Author: admin

There are lines you can take around the Buentoille which mean you never have to leave your train carriage; they just keep going around and around in perpetual locomotion. The trains do stop overnight, but it is entirely possible to spend and entire day swooping around the City, occasionally dipping underground or reaching up above the streets on raised rails. There is a certain rhythm to all of this, to the rattle of the wheels on the tracks, the singing of the rails as the engine pulls to a halt, the voice through the crackling speakers reading out the names of each station as they come and go, the click and slide of the doors, the step of passengers getting on and off.

For some, this experience is meditative, for others is is repetitious and frustrating. There are at least two saints of the Chastise Church who gained their Attunement through meditating on the rhythmic nature of the Buentoilliçan rail. Since 1966 there has been an added noise on a certain carriage on this day, every year: the poetic stylings of the Carriage D Commutarian Rhapsodists (CDCR). Whilst its glory days are over, the group still garners significant interest from their fellow passengers, although some might argue that they have something of a captive audience, and several people actually avoid that particular carriage, or the trains altogether, today.

The CDCR was first formed over a number of meetings on the First Unified Line, the primary cyclical rail line, between the stations of Cantacle Roof and Beltwithy Spa, where several like-minded commuters frequently bumped into each other. After seeing the same person enough times you tend to nod in recognition, and slowly, if you are willing to share your time and personal space, this recognition can lead to communication, and even friendship, if you are lucky. It is not only lovers and enemies who meet on the daily commute, as films and television might have you believe. The CDCR started when Iamolo Dessanteviche was (perhaps somewhat rudely) looking over Bernard Kater’s shoulder at the poetry he was writing, and suggested an edit. It was a small thing, a word better suited to the tone of the piece, and once Kater had gotten over the unintended insult that only he felt, they became fast friends; both of them worked in publishing, after all, but had always wanted to produce their own work.

At its peak there were only five regular members of the Rhapsodists, their numbers swelling as the train progressed onwards, then ebbing again as everyone got off at their stops. New members joined here and there, as folks were drawn in by the small performances they gave once a week. Mostly the time they spent together, a short, liminal time, they spent writing together, editing each other’s work. They made a few performances, but nothing spectacular. A lot of the time they did no work, but just chatted about their days, about art, about their hopes and dreams. Eventually, as Kater and Dessanteviche moved on with their lives (Dessanteviche actually became a full-time writer, mostly of news articles, but she had five books of poetry published too; Kater wrote a few books for his children, but had never been interested in being published) and no longer travelled the same routes, the CDCR began to fracture. Eventually there were no meetings twice daily.

Yet despite their inability to meet up every work day, the Rhapsodists decided after some years that they missed each other, and so they designed the festival. Nowadays when the CDCR meets, none of those original members attend, but instead a new generation of poets visit that carriage, with its telltale marks of the first members; under the table are scratched the first three stanzas of Dessanteviche’s ‘Light and Dark Pass Over the Windows of Life’. A metaphor of life as a train continued to be a strong presence within her work for the poet’s career, and is what most remember Dessanteviche for.

The work of the new poets, who will today spend their time writing, editing and performing their poetry in sporadic bursts, tends to be characterised by long, free-form splurges of rhyming, rhythmic words which do not tell a tale directly, but which invoke certain sensations when taken as a whole. The more skilled poets (and there certainly is quite a range of skill, with some today making their first foray into the genre) manage to intertwine these concatenations of verse with the rhythms of the train itself, modulating their voice and pace so that they almost appear like another everyday element of this space, blending in with its familiar rattles and screeches.

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Other festivals happening today:

• The Festival of the Shiniest Rock
• The Brakes of Love Stop the Sinful World – a Festival of Deep Prayer
• The Festival of Hammers

In 1467 Jinni Metchlasin was eleven years old, and had become obsessed with the paintings on the walls of her father’s wine cellar. She went down with an oil lamp and sat in front of the red and blue cave paintings staring at the figures depicted there, trying to make sense of the thing. When her father or one of the workers would catch her there she’d scamper away, then return later when the coast was clear. Her mother was concerned for her, said she’d be better off playing outside, in the fresh air with the other children, but nothing she said would dislodge the obsession. Jinni would ask her parents about the paintings, which covered the eastern side of the roughly circular natural cave beneath the Children’s Mound, but they didn’t know much about it themselves. ‘Farthyr ewesd to say hys farthyr sed thy wer pikturs of the Sayvyor,’ wrote Metchlasin later on, in 1489, ‘but he newe no maw then that.’

As they grew up, Metchlasin moved on from sitting in the darkness, and indeed did spend longer outside with the other children, and eventually started work, and eventually took over the winery from her father when he died. Through all of this she pretty much forgot about the wall paintings, until one day, after checking on some barrels, she turned around and they were there again, and she was back to being elven, staring in wonder at these ancient paintings. Who was this saviour? Who did they want to save? What were they saving them from? Who had painted this on the walls? All these questions came flooding back, but now she felt a determination to answer them.

There have been many archaeologists that have scrutinised the images, which depict a lone figure holding aloft a sword, coming out of a wood and over a hill toward a settlement, which presumably represents Buentoille, or what was here before the City. Today the image has been destroyed somewhat by time and moisture, as well as vandalism thought to have been hastily committed by Chastise Church faithful, who saw the images as some kind of veneration of the Waylayer, but via carbon dating and other methodologies, they believe that the paintings were made in the early half of the third century. Little is known about this period of Buentoilliçan history, when there were certainly settlements on the site, but no City as we would know it today. Back in her day, there were no professional archaeologists, only a few antiquarians who used rather unscientific methods to reach their conclusions.

Going on the little that Metchlasin knew about the flaking paintwork as much as anything else, the antiquarians decided that this was some kind of martyred figure who had been killed after the settlement in which the painter lived had been occupied by antagonistic forces. This fresco was made down here in the dark to keep it secret from those forces, those who the images foretold the fall of, when this great martyred figure arose from the dead. Apparently there was once a large tree painted to the left of the figure rising over the hill, which is now all that is left, out of a wound in which the figure was climbing. To the right of the hilltop scene, the image would have shown soldiers falling dead at the sight of the mysterious figure.

There are no distinct ethnic, religious or geographical groups known to modern historians which neatly fit into each of these roles, the oppressors and the oppressed, again mostly because so little is known of the geopolitical landscape of the time. If such a conflict did happen, this image, now mostly crumbled away, is our only record of it. To Metchlasin, this only made her ‘discovery’ feel all the more important, and she named each of the groups as ‘ancient Buentoillitants’, who were the oppressed people, and ‘the Occupation,’ a nebulous term that has come to describe illegitimate monarchs, mercantilist elites, and foreigners, depending who is using it. There were even early Revolutionaries who advocated waiting until this Saviour presented itself, to save them from the monarchy. The idea of this ‘Saviour’ who will one day rise from the grave and liberate Buentoille became ingrained into the public consciousness, especially when Metchlasin began celebrating them with something akin to a mystery play each year.

Metchlasin allegedly chose the date of September the 9^th because of the position of the sun in the images and how it correlated to the hill range, which she claimed was the Children’s Mound; today would be the day the Saviour would return. The fact of the matter is, however, that this makes no sense, and it’s more likely that she just chose a date at random, or perhaps a date that had some significance to her personally. The pageantry, which continues to this day, begins on one side of the Children’s Mound, where a Buentoillitant clad in a suit of armour cuts their way out of a ‘tree,’ a paper mâché and cardboard construction which several branches are affixed to. The crowds will then follow this figure up the hill, cheering and laying paper flowers before them the whole way. At the top they will pose for a good while, and make a speech.

The speech is normally short, and varies around the preoccupations of the age. There were times in which people actually looked towards this mythical, probably apocryphal, Saviour, especially during the Great Grain Crisis, when they promised to ‘remove from office those who starve us’ and ‘let the grain flow freely once more.’ The festival’s resurgence in those times is partly why it survives to this day. There have been various organisers over the years, each with their own agenda seeking to swing public opinion, and most have been tolerated over the years by those in power, who recognise that there is little danger from a fictional saviour who will never actually arise.

Today this speech is played up for comedic effect, more than anything else. The people of Buentoille saved themselves, after all, and the joke here is that the Saviour arose a century or two too late; they promise to ‘depose the vile monarchy’ and ‘feed the masses,’ whilst folk stand to the side enjoying a festival snack. When the figure once again descends the hill and reaches Falen Drochyt’s Square, the crowds assembled there will all fall over at once, giggling as they do.

We might never know for sure who this alleged ‘saviour’ was or what else the painting was supposed to represent. Today there will be works carried out to attempt to preserve some of what’s left, and there will also be a new research paper released, which allegedly claims that the ‘saviour’ is actually supposed to represent an ancient folk story of a greene man or woman who comes to a settlement to avenge the deaths of their fellow trees on the people who live in their seasoned carcasses.

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Other festivals happening today:

• The Festival of Truly Being You
• The Charlatan of Nought Festival
• Away Day

Up until today life was very good for Dulsy the chicken. She’d had pretty much full reign of the pub’s big garden, and there were always plenty of worms and feed and nuts and things that the patrons threw out for her. She had a pretty good perch in the old pear tree, and for the last year she’d been chief chicken, first in the pecking order with the other, younger fowl. Occasionally the cat next door would come in trying to cause trouble, but pretty soon she was big enough to give it a nasty scratch if it pushed its luck. This is all set to ended this morning at about 10am when Keith Lorastor, the owner of the Imprudent Canticle, will snap her neck and start pulling all her feathers out. It probably wouldn’t be much of a consolation for Dulsy to know that her body will be the primary part of what some call Buentoille’s best chicken stew, but she will. Folk get pretty excited about it.

The Imprudent Canticle is a pub in Druether’s Mark, a district on the western edge of the City. Apparently it got its name after worshippers who should have been in church turned up and sang in the pub garden instead, and then were harangued by the priest later. This isn’t really what the Canticle is known for, though. The Canticle is known for its good food and music that both continue well into the night, and not normally the kind of music that happens in a church either; the Canticle is the place to be if you want to hear some traditional Buentoilliçan drudge.

Drudge isn’t as bad as it sounds, or rather, it sounds better than the name would imply. The name actually refers to the drudgery of the poor working classes, around which most songs are based. There are usually two singers who perform songs in a call and response style, cataloguing the problems that life has beset them with in a self-effacing manner which can sometimes broach into comedy or tragedy. Each singer usually plays some kind of stringed instrument, either a fiddle, arched bass, or twelve-stringed guitar, and with these they make mournful, crooning melodies that accompany their singing.

The genre is thought to have originally come out of traditional working songs, sung to get through a hard task of manual labour and to provoke a sense of solidarity with your fellow labourers, which were then modified into other forms. Whilst fiddles and guitars might create the wailing higher notes to accompany these songs, the bassline is usually a plodding, two-note thing, which frequently shifts key. Whilst more famous bassists have used these bones to build more complex musical expressions, the basic nature of the bassline has led to a (probably unfounded) stereotype of drudge bass players as simpletons.

The Big Chicken Dinner, that is, today’s festival, is said to have started in 1820, when a gang of workers who’d just finished laying a new underground rail line, rolled into the pub, demanding ‘drink, music and a big chicken dinner.’ Douglas Newberry, the then owner of the establishment, was only too happy to oblige, knowing that the labourers would have just been given a nice pay packet. At the end of the night, when the workers started filtering home, they declared that they’d had an excellent time, and looked forwards to doing the same thing again soon. Newberry told them they’d have to wait until the next chicken fattened up enough, and that would be about in a year. So it was that the festival became an annual celebration.

Since then the celebration of good food and music has become very popular, and whilst a limited amount of people can fit in the pub itself, the windows onto the street are left ajar and there are tables and chairs set out next to them for latecomers who can’t fit inside, through which food and drink are handed. The stew is a fiery sort of thing, made with plenty of chilli and smoked paprika, though things are tempered somewhat by the large quantity of potatoes therein. Apparently it goes really well with wine, although beer and cider are more usual accompaniments. Perhaps part of the reason why so many people applaud the food is because of the round-bottomed bowls it’s served in; you can’t simply leave it on the table whilst you chat and listen to the music; you have to devote your whole attention or risk spilling it everywhere.

A peculiar tradition is observed at midnight, about half-way through proceedings, which usually continue on until about four in the morning, when the pub owner comes out and presents the players with the chicken’s wishbone. They each hold an end and snap it in two, and then each place their piece of bone inside their instrument, where it rattles around to the music, creating a kind of resonant buzz which suits the genre well. Apparently this practice began on that first night, when the bones were dropped into the bass by accident, and could not be extricated without unstringing the instrument. Whilst the bones are taken out when the instruments (which are normally kept at the pub above the bar) are restrung, and then placed in a large glass jar under the counter, this happens rarely and there are usually four or five bones jumping around inside at any given moment. According to Lorastor, by putting half of the bone into both the bass and the guitar, the musicians are harmonised with each other, and also the audience, whose bellies contain the chicken from whence the bone came.

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Other festivals happening today:

• The Festival of Saint Buchanbar
• The Daring Heist of Dibber Howe Day
• The Festival of Ugly Necklaces and Hairpins

Jannits Velure, priest of the Hope’s End Consolidated Church, can’t visit Saint Welgather’s Circle without bursting out in floods of tears. She’s fine if she walks around the outside of the space, circumnavigating the tall central statue of her most beloved saint, but if she looks up, even for a moment, she’ll be almost incapacitated by the heart-wrenching sobs that appear as if from nowhere. Most of the time she just avoids the place altogether.

In fairness to Velure, the statue very acutely conveys the feeling of grief to the viewer. Saint Welgather is kneeling, or rather sitting on his legs which are tucked beneath him in a formation similar to kneeling. His back is slumped, shoulders limp with despair. His right hand weakly gestures towards the heavens, the other touches his face, which seems to hang from its bones, lips slightly parted, the most woeful expression possible cast upon it. At some point someone rigged up a pump inside the marble, so that the saint’s likeness would actually cry, as the holy personage himself frequently did, and now there are stains where the water runs, cascading over his naked torso and scanty loincloth.

Saint Welgather, born Estus Caregiver, was a loveable rogue, a thief and a swindler, when he was young. He roamed the streets as a child, making his way in the world through guile and a grey moral code, in the absence of any parental control. Estus’ mother died when he was born and his father left him on someone’s doorstep the next day. As a beggar, Estus did well, being able to summon tears at the drop of a hat, a skill which, along with his other dramatic capabilities, secured Caregiver a life off the streets in the theatre.

Caregiver was a famous actor in his time, playing the lead role in many Heinbrow plays. As an adult his attractive physique earned him many admirers, and the man was known for his licentious behaviour and wild party manner. It was whilst performing Einar and Glicelli that Caregiver converted to the Chastise Church, in a moment of spontaneous Attunement. Caregiver’s character, Einar, has a rare moment of self-reflection, and begins to cry when he considers what his actions have wrought. ‘Whatte ys thys warter thatte dus obskure myn eyes?’ he asks, ‘whatte mystcheevyous ymp holdes the nyfe thatte cuts intwo myn harte so softlye?’ Going somewhat off script, caregiver began crying for a good fifteen minutes. According to the Church, the audience were strangely enraptured.

It is this moment that is represented in the large statue in the circle that hangs on Saint Welgather’s road, like a pearl on a string. It was at this moment that Caregiver made his first steps to becoming a saint. The tears were, for the first time since he was a baby, genuine, not feigned for money and prestige, and suddenly everything seemed very clear for the saint, who had that morning passed a street preacher. Everything clicked into place, and he kept crying.

Today, the birthday of Saint Welgather, is the only day in the year when Velure doesn’t look quite so silly, bursting into tears at the mere sight of a statue. This is because there is strength in numbers, and for reasons divine (as the Church would have it) or sociological (as many scientists have attempted to explain the reaction that most people have to the statue today), there will be hundreds of people, of faith or otherwise, unable to control themselves in the presence of this representation of the saint. As soon as they enter the circle, most people will begin crying, apparently feeling a keening sense of loss, yet of what they do not know. They slump over each other in despair, they cover their faces to hide the torrents of tears. A few reactions like this happen before midday, but as the clocks all strike the group arrives, fresh from the service at Velure’s church, and from that point on the circle will be filled with wailing until the sun sets.

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Other festivals happening today:

• The Festival of Stony Resistance
• The Passing of the Carrier Dove Festival

There’s been a certain bite to the air in the last few weeks, as the summer comes to an end. That’s not to say that the weather hasn’t been good; weather in Buentoille tends to be pretty steady year-on-year, and the last few weeks have provided a good amount of sunshine to grace the fields. It’s just that there is a crispness to the wind, a slight dampness to the air that wasn’t there before, and thoughts have begun to turn to autumn, to falling leaves, longer nights and the harvest, much of which is due to be completed today, whilst the fields are nice and dry.

Harvest time has always been a time of particular togetherness, even in Buentoille, a City known for its communal and interconnected nature. At one time, before mechanical labour-saving devices like combine harvesters and tractors, it would have been a time when workers all across the City put down their usual tools and picked up scythes and sickles, to ensure that the grains, especially, were brought in in a timely manner. This switching of roles was particularly common with quilters and those of associated industries, whose work wasn’t particularly urgent, though it was tolerated by employers across the board, who had their bellies as well as their pockets to think about. The pay was never wonderful, and the labour fairly hard, but it was time spent out in the fields with friends and family, working towards a common goal, and this made up for many evils.

There is still something of this togetherness through common labour retained today, as those fields closest to the City, and many of the green spaces within, are now formed into allotments, where folk from around Buentoille are entitled to grow food or flowers or whatever they like really, providing it can be dug back out of the ground when it’s someone else’s turn after five years. Most of the land that runs between the outreached fingers of the City is set aside for this purpose, intersected by train lines which provide easy access to the gardeners. The main bulk of Buentoille’s agricultural land, however, is farmed by the Cooperatives whose production is directly informed by orders from the Council of Logistics, which still maintains a monopoly on all large-scale food production and trading, to ensure low, fair prices and that there is no return of the Great Grain Crisis. With modern equipment the Cooperative members are far fewer than they would have once been, but they still number in the thousands, and have filled the fields with bustling activity for the last day or two.

There are a number of harvests, of course, because various crops are grown in Buentoille, but the biggest crops grown around the City are by far cereals; wheat and barley, predominantly; and the harvest of these is due to finish today. Like many festivals at this time of year, today’s Harvest Festival chiefly consists of drinking and eating large amounts, in particular beer made from last year’s harvest and bread from this year’s. There are three ‘harvest halls,’ (i.e. repurposed old tithe barns) on the City outskirts where the festivities mainly take place, decked out with wheat sheaf decorations and flowers aplenty; this is one of the year’s highlights for the Cooperative members, and it is treated with due reverence. In addition to hearty stews, roasted vegetables and freshly baked bread, a good deal of roasted meat is also eaten in the western and southern harvest halls, though not in the eastern hall, where vegetarianism and veganism are the norm.

Yet there are some more idiosyncratic traditions which are observed today, as well as these familiar scenes of righteous gluttony. As part of the celebrations, any Chastise Church members amongst the harvesters will deliver a ceremonial wheat sheaf to the Church of the Holy Host, where it will be laid on the main altar, a symbol of humankind’s ability to survive without the help of any god or impostergod. Depending on the roll of a dice made at the headquarters of the Union of Children, a child might burst forth from this sheaf at the beginning of the daily service. It has been this way for centuries, and there is usually a pregnant pause from the Priest after they’ve said the first few words. They aren’t allowed to check the sheaf on delivery, of course. That would be cheating.

There is also the matter of the grain parade, where harvest workers would carry sheaves through the streets singing ‘we will eat, we will eat, to the miller’s you must go!’ This practice was called off, however, during the Great Grain Crisis, for fear of theft. Nowadays, after the feast, a number of tractors are almost entirely covered in wheat and paraded through the streets with accompanying songs. The harvest workers hang off these slow convoys, drinking beer and throwing it over those who pass them.

Finally, there are the straw people. These are small figures fashioned by many households with straw either gotten from the fields by hand or bought from roving straw sellers. They must be completed before the day is out, and installed in the rafters or similar secret spot within the house, and then they will provide protection from all manner of foul spirits and poor luck throughout the long winter months. Some families even make small straw houses for the figures, which are made by every member of the family, and are ‘copies’ of each person that will absorb any bad luck. Legend has it that on the night of the harvest moon (normally in September, but this year in October) these figures come to life and dance arcane dances out of sight. Last year’s figures will also be burned today, expelling all the bad luck that they gathered throughout the year.

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Other festivals happening today:

• Server’s Day
• The Festival of Doughty Nieces
• The Festival of the Blackened Foot

In 1739 the Troll Bridge in Tallboys district fell into the Withy stream, which bubbles up from the ground in the district and becomes a tributary for the Moway. The Bridge was an old thing, the mortar long rotted, the stone crumbling, and nobody had bothered to look after it or restore it for a long time. It went across the river at an odd place and was seldom used; it’s a mystery quite why they built it there in the first place. It was a foot bridge, arched in design and only wide enough to allow one person across at a time, so it’s no wonder they built another, more useful bridge half a mile down the stream, where it was more useful, and let it fall into disrepair. Thankfully the fall happened in the night, and nobody was hurt; presumably the thing just finally gave up the ghost.

The collapsed bridge did present some issues for the local people, despite the fact that they hardly ever used it. It was called Troll Bridge either because of the festival which happened there every year (on this day), where a man dressed as a troll would hide under it and scare anyone who dared to cross (the bridge actually received far more foot traffic on those days than any other), or because of the stone troll carving at the apex of the bridge. Then again, it’s quite possible that the festival, carving and name of the bridge were all inspired by some earlier event lost to the mists of time, or, as some have proposed, the bridge may have once been a toll bridge. Another theory suggests that the bridge was named as such because people seemed to avoid it, like the bridge in the famous folk story The Kingdom Under Bridge, where a human-eating troll living beneath a bridge is confronted by several great warriors but eventually defeated by an infant flower seller. No matter the origins of the name and festival, it clearly had some significance to the locals, and therefore needed to be rebuilt.

The idea was to rebuild the Troll Brige in a similar design but wider, so that it would be more useful. This led to some disconcert between local people, some of whom were angry that this would make controlling access across it as the ‘troll’ a harder task, but these concerns were swept aside. The work on the new bridge began by first clearing the debris, keeping the carving (albeit in somewhat damaged form) so that it could be later placed back in pride of place at the apex. They then started to dig new, wider foundations. It was only then that they found the bones.

There were the scattered remains of sixteen adults and two children buried beneath the foundations of the Troll Bridge, all showing signs of cannibalistic practice, with teeth marks clear on the bones. Quite how they came to be there is unknown, as all archaeological evidence has since been disturbed by the constructions that followed, and would necessitate destroying or severely damaging the New Troll Bridge. Theories at the time seemed to suggest that some depraved individual living beneath the bridge had buried them there after consuming them, though it’s not clear how they would have managed to dig beneath the bridge without collapsing it.

The bones were said to be ‘very old’ and have since been buried in the churchyard of The Church of Our Lady Versaith, and it was clear that their placement there was not what caused the bridge to collapse. As a result some modern theories suggest that the remains were unknown to those who built the Troll Bridge, as the foundations didn’t go as deep as its wider replacement. There’s little information about who built the bridge, it only being ascribed to a mysterious ‘benefactor’ in some court documents, but it’s possible that they hid the bodies there to hide their crimes, then built the bridge over them, placing the troll carving there as a macabre joke. We will probably never know for sure.

Understandably there was something of a moral panic surrounding the festival, which was now seen by some as a celebration of the gruesome deaths the unfortunates buried beneath had suffered. On the other hand, there were those who said that the tradition should endure, no matter the grizzly connotations. Things seemed to be lining up for a fight, with those who wanted to carry out the festival receiving threats that they would be beaten if they tried. Eventually community leaders stepped in and reached a compromise between the two groups: the festival would go ahead, but not as a jovial thing, with the troll jumping out to surprise people. Two trolls would be employed instead, and they would soberly stand at each end of the bridge, denying access as a gesture of respect for those who were once killed and buried beneath. This rather odd state of affairs is what still happens every year to this day.

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Other festivals happening today:

• The Eastern Star Alight Festival
• The Cream of the Hallowed Ground Day
• The Festival of Silver and Gold Spinning

Three days ago a skiff turned up in the Buentoille Bay and a woman standing aboard started waving a green flag with a black circle on it. Two row boats went over to meet her, a couple of fishers breaking off from their work. They had a short chat and then returned to shore, excitedly shouting to others: ‘the Veransi are coming! The Veransi!’

They still roam the seas out there, that remnant of Picaroon prowess, the Veransi live on, enduring well beyond the nautical empire, the Picaroon Consulate, of which they were a central faction. Whilst many of the other political groups broke down and either perished or were assimilated by land-based powers, the Veransi held together, living out their entire lives at sea and seldom if ever making landfall. Way out in the wide, deep ocean, they live by fishing, trade, and occasional piracy.

Yet despite their fearsome reputation, the Veransi are no longer feared or despised by the people of Buentoille; on the contrary, their presence is a cause for celebration! These women who once controlled access to the Outer Ocean through their pirate fleets, and who are generally credited for the failure of the Great Expedition, come now in peace and friendship, and have done so every few years since the Revolution, when they came to congratulate the City for throwing off its oppressors with gifts of food and alcohol. Quite how they came to hear of the uprising is something of a mystery.

These gifts were received with enthusiasm; this was the time when the trade which Buentoille relied upon had been cut off by the Seven Cities Trading Company, and many had begun to starve. Apparently, much of the food that was given to the City was stolen from the Company, as an act of solidarity, but also a historical rivalry between the two groups that has simmered since the Company negotiated a settlement with the Picaroon Consulate that led to the opening of the Tibizian Straits, and paved the way for the Traders’ subsequent domination of the region. Nowadays the City doesn’t require their charity or trade to survive, but trades are made nonetheless, after the greeting ceremonies are done away with, of course.

It’s the women who usually go over first. Men usually feel a little uncomfortable on the Veransi vessels, where the lascivious stares of women long at sea away from men are somewhat unnerving, even (perhaps even more so) for men who are usually the ones directing their gaze in such a manner. Women are better respected by the sailing folk too, who do have some men in their midst, but only those under sixteen, the sons of the women who live and work on the many ships and boats that make up the Veransi fleet. At one time they would have held men as servants and galley slaves, and whilst this practice has long been outlawed it still persists in the minds of those less enlightened Buentoillitants, the same people who refer to the Veransi as the ‘Lesbian Pirates.’ Lesbianism is, of course, common and even popular amongst the Veransi, but it is by no means the exclusive sexuality on their fleet. It is only those identifying as men who are banned from sailing with them, not straight women or folk of other genders.

The ceremonies always happen on the ships, a great knot of seafaring vessels which are pulled together whilst the boat party commences, enabling folk to travel between them as they float out in the bay. Buentoille hasn’t the docking facilities to accommodate all the ships, of which there are roughly 300, but even if it did they would not land or come ashore; the Veransi get terrible, debilitating land sickness. They will arrive at some point this morning, according to the advance scout, the first time for seven years, and folk are eager to see them. Many people have struck up relationships with these seafaring women, and will recommence them for a short period, before they head back out into the Outer Ocean once again.

The Veransi are anarchists, so do not have a leader, but they elect diplomats to speak for them, in much the same way that members of the Buentoilliçan Office of External Affairs are elected. The two groups will shake hands across the bows of their boats, before the Veransi attach three loaves of bread to each pong of a grappling hook and use it to pull the two together. The bread is a sign of friendship. Any male members of the Buentoilliçan side are require to stay put on their vessels until the other side have dropped anchor, whereas others are let aboard immediately. On board, the two groups will then exchange three gifts: an empty bowl is given to the Veransi, symbolic of how they came to the aid of Buentoille in its time of need. The sometimes pirates then place a fish in this bowl and hand it back. The Buentoillitants take out the fish, fill the bowl with nails and then hand it over once again. Whilst this may seem odd, it is a symbolic way of each side declaring its intentions to keep trading and helping each other, whether that be by providing food or boat repairs and other goods and service, hard-to-obtain on the open seas.

Once the niceties are out of the way the drinking begins in earnest, and the other Buentoillitants interested in attending the party board. Boat parties tend to be best in July around the time of the heatwave, but they are well attended even if there is snow falling. The Veransi are notoriously disorganised in their approach to yearly management, and they really could arrive at ant time of year, despite repeated petitions for them to make it a regular festival day. As such, if you want to sample Veransi hospitality, to taste their grog and strange mix of seafood, the spiny horrors of the deep and the farmed seaweed and muscle ropes that hang from beneath their ships, or to see the soilboats where small citrus fruit trees and flowers grow, you will have to take your chance now.

For some, today is a chance to see their children that they may have never met, raised aboard the boats in communal nurseries. Some may make new children, or simply make amorous connections where men are novelties and other newcomers are welcome novelties. There is always a certain exchange of people, as well as goods; the young men who have come of age depart their seaward home forever, enduring several weeks of terrible land sickness in the process. If their fathers cannot be found, then they are initially cared for by the Buentoilliçan Adjustment Contingent, who teach them the ways of the City. Conversely, some women who are attracted by the lifestyle or the company of a particular Veransi, will depart the City and live on the seas. Buentoillitants don’t usually last long amongst the Veransi, however, as they quickly become very homesick. An extra boat is always brought along with any newcomers, in case they want to come back home. Apparently this is common enough to warrant various jokes, and for the Veransi to call someone who is uncommitted or naive ‘a Buentoille’.

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Other festivals happening today:

• The Festival of Crooning for my Darling
• Cardinal Caper Day
• The Festival of Unholy Skin

Elderberries are actually, contrary to popular belief in Buentoille, eminently edible. There are recipes from as far back as the first century which detail how to make elderberry jellies and wines, and if cooked, the poisonous elements of the berries are destroyed. Even if you eat one or two, perhaps by accident, the chances are that you won’t suffer any noticeable harm; you’d need to eat a significant amount of berries for the poisonous compounds to build to a dangerous point. This is not an endorsement of eating raw elderberries.

Whilst we have no way of accurately pinpointing the moment at which elderberries became quite so maligned, the chances are that it happened over a long period of time, and in particular as a fearful reaction to the Coven of Irah, the group of witches who claim to be descended in some way from the berries, the ‘darkening’ aspect of the elder tree, which ripen just before the autumnal equinox, the point after which nights will be longer than days. This day (occurring on the 22^nd of September this year) is also a time of great significance for the Coven, but today is perhaps more important as today they will harvest the elderberries before they are all eaten by birds and squirrels. The corrupted reputation of the berries amongst humans is rarely challenged by the Coven, as it gives them something of a monopoly on the boughs laden with clusters of reddish-black fruit.

There is something distinctly blood-like about elderberries; it is as if they are blood pooling on the underside of a butcher’s table, slowly forming into drops. Perhaps this is what makes them appealing to the Coven, a group which has never made comment on the accusations of animal sacrifice. Much like their ‘brightening’ counterparts, the Infused Sisterhood, there are various rituals which the Coven observes before and during harvesting the produce of the elder tree, yet unlike the Sisterhood, these witches do not spin or dance or sing. They move with determined grace, remaining seemingly completely still between motions. They never speak above a whisper. They wear long black garments of silk, and keep their faces covered with sheer black veils.

They begin under the light of the crescent moon. Yet whilst they do not dance per se, these witches do move with a certain rhythm, almost mechanical in their practised motions. They glide up to each bushel they wish to harvest, surround it in a circle, then place their right hand on the shoulder of the person on that side. They lean over, theatrically, in a wave that travels around the circle, and whisper something in their sister’s ear. With their left hand they then, all at once, knock on the elder wood, and appear to listen closely to it for a few moments. Finally, they produce a small silver blade from their cloaks, with which they deftly slice a cluster of berries from the tree. Below, they are caught by younger witches, who crouch low and move with similar arachnid grace.Each witch whispers something inaudible throughout the entire sequence, which is repeated numerous times throughout the night, at different elder plants.

Quite what potions and ointments the Coven of Irah use their cropped fruit for is a closely held secret, though it is likely that they crush the juice out of them before doing anything else, as otherwise they spoil quickly once harvested. If you are out in the fields after the harvest tonight, which generally occurs in Stone Burrow Field where there are a great quantity of solitary elder trees, or ‘witch bushes’ as they are sometimes known; the Coven of Irah’s harvest methodology means they cannot use those plants growing in hedgerows; you might have opportunity to see how they put much of their harvest to use; in the Bleeding of the Lesser Daughter.

It begins with one of the younger witches removing her black cloak and revealing a milky-white lace dress beneath. She gathers up many of the elderberries the witches have harvested and places them in a small sack made from a porous fabric. She holds this close to her, and then the eldest witch comes up behind her and places one hand on her head, the other in the small of her back, as if wielding an invisible knife. The younger witch then squeezes the bag and, as the red liquid steadily drips out from within, the other witches quickly move towards her, their practised grace and head coverings gone, and begin covering their hands in the stream and covering their faces and arms in it. They push and shove, trying to cover themselves fully whilst jostling in this way. A fearful susurration of half-heard whispers fills the studied silence that existed moments before.

Unlike the blood of the Lesser Daughter that the juice symbolises, it dries on the skin a deep purplish blue, not the bright red you might expect. This isn’t a wise thing to point out to the witches, however, who believe that Irah, their progenitor who was created in the blood that flowed from the first Bright Witch when she was killed by her mother for being unfaithful, is physically present upon their skin. By covering themselves in this way, they cement their supposed loyalty to the Elder Mother (the Infused Sisterhood would argue this point), the first witch who resides inside every elder tree, the being to whom the knock is addressed. For new witches this is an initiation, the moment they first become part of the Coven.

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Other festivals happening today:

• The Festival of Enduring Hate
• The Festival of Game the Hunter
• Ranaclois Up and Down Festival

Everyone knows that magpies like to steal shiny objects. There’s something about the sparkle that tempts them, makes them want to hoard them in their nests, perhaps as gifts for their significant others. Everyone knows that magpies like to steal shiny objects, even though they don’t. There’s absolutely no evidence that magpies exhibit this sort of behaviour. There aren’t even any recorded instances in history, no outlying events where one of these birds picked up a necklace by mistake or under the influence of some unknown stress. Folklore is folklore, and when it comes to the truth, most Buentoillitants aren’t particularly interested.

It’s probably from this widely held belief that the Dental Magpie, or Tooth Bird, as it is also known, spawned. This mythological, and seemingly immortal, creature is uninterested in jewellery or keys or aluminium foil, but is instead obsessed with one thing – (you guessed it) children’s teeth. It’s apparently been around for hundreds of years, collecting these little discarded gnashers on this night only, when it is let out of its cage by its owner, Death itself. It’s said that from their milk teeth, Death will be able to discern when a person will die, and will therefore be there to sever the link between their spirit and body at the correct point.

It’s customary for children to sleep with their windows a crack open today, their removed teeth arranged on the sill neatly, or perhaps placed in a small bag to make them easier to carry away. Some children even make little perches, next to some sunflower seeds or a bowl of milk, the Dental Magpie’s favourite drink, as a welcoming gesture. Some try to stay up all night, to catch the Tooth Bird in the act, but as is the way with that sort of endeavour, they rarely if ever succeed. Apparently the Magpie is very fast – it has to be, to get all the teeth from all the children of Buentoille in one night.

In the day, before these stakeouts, at the Children’s Union Headquarters, there will be several debates, or Important Arguments, as the children call them, about whether or not the Magpie is real. There are spirited arguments on both sides, with some bringing sworn statements from their parents, or their favourite books on the subject, as their evidence. Some children with a greater grasp of biology and natural sciences might point out that a magpie cannot live so long, or move so fast. Others say that because the bird is owned by Death, it presumably cannot die. There is never any consensus reached, no matter how long they argue.

Of course, the most exciting part for any children who left their teeth, collected yearlong, out for the Magpie, are the gifts they receive in return. This usually consists of a few coins, or sweets, or even pieces of liquorish root in some instances. Whatever they get it certainly seems like a good deal for a piece of themselves they no longer need, yet some are unsatisfied with perceived differences in reward between children, and several tooth strikes have been instigated where children have withheld their end of the deal, or given smaller quantities of teeth, in the hopes of getting a more equitable deal the next time around. This ‘industrial action’ is usually accompanied by a short letter explaining the decision, occasionally with a list of demands.

However, these strategies seem to have had little effect, although the more equitable distribution of wealth in the City post-Revolution has probably levelled out the payments given to children. The most common response to a ‘tooth strike’ seems to be the delivery of a single piece of their least favourite vegetable the following year.

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Other festivals happening today:

• Bubble Day
• The Festival of the Uncouth Steward
• The Cat in the Box Festival

Mrs Jessam Derilley was what folk would once have termed a ‘lady of leisure.’ She spent many a day looking for idle pursuits, flitting from one fleeting interest to another. For most of 1634 she was interested in literature, becoming obsessed with several different authors, never finishing any of their works. For all of 1635 she took up crafts, focusing in particular on the shaping of resistant materials like wood and metal. She half finished a brooch from silver, and her chair never quite got that fourth leg.

It wasn’t that she was bad at any of the projects she began, merely that she lost interest quickly when some new thing floated into view. One project she did finish was her long box. It was precisely two metres long fifty centimetres high and seventy centimetres deep, made from sturdy teak. She spent about three weeks measuring and cutting all the wood; it was so precise that when you closed the lid there were no gaps at all. She was so proud of it that she never found anything good enough to keep in it, so she kept it up in the aptly named box room, along with various other pieces of craft detritus.

The Derilley family called that room the ‘box room,’ but in most Buentoilliçan households of the time, it would have qualified as a master bedroom, as far as size was concerned. They were pretty damn rich, as it goes, and their house, named Turnstall Manor, was palatial. Nowadays the space has been divided up into thirty three moderately sized flats’ perhaps that gives some sense of how large the space was. Today that space will once again feel as large as it once did, as each and every home within the complex will be opened up to all the other members of the complex, for one enormous and glorious game of hide and seek.

Some people are just plain bad at hide and seek. They panic and jump under the table, or under the bed, or just put a blanket over themselves and hope for the best. Patience is probably part of it, too, you need to be incredibly patient to be any good at hide and seek. On the other side of the scale, there are those who are brilliant at it, finding ingenious ways to bend the space around themselves, restricting their breathing so they cannot be heard. Jassam Derilley’s daughter, Catmyn, was famously ones such person. Hide and seek was her favourite game and she was stubborn enough that no matter how long you called to say you gave up, she stayed hidden. This was, frankly, fairly annoying for everyone else, even if Catmyn enjoyed it, and it wasn’t too long before everyone refused to play with her.

Quite often there were people visiting the house, staying over for a few days. Family, friends of the family, and some business associates of her father, Malpheus. It was one of the latter group that Catmyn accosted, and persuaded to play hide and seek with her, on this day in 1638. At this point her mother was trying to find something to distract herself from completing an economic thesis. She’d been putting some paintings in the (now burgeoning) box room, and had left it unlocked. The visitor to the house knew nothing of Catmyn’s stubborn ways, and gave up quickly, thinking she would come out eventually. He called, half-heartedly that he gave up, then went to get a drink from the cabinet and forgot all about it.

At dinnertime, when Catmyn was nowhere to be seen, he remembered the game suddenly, and a sigh of frustration swept across the table. They sent a servant to find her whilst they ate, but they couldn’t see her anywhere. It was nearly 10pm when they started looking in earnest. Catmyn had been dead for three hours. It took two days for them to find her body, lain inside her mother’s long box, which was so well made that when the lid was closed, as it was for the child to remain hidden, no air could get in or out. The girl died of oxygen starvation, and it was probably quite a peaceful way to go; she would have passed out long before she even realised she was running out of air.

It wasn’t long before this rather macabre story made its way into that great repository of macabre stories; the folk record. Slowly, the story became a parable about negligent mothers, about the corrupting influence of wealth, about the laissez-faire attitude and decadent excess of rich Buentoillitants. Ghost stories began popping up around the Manor, and other similar large houses, which bizarrely laid claim to being the ‘true’ progenitor place of what was now an urban myth. The modern game of hide and seek that tears through the family homes of Turnstall Manor was suggested in this context, rather than that of the original sad and gruesome story. It is a way of claiming the story, and the history of the place for the residents. It’s a way of saying: that happened here, in this very building!

The longbox is still held in the house to this day, although the wood has now warped a little, and two holes have been drilled in the sides, to stop anyone accidentally re-enacting those terrible events once again. It sits pride of place on the stairwell of the third floor, where the box room was once located. If you are having real trouble finding your quarry, the best thing to do is stand beside this box for a few minutes in silence, and the ghost of Catmyn will allegedly show you the way.

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Other festivals happening today:

• The Festival of Deputation
• The Wheeze Festival
• The Festival of Careful Surveyors