Holidays and Celebrations
The Covenant Grounds celebrate 8 official holidays. During these seasonal festivals, the whole city (and surrounding villages) come to celebrate. With the exception of those who have been granted official leave by their guild superiors, attendance is mandatory and absence will be recorded.
Spring Festivals
Founding Day
Commemorates the original Covenant Pact that stilled the Grounds.
Marked by parades through Port Valmorra, lanterns lit in colorful fairy lights at every street corner, and offerings at shrines.
People celebrate the Eternal Flame of Deity and bring offerings for another blessed year. So long as his flame burns, so the Covenant will stand.
Floodtide Vigil
As the bayou swells from spring rains, families gather together along the water's edge to float candles or charms, asking The Great Serpent for her spirits not to take over their homes.
People wear reeds braided into crowns, elders sing hymns to keep the spirits at bay.
A time when the Circle of Root and Bone is quietly at its busiest, as their blessings and charms are in high demand.
Summer Festivals
Saintsday
A holiday remembering the countless lives lost to slavery, famine, war and chaos during the earliest Lawless days. People bring offerings to the Gods who stilled the lands.
Churches hold long services (mandatory attendance) during which the Lanterns speak of liberation through law, while the Storm Children call for liberation through defiance.
The Nocturne Order sponsors public feasts in remembrance of the lives lost (despite being the only ones to have owned peoples in the past, and were the primary sponsors of wars).
Serpent's Wake
A folk celebration said to honor the Great Serpent who coils beneath the bayou, keeping pestilence at bay.
Parades of painted boats, masked dancers in serpent garbs, and offerings of rum or blood poured into the swamps.
Mischief runs rampant here. Keep an eye on your purse.
Autumn Festivals
Harvest festival
Classic harvest fest: tables piled high, songs in the fields, public markets bursting with goods. Lots of games and drinks galore.
Children get excused from school to help with the harvest, and are typically celebrated for their hard work with food and a few coins.
A time of uneasy truce, where even the Guard turns a blind eye to theft or smuggling, because "all deserve to eat the labor of the land".
Ash Night
On the one hand, it's a celebration like Halloween, except children are dressed as priests, ghost hunters and knights, and go around houses offering "blessings" in return for candy.
It is also a somber night, where families burn effigies or old belongings to ward off wandering spirits.
Smoke fills the streets of Port Valmorra, and ash is smeared on foreheads like a blessing.
Believed to be the thinnest night between life and death. Be extra careful around places where spirits may linger.
Winter Festivals
The Long Night
Darkest night of the year, when candles are lit in every window to keep the (literal) dark, especially The Nightmare King, at bay.
Families stay awake together, telling stories, singing hymns, and drinking through the night.
Some day if the lights go out, something dark comes knocking... but that's just folktales, right?
The Covenant Feast (late winter)
Marks the survival of another year in the Grounds.
Rich and poor alike share food in public squares, though mostly funded by the Nocturne Order.
Ends with the ringing of bells across the city to "wake" the land for spring.