though Wilt didn’t interrupt him:] —but of the landen man’s peers, both landen and Blood.

[Wilt, sighing:] That’s correct, Garret. It seems this Tribunal of three landens and three Blood will listen to the young man’s account, as well as the stories of other witnesses, and determine a suitable punishment. This will be presented to the Queen, and she will carry out the sentence.

[Garret:] Looking now to the warming weather and what that means for trade with the mercenary settlements outside of Draega—

Comments

[illequipped]

[Emil sure is back here picking up junk. His brief conversation with Lalli and the two of them showing up on Guts' heels seems to have a few of these honestly very reasonably upset food vendors convinced that he is somehow in control of anything happening here?? Or at least he's the smartest choice to try to talk to, which is correct, but it does mean that Emil has an armful of somewhat ruined food that he's trying to shlep back and forth while people demand to know what's going on.

So he's a little frazzled already, and stuck over here with the junk and the complaints a bit longer, so Destructo-Man and Lalli over there better not make this worse...!!]

[ilves]

[Lalli remains where he is for a moment longer, making sure that Guts isn't about to leap on top of the table before he finally walks over to peer up at this child. He's not good with kids! He can tell that this one is scared, but he neither knows nor cares how to deal with that; the only thing he does know to do is point at the table and issue a short, simple command:]

Down.

[Like he's dealing with some type of dog! It's no wonder the child a) shakes his head and b) tries to float a bit higher, but nuh-uh-uh; Lalli makes a quiet noise—a tiny hiss?—before using basic Craft to... well, yank him back down. He's never had to use Craft like this? His handling of it is a bit, mmm, imprecise, but the important thing is that very surprised child is only hovering, like, a foot above the ground instead of over everyone's heads. Progress.

Anyway, since Lalli doesn't want to touch that cursed rock... watch him continue glaring at this brat as he points back to Guts. Give him the egg, please and thank you! Do not yeet it back into the crowd, even though that it looks like the egg thief is... seriously considering it...]

[garmr]

[The boy is looking up at him with wide eyes, and Guts is unsure how to make himself look less threatening after chasing him down the length of the street the way he did. Maybe he should have tried a little harder to avoid knocking over so many salami plates and signs.

He tries to speak more calmly:]

Alright, kid. You want to give that back, or do I gotta take it?

[The egg thieving boy just flinches when he steps closer. Man, he was really not doing a good job in front of all these watching people. Maybe dressing like a medieval death trap wasn’t the best way to gain a child’s trust. He really doesn’t have the patience to try and make friends though. With a resigned huff, he reaches down to grab the Behelit, only for the boy to open his mouth…

...and let out a high-pitched wail. Yikes.

Don’t mind if he just, plucks it out of his tiny hands as gently as someone like Guts can manage.]

[illequipped]

[In Emil's corner, he's not doing too bad cleaning up the HORRIBLE MESS that SOMEONE made, as much as some of these dishes and displays can't be saved. This block is going to be a little... ugly until tomorrow night, but he's helping these people salvage their livelihood quite literally in some cases. And he has about 6 new apologies on rotation for everyone who talks to him...

...And then he and everyone else around hears the child start screaming, which gets Emil's attention more urgently than the free sample toothpicks he's painstakingly picking up from the ground. He gives some rambling explanation about my-friend-needs-a-hand this and the-big-one that, and hurries over only to find that Guts did this and Lalli is innocent. Probably.

Still—] What is going on? Why is he still floating?!

[Did you even finish step one!!!]

[ilves]

[The child screams and Lalli instinctively covers his poor, defenseless ears, because oh! My God! He's standing so close! Forget everything that led them to this moment; this right here is the true nightmare scenario, which is why he shoots Guts the sharpest possible look. You fool...

But ah, here comes Emil! Lalli glances back his way, catching that last (silly) question and answering it with the briefest of shrugs. The child is still floating... because he wants to float? Duh? And because the cursed rock's owner is both big and stupid, but if it's really that big of a deal... hmph. He reluctantly removes one hand from the side of his head, reaches out to place his hand on this baby's shoulder, and gingerly pushes him right back down to bump against the ground. Does this child like this? No. Does Lalli care? Not really... until the child, you know, lets out another piercing shriek. uGH.]

Pssh!

[That's Lalli speak for Shut UP! Anyway, that hand is now going right back over his ear as he goes back to glaring at Guts, because he is... over this...]

[garmr]

[The child points at the Behelit in Guts' hand as soon as Lalli lets go of him, finally falling on his rump as his jewel-fueled floating runs out of steam.]

I found it first! It's mine!

[Cool. Guts is going to slowly put the egg back in his pack now, shuffling it into a more secure spot. Sorry, kiddo. He's seen enough child apostles to last him a lifetime. With the arrival of Emil, he takes a read of the crowd around him. That sure was a lot of eyes on him, and that usually didn't mean anything good.

Glancing back, he sees the grumpy landen owner meticulously start picking the bottles he knocked over and set them back in place. Hm.]

Sorry about the mess.

[He leaves exactly two coins from his stipend on the stand where all the bottles were being stacked. That covers all the damages, right? Hope you have a better apology for everyone, Emil.]

[illequipped]

[Oh my god, this is the nightmare scenario. Emil puts his hands on Lalli's shoulders to kind of... steer him away from screaming children, part one of his Damage Control Plan. Yeah, this method of handling it earned a solid 6/10.]

Thank you, Lalli... I've got it now, I think.

[Now as for the rest of this, uh... Well, Guts' two coins are just embarrassing. Emil sighs.]

Uhhhh— [UHHHH!! He's been left to hang, what the hell!! He glances around for something he can do that's not completely terrible and settles for shuffling over to the upset little boy on the ground to help him up and speak quietly to him, maybe about how Guts is a horrible man with a horrible egg that, really, no one should want! How about a nice cake or something instead!

The child looks like he's going from indignant to on the verge of sloppy tears, now that someone is actually trying to sympathize with him. Emil will handle emotions, you two please pick up some plates or something.]

[ilves]

[Lalli is turned away, and so away Lalli goes... because like hell he wants to stand anywhere near this blubbering child. He'll just, you know, push past more people to go stand beside one of these destroyed stalls. There's so much junk left for Emil to pick up! He kicks a piece of a broken plate over to the side, hands still clamped over his ears as he takes in all of this... mess. He's going to be watching Emil clean for the rest of the night... and maybe help him, but still...

But, uh, where does that giant think he's going? Lalli spots him moving away from the corner of his eye, and while it doesn't hurt his feelings... well, again: there's so much junk left to pick up, which is why he leaps over more porcelain shards and hurries after this horrible man. Hey! You! Yes, you. Lalli reaches out to, like, grab that cloak with one hand and point back at all of that carnage with the other, because listen—]

You can't leave.

[Go clean up after yourself, punk! Lalli has a list of food booths he has yet to hit up, and this is really messing up his plans!]

[garmr]

[Alright. Child safe. Apology given. Money left for destroying people’s stuff. Typically, the next Black Swordsman thing to do is to disappear mysteriously into the night the same way he came. He was ready to wipe his hands clean of this mess and let the two idiots that started it handle the clean-up.

Except, while he was mid-stride away from the watching crowd, he feels something tugging at his cloak. Guts looks back, brows creased with annoyance, and his gaze slowly lowers down until he finds Lalli grabbing his clothes. He can’t leave, huh?

Right. As if he was going to listen to those two after they slapped his Behelit into a crowd of people. As far as he was concerned, maybe this’ll teach them and the brat to keep their hands off his stuff. His lip curls up and he gives a resounding - ]

Tch.

[Sorry, Emil. Unless the boys have some other way to convince him to stay and help, Guts is going to continue marching on ahead.

Watch him leave, friends. Watch him.]

[illequipped]

[Oh no he doesn't!! Emil looks up from comforting this now crying menace child to watch this valiant attempt to get Guts to stay play out, and, huh... it's not working. Who would have thought that a tiny twig of a boy couldn't stop someone the size of a small tank. Surely, this was the least likely end to that try.

But that's so! Rude! So Emil, one hand still on the kid's head to stop him running- or floating- away again, reaches over to Guts' pitiful two coins...

He grabs just one, promises he will get it back, and yeets it as hard as he can at the back of Guts' retreating head. Get BACK here!!!]

You made this mess!

[ilves]

[The important thing, Emil, is that Lalli kind of tried to stop this destructive man from running away. ...Kind of. So when Guts just, you know, ignores the cloak-pulling and continues along his merry way, Lalli is highly annoyed... but really, what's he supposed to do here? Use Craft to drag him back to the scene of the crime? Lalli doesn't have a death wish.

But Emil, apparently, does. Lalli glances back his way, taken aback by that surprisingly good aim, before looking back up at this nearby giant. First of all? He didn't do that. Second of all? Well, since Emil obviously doesn't want to let this go...]

You did. [Lalli even helpfully points back to all of that destruction, just in case this man's tiny brain has already forgotten all about it.] Go fix it.

[Right now!!]

[garmr]

[They won’t need much help convincing people that Guts is a horrible, horrible man. First, he masterfully tilts his head away from the incoming coin, denying Emil his well-deserved catharsis as it whizzes past his ear.

Second, he stops in his tracks, finds the daring coin-thrower in the crowd, and fixes on him the kind of deadass cold glare he reserves as a final warning. Was he actually going to indulge Emil on his impending death wish? No, of course not. But he did look like he was considering it, mainly so he wouldn’t get more coins thrown at his head.]

Piss off.

[And with that, he turns the corner of the alley and slinks out of sight.]

[illequipped]

[Hmm, okay— safe to say that Emil is momentarily goddamn terrified when Guts gives him that look. Guts is huge! Look what he did to this whole area!

But his frustration at being clearly the only one who's going to help pick up this stuff- because Lalli will pick up two plates and give up, he's sure, no offense Lalli- wins out, and all he does is make an aggravated noise and gesture around pointlessly at the area. Guts has already left... it's fine.

It's not fine and he's going to have so many petty things to gossip about at breakfast, but whatever! He'll CLEAN this place, even if he has to literally carry that crying child around until he stops CRYING, GOD!!!!]