Interludes

The year consists of 365 ¼ days; 12 months, each consisting of 3 weeks which contain 10 days, plus five feast days that fall between months. There is also an extra day every fourth year, the Dragonfeast, which is part of no month and follows the Midsummer Festival. The names of the twelve months are given along with their more common name, the feast days are in italics.

Midwinter
Skelern	( Sleet )
Galemir	( Wind )
Pipetal	( Seed )
Springtide
Jasmarill	( Blossom )
Heliora	( Bright )
Menderal	( Meadow )
Midsummer
Setheran	( Heat )
Arvinoth	( Harvest )
Harvestide
Lorinfall	( Mist )
Kryll	( Frost )
Ghostmoons
Ternost	( Snow )
Kruthos	( Dark )

The Dragonfeast is the extra day that comes every four years. It is a day of open council between nobles and people; a day for making and dramatic ending of agreements. The entertainments are often in the nature of tests and trials for those wishing to improve their reputation or status. Traditionally, the constraints of class and of breeding are removed for this one day. A minor cult called ‘the Dragonshield’ are associated with the Dragonfeast.

Midwinter is also known unofficially as Yuletide, the turning of the Year. For the nobility and other leaders, this is a time to plan the coming year, to renew old alliances, make new vows and send gifts of goodwill. To more common folk this is the nadir of the year, when their lords have an obligation to provide food and warmth to see them through the worst of the cold. They celebrate this heartily with feasting and bonfires.

Springtide is the official end of winter, a day of celebration. Flowers that have been carefully cultivated indoors are set outside to decorate the home and to bring luck and fertility in the coming year. Early wildflowers are also gathered and used to ‘crown’ a maiden in each community, who then blesses the fields. By tradition young children are Named at this festival; probably due to a seasonal baby boom.

Midsummer, also called the Short Night, is a time of feasting and music and love. Betrothals are traditionally made on this night. Sharing and informality are the essence of this feast and, for this one night, the constraints even of marriage are forgotten in an unconditional of love and passion. Bad weather during the night is considered a very bad omen.

Harvestide signals the start of autumn and, hopefully, of the safe fathering in of the harvest. It is a feast both to thank the hard working harvesters, and to celebrate the brief period of plentiful food. Many journeys are undertaken at the end of the feast, as travellers hurry to reach their overwinter destination before the worst of the mud arrives are the rain freezes into snow.

The Ghostmoons is the most sombre festival day in the year. It is a day for remembering the dead; graves and shrines are decorated, and many tales told of ancient heroes and lost treasure. Both moons shine full during this night, and it is believed that on this night the ghosts of lost souls can return to the world. This day marks the start of winter snows, and the end of fighting until the spring re-melting.

Copyright page

First Printing: May 2017

Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 license (see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ for details)

Fonts used:

Liberation Sans – Title Page – Used under the SIL Open Font License
Liberation Serif – Body Text on this page – Used under the SIL Open Font License
Cloister Black by Dieter Steffman – Newspaper Titles – Freeware (according to www.fontspace.com)
BlackChancery – Descriptive Text, Chronicle Text by Earl Allen/Doug Miles and is public domain (according to www.dafont.com)
Great Vibes – Decrees and Letters to the Editor – Used under the SIL Open Font License 1.1
MS Mincho – Kinjuru Signature – Used under the Windows 7 License
Learning Curve – Times of Cascorach Text – Freeware (according to www.dafont.com)

Images used on the “Ghostmoons” page are from wikimedia.org where they are claimed to be in the public domain.

Image used on the “Definitions (Part Two)” is from South London by Walter Besant printed 1898 and digitised by Project Gutenberg.(see http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44683).

Many interludes are from background and scenario notes. Many may now be incorrect or superseded by other events. Remember that the Chroniclers are not unbiased (but do attempt to write as such).

“A Map of Athion” and “A Map of Salvoyn” from Zygmunt Lozinski’s notes. Shimaguchi based on notes from Zygmunt Lozinski.

Total word count of 219,074 words according to LibreOffice.

Note: Some occasional and hopefully minor edits have been made to normalise spelling and to get page breaks to fall where I wanted them to.