Event: Sorrows

The long, cold winter’s opening is marked by Sorrows, which occurs at the juncture of the months of Little Yule and Great Yule.

What is Sorrows about?

The purpose of Sorrows is to commemorate the dead, to remember friends and family lost to the sands of time and honour them. Along with the mortal dead, the festival also serves to honour Voland; when Bishal cut him down, for all intents and purposes he was dead, and so Sorrows remembers the sadness of having lost him. Finally, the festival also marks the beginning of the Namelessness, when children are stripped of their name and treated as dead. Namelessness is part of remembering Voland’s death; children are made to be ceremonially dead for six months, the same amount of time as Voland was.

Though the colder weather usually arrives before Sorrows, it is officially viewed as the first day of winter. The Libram tells that after Voland died, the world was plunged into the first winter as Bishal let loose the ice of Nifel, the frozen hell that Bishal hails from. This part of the story is meant to explain the cycle of the seasons; prior to the Freeze this was used as evidence by the sceptical that the Libram was largely fictional, a view which has waned in support in the Bay in the present.

What are normal Sorrows activities?

The festivities of Sorrows occur in the first half of the day, culminating in a modest feast at midday. Prior to the feast, many people sing various traditional songs about Voland, death and rebirth, and the remembrance of those loved ones that are gone to Muspel to reside with Voland and bask in the heat of his eternal flames. Sometimes games are played in the morning, especially by the children who are about to become Nameless. These activities and the midday meal that follows are often conducted with just the family.

After the feast, people begin to make their way to the kirkhall for the holiday service. Traditionally, the service begins with a reading from the Libram, the first chapters up to the death of Voland and the coming of the winter. Following the reading, the service takes the form of a funeral for Voland complete with a coffin surmounted by a large red candle; various songs are sung, laments for the dead and messages of love and remembrance. When sunset approaches, it is time for those children who have reached the age of twelve in the past year to become Nameless.

The children are dressed in white robes and each given a candle. One by one, they approach the head of the kirkhall and are given a blessing by the Keeper. The child lights his or her own candle from the flame of the red candle on Voland’s coffin, then one of their parents or another family member such as a sibling or an aunt or uncle proceeds to remove the child’s hair with a saege knife. The child speaks his or her name aloud for all to hear, and hands the Keeper the candle. The Keeper declares the child dead, and places the candle with Voland’s. Once all the children have become nameless, one final lament is sung, and the people return home for bed. The candles of the nameless are watched over by the Keeper, keeping the flames alive and exchanging spent candles for new ones all through the winter.

What is eaten during Sorrows?

As mentioned, the feast on Sorrows is modest, but still larger than a normal meal. The contents of the meal are very simple, the only special feature being cinnamon loaf baked and distributed by the Keepers. The Order maintains a number of trees from which cinnamon is harvested specifically for this purpose. The rest of the meal traditionally consists of porridge, cheese, and apples, though some people also include small portions of reindeer meat. Cider and rosehip tea are the usual drinks for all ages.

Possible Adventure Hooks

Namelessness can prove to be quite an ordeal, being without contact from your family and friends for so long, and the prospect of it can frighten many preparing to undergo it. Your adventurers could be enlisted to find and return children who have run away, hoping to avoid Namelessness. This mission would come with a time limit as the ceremony cannot be performed on any other day, and a child who has not undergone his or her Namelessness will never be considered an adult.

Because of the war, malicious people on both sides might attempt to disrupt the Sorrows traditions in order to damage the enemy’s morale. This may come in the form of a minor disruption, such as the cinnamon being stolen before it can be used in the baking of the holiday loaves, or it could be a more significant matter, such as stealing or destroying the candles used in the Sorrows service.

Lastly, the ceremony itself could be interrupted. Perhaps midway through the service, Voland’s empty coffin opens itself, and someone claiming to be Voland emerges. This could be a genuine visitation from an aspect of the god himself, or it could be a malicious spirit or being with some sinister plan that involves gaining the trust of the people.

Gone on Holiday: Returning January 3, 2011 for a full week (five days) of posts. Resuming the normal schedule the following week.

Culture: Death

In the culture of Butter Bay, even more so since the Freeze began, death is held in great reverence. The Libram’s account of the death of Voland at the hands of Bishal and his subsequent resurrection has ingrained itself into the collective consciousness of society, and instilled a deep respect.

Namelessness

The most obvious sign of this reverence is in the rite of passage known as Namelessness. Namelessness is a coming of age ritual that all inhabitants of the Bay go through; it is absolutely mandatory. If, somehow, one was to not do it, they would forever be considered a child. When you go through your Namelessness you are re-enacting the death and resurrection of Voland, claiming your place in the world as one of his children. The process begins at the festival of Sorrows. All children who have turned twelve in the year since the previous Sorrows are deemed ready to go through their Namelessness. A parent or other family member, or occasionally a Keeper, will use their own saege knife to cut off the child’s hair in a ritual performed in front of the whole community.

After the ritual is completed, the children, now called nameless, are considered to be dead. The role of the community in the Namelessness is simply to not interact with the nameless in any way. The nameless must fend for themselves, preparing their own food, dressing themselves, repairing clothing, and anything else that might arise. Though the nameless are not officially supposed to speak at all, they sometimes speak with and interact with one another; the rest of the community does not enforce the no-speaking rule because they are not allowed to acknowledge the nameless. It is also common for the nameless to help one another with food, clothing, and protection; this is also accepted because the community is not allowed to acknowledged them, but some view the practice as a positive as it helps instil the nameless with a sense of community.

When Nighsend, the new year’s festival, arrives, another ritual is performed; the nameless are each presented with a saege of their own, to carry and guard the rest of their lives. Once this ritual is completed, the nameless become adults, and are considered alive again. When the nameless regain their life, they are allowed an opportunity to alter their given name if they so wish. As adults now, they are expected to contribute to society just like everyone else by farming, or fishing, or mining, or even joining the militia.

Dying

When people die in the Frozen Over setting, things work somewhat differently than normal. Upon dying, the person immediately returns as a ghast, a sort of undead spectre of themselves. Ghasts are able to continue to exist in the world for a time if they so choose, but it takes a focused effort to hold onto the land of the living. Over time, the person’s ghast slowly slips away and crosses over to the afterlife. A ghast can choose to let go and cross over of their own accord at any time.

What this means in game terms, specifically in 4th Edition D&D, is fairly simple. After dying, either by way of three failed death-saving throws or by dropping below their negative bloodied value, the character immediately regains 1 hit point and consequently regains consciousness. However, they are no longer a living creature, rather they are undead. A ghast character functions as normal with two exceptions: first, the character gains the following racial feature:

Slipping Away: While you are bloodied, you can move through blocking terrain, obstacles, and enemies as if they were difficult terrain; you must still end your movement in an unoccupied square. In addition, you gain insubstantial while you are below 0 hit points.

Second, you have a pool of ten “ghast points”. Each time you fall unconscious, fail a death-saving throw, or take an extended rest you lose one ghast point. You can also expend a ghast point to gain a +2 bonus to one attack roll. However, when you no longer have any ghast points, you immediately cross over. There is no way to regain lost ghast points.

When you return as a ghast, your dead body remains on the ground, meaning there are effectively two of you, one corpse, and one ghast. The corpse is naked, and all your clothing and equipment is on your ghast body.

Resurrection

Death is taken seriously in the society 0f the Bay. It is to be respected and revered, and not to be counteracted. Returning the dead to life is actually illegal in all but the Uruk nation, and even there it is not looked kindly upon. Part of the reason for this attitude is that resurrection generally doesn’t work, at least not in the way you would expect. The ritual to return life to the dead is relatively simple, but it doesn’t return the body to its original condition. At first glance it will appear to have worked perfectly, but as the days go by it will become apparent that though the persons mind and spirit have been returned to the body, the body is still slowly rotting away as if it were dead.

Eventually the flesh will fall away completely and the still-conscious and fully active person will be nothing but a skeletal being known as an esquel. The length of this process varies depending on the temperature, and therefore the time of year; in the summer it will take only a month, while in the winter it can take up to six months. Ressurected individuals who are obviously decomposing or have become esquels are not accepted in society and the citizens of the Bay are liable to hunt them down and destroy them if they are discovered. An esquel takes a -10 penalty to Diplomacy, and Streetwise checks, but gains a +10 bonus to Intimidate checks; while still rotting the penalty and bonus are only 5.

There is a way to resurrect a deceased individual without them becoming an esquel; it involves creating a substance called the Blood of Voland. If the Blood of Voland is used in the ritual to raise the dead, they are returned to their original state, fully alive with no lasting effects. An esquel can also consume the Blood of Voland and their flesh will slowly regrow, with similar timespans as the process of rotting took. The catch, however, is that the recipe for creating the Blood of Voland is long lost, and the ingredients are exotic and difficult to find. If your adventurers are determined to return a lost companion, the quest to do so should be a large undertaking all on its own and will lead them into distant and uncivilized lands far from Butter Bay.

Undeath

Various types of undead creatures exist; ghasts and esquels have already been discussed above. The other major types of undead are liches, and thralls. Liches are effectively esquels who have enacted additional rituals to preserve themselves, binding their spirit to a phylactery. If their body is destroyed, but the phylactery is still intact they will slowly regenerate. No-one knows how long it takes to regenerate, but estimates are usually quite lengthy, in the range of decades or even a century. Thralls, unlike the other types of undead, are no longer people, but are instead mindless beasts; their bodies were simply reanimated rather than resurrected. Like esquels, they begin covered in flesh, but eventually are little more than animated skeletons; fleshy thralls are sometimes called zombies. A thrall is usually bound to the will of whoever created it, but if they die or their body is destroyed the thrall simply crumbles. It is possible to create thralls that will survive past their master’s destruction, but they are more difficult to keep control of, and nearly impossible to control in large numbers.

Friday: The Uruk Race

Event: Hallows

As the first in our series on festivals and other special events in the Bay, we take a look at Hallows, which takes place at the juncture between the months of Little Tober and Great Tober.

What is Hallows about?

The primary purpose of the Hallows festival is to celebrate the end of the year’s successful harvest. Hallows is a time to thank Voland for the bounty of the season that will hopefully sustain everyone through the long winter. The festival can be seen as an analogue of Thanksgiving.

Because the start and end of seasons can vary from year to year, sometimes the harvest runs later than expected; when that happens Hallows is postponed until the work is done. What this means is that Little Tober continues, adding more days beyond the usual 25, until the harvest’s end, at which point Hallows day occurs. Days added to Little Tober are subtracted from Great Tober.

Though not directly related to the harvest, tales of horror abound during Hallows. Somewhat linking to the harvest, many of the stories include scarecrows come to life roaming the countryside. One particularly famous scarecrow is known as Mister Unlucky, who has a massive pumpkin for a head and is said to devour children in the night. The stories say that children can protect themselves from Mister Unlucky and the other scarecrows by saying a prayer to Voland and hanging a wreath in their windows on Hallows night.

What are normal Hallows activities?

On Hallows day, a special service is held outside of the kirkhall. A large bonfire is built up, but not immediately lit. Instead there is a ceremony where a pumpkin is placed among the wood by the Keeper as a symbolic sacrifice to Voland. Only once the sacrifice is in place is the bonfire set ablaze and the pumpkin is consumed by fire, symbolizing Voland’s acceptance of the gift.

After the ceremony the Keepers generally organize games and festivities for the children, while adults go about their business. One game involves the Keeper masquerading as Mister Unlucky and chasing the children, who must hide from the mad scarecrow or be gobbled up. This game is usually the last played, and concludes with the ringing of the kirkhall bell at sunset, signalling the dinner hour.

While some of the time without the children is spent preparing the evening meal, it is tradition among many for a couple to take the opportunity to share their bed. As a result, many children are conceived on Hallows, and there is a spike in births around the end of Great Solen and beginning of Little Greening.

What is eaten during Hallows?

The highlight of the festival is the evening feast. The term feast may be a bit misleading; the people of the bay in no way overeat as is common in real world Thanksgiving, but they do eat more than usual. Waterfowl is the traditional dish, usually duck among the commoners, while nobles and the wealthy eat goose. Some families may not be able to afford even a duck, and so they will often resort to other fowl such as chicken or squab.

Side dishes that you might find at the meal include potatoes, squash or pumpkin soup, and a variety of greens. Some households also bake a special cranberry bread for the occasion. The specifics of the food in any given table can vary wildly, just as in the real world.

Possible Adventure Hooks

The most obvious adventure hook relating to Hallows is Mister Unlucky. You can have your adventurers deal with disappearing children, and discover that the stories of living scarecrows are more than just stories. This adventure should probably conclude with a fight against Mister Unlucky himself, perhaps with a retinue of ghasts or scarecrows.

A more mundane threat to deal with during hallows might be bandits. Following the successful harvest, the freshly reaped food is nowhere to be found. The player characters may discover that varkers are behind the missing stores, or perhaps the culprits are closer to home, people living in their midst looking out only for themselves rather than the community.

If you want to bring the Blackwood Scions into your adventure, either of the above hooks could be adjusted to their aims. Mister Unlucky and his followers could be constructs created by the Scions to spread terror and undermine the Baron’s rule, or could even simply be Scions in disguise. For the missing food hook, the Scions could again be attempting to undermine the established authority, or they may be simply building up their own stores in preparation for something bigger.

Monday: The Hodekin Nation