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October 28th – The Festival of the Sinister Soirée

Throughout most of the nineteenth century, the occult was a popular subject of study, entertainment and fascination amongst the upper and upper middle classes of Buentoille. Fortune tellers were suddenly in vogue, and were welcomed to, rather than chased out of, ‘respectable’ areas of the City. All manner of spell merchants and purveyors of lucky implements sprung up all over. You could buy an exorcism or ghost-laying on any street corner. Yet this newfound passion for all things magical and strange was more than simply a fad; it had a lasting impact on world events.

Catwen Fineverse was a medium and séance-leader from the east of the City, in fact she was perhaps the best medium and séance-leader that the City had to offer. Amongst those who attended her séances, known then as ‘Sinister Soirées’, were leaders of industry and politics, including the Parliament Leader, Vaster Micklebright. Micklebright had spent, at this time, an unprecedented fifteen years as the central force in Parliament, holding together various different voting groups to pass legislation that he deemed worthy. Unlike other parliamentary systems, which have an organised government and opposition, the Buentoilliçan Parliament had a melange of various different landowners and highborn folks who never saw any reason to divide themselves because they broadly agreed on everything. It was the job of the Leader to direct the consciousness of this over-privileged group toward productive subject matter.

Access to such powerful people made Fineverse very powerful herself, especially as Sinister Soirées tend to last much longer than mere séances; they are essentially an extended dinner topped off with the séance itself as entertainment at the end. Some were more effective than others in this endeavour; Fineverse was a master in this art, only holding the Soirées in her own home, a dilapidated manor which had supposedly been passed down through many generations of her family. In this setting she was able to control the environment, and therefore the tone and mood of the Soirée, ensuring that it was suitably spooky with dark furnishings, inky mirrors and low lighting. Her servants would welcome the various guests, and serve them dinner, and they would be entertained by Fineverse’s wife Cerys, an agreeable, somewhat pallid and nervous woman who would say very little about her spouse. When asked why Catwen didn’t join them for dinner, Cerys would avoid the question, yet at the strike of midnight, she would step from the shadows, as if she had been there the entire time.

Fineverse’s taste for the dramatic was not only confined to her entrance; in person she was, apparently, a powerful presence, for whom the room went silent as she spoke in deep, hushed tones. ‘She had a way of staring into the eyes of a man so directly that he lost all thoughts he had been storing up for their conversation, so I never got to ask her why I’d never seen her eat,’ wrote Lord Quicktamper in his 1857 diary, ‘it was alike to that feeling which one has when confronted suddenly at parties with young and beautiful women, amongst whose ranks our lady Fineverse must be counted, I suppose, yet she had something else to her, a sense that she was reading your mind, that your most private moments were laid bare to her. I felt as if I should suddenly cover myself, as if I had spent the entire Soirée entirely in the nude. Perhaps it was the way she met my gaze so forthright, as nanny did on occasion when I had been thinking naughty thoughts, with this knowing expression on her lips, perhaps even tinged with a little cruelty.’

Fineverse lived to the age of 107, persisting well into Revolutionary Buentoille. In 1930 she wrote a book about her life, Placing the Veil, in which she revealed, as many by this point knew, that she was no impoverished countess, as she presented in her Sinister Soirées; it was all an act. She was actually a working class actor, as were her ‘servants’ and wife (though their marriage was no act), a troupe who had been left the manor house by an aristocratic patron, and had decided to put it to good use. The ‘servants’ would gather pertinent information from the guests, which would be later sold on to interested buyers. The food contained a very small amount of a mild hallucinogenic compound, designed to make the guests more suggestible. Cerys Fineverse (both of the women used their real names) would surreptitiously direct the conversation, loosening the lips of the aristocratic and bourgeois visitors and preparing certain expectations in their minds before Catwen’s arrival.

Today, in many homes around the City, folk will play a game called Fineverse and the Leader, designed by Seraph Delilah in 1946 to commemorate the deceptions of this group. The game is played collaboratively with special cards, similar in appearance to tarot cards (this is perhaps misleading; Fineverse never used cards in her séances), and is supposed to model the interactions between Fineverse and Micklebright. The players must ‘convince’ the ‘Leader’ that he is really speaking to his dead mother by raising his ‘credibility’ score and countering ‘sceptic’ cards randomly drawn from a stack. It is a complex game, roughly separating into two stages; the ‘setup’ and the ‘denouement’, with the characters of Cerys and Catwen being most effective in each, respectively. It usually takes several hours to complete the game, and whilst most report that they enjoy it, few choose to play it outside of today, when they feel they have a duty to do so.

So why do Buentoillitants feel they need to commemorate the deceptions of fake occultists? Well, quite simply, they averted a war. For some time, Micklebright had been considering going to war against Litancha, which had been interfering with Buentoille’s then good relationship with the Seven Cities Trading Company. When the Fineverses caught wind of this plan, which Micklebright had begun testing the waters with, in order to ensure it would go down well with Parliament, they immediately began hatching a plan. When Micklebright next attended their Sinister Soirée, to talk through Catwen to his dead mother as he always did, she used her extensive knowledge of his childhood that she’d gained through their many previous sessions to strongly imply that his mother would not approve of the planned war. ‘Do you remember when you got in a fight with those boys at school?’ she asked, ‘You were looking over your shoulder for months afterwards.’ Never before or since has an actor had such power over the direction of the City.

Other festivals happening today:

  • The Festival of Dangerous Juice
  • The Festival of Coding Your Dreams
  • The Heat of the Brand Day

October 29th – The Festival of His Swirling Presence

There’s something about the precise shape of Uther Dean’s Triangle in Whight Hollow that creates strange currents in the air. Usually they wouldn’t be noticeable, but at this time of year, what with all the dry foliage fluttering around, they are revealed; six eddies, swirling circles of leaves about a metre across. They dance around the space, going all the way into the porch of the butcher’s shop (much to the butcher’s consternation), or across the now empty flower beds, or circling around the tree in the south east corner. They are always there, these currents, at least when it is windy. There are always six of them.

If it’s not windy, the small Canaring contingent visiting the City today will be rather disappointed; they’ve come a long way to see this odd congregation of winds. In fairness, they might be disappointed regardless, as the spectacle is often built up quite grandly in their city, across the Inner Ocean. It is, after all, the spectacle which created one of their greatest saints, but in person it resembles little more than a few leaves flying about on a windy day. Still, it was watching these mere leaves which spurred the conversion of Saint Blackhand, as Troilus Acedus is commonly known in Canaring, who is not a saint of the Chastise Church, which Buentoillitants know so well, but its progenitor, The Church of Our Great Lord (COOGL).

To those who worship the ‘Great Lord,’ most Buentoillitants are godless heathens, either having no faith, or following a church which actively disputes the notion that human affairs are controlled by transcendental beings. Their Great Lord is all seeing, all knowing, and all powerful, a difficult philosophical position to maintain to be sure, but surprisingly, in Canaring, adherents to the religion are a majority, rather than a tiny majority as in Buentoille. The primary piece of iconography for COOGL worshippers is the Band, a selection of six intersecting circles, each representing a different aspect of their god: the Prophet, the Father, the Daughter, the Dilettante, the Wanderer and the Dreamer. Given this, it’s not surprising that the visiting contingent find themselves attracted to Uther Dean’s Triangle, or The Shape of Saint Blackhand, as he is known in their city, with its six swirling circles.

The primary reason for Acedus’ sainthood, and the name ‘Blackhand’ was simple; in 1944 they rounded up apostates and folk from other religions, then burned them to death in one of the greatest massacres of modern times, ironic for a man who had himself renounced his religious beliefs to join COOGL. This religious turmoil spread throughout all sections of Canaring’s highly stratified society, and Blackhand was known for the ‘fairness’ of his murder as he did not unfairly favour those from upper strata, although he did primarily target those on the lower sections. According to a tale which Acedus told, which in turn became part of Saint Blackhand’s founding myth, he was first turned to COOGL after a Chastise Church service, where he had felt ‘empty and cold.’ He had been conversing via inter-city mail with a Great Lord priest, and was slowly being turned on to the idea that god was present, ‘filling the empty and lonely spaces of this world.’

Interestingly it was the framing of the religion’s beliefs with science and pseudo-science that helped Acedus turn to god; the atom had recently been calculated to be mostly empty of matter, and it was this space that the priest claimed was where god dwells, if we let him; where we can feel His Swirling Presence. This idea stuck with Acedus, flitting intermittently across his mind, until he sat down with a coffee in Uther Dean’s Triangle, watching the swirling motion of the fallen foliage, and decided that it was a sign, a message from god. Whilst he has never claimed that it happened, most worshippers say that the six rings crossed over much as they do in the Church’s logo. Either way, the visiting contingent this year, arriving on Acedus’ birthday (that is, today – normally the death day would be used but that was in midsummer when wind speeds are too low) will revel in these strange currents, these concatenations of wind that somehow ensured their religion’s dominance in Canaring.

Other festivals happening today:

  • The Festival of the Softest Drum
  • The Attack Cat Festival
  • Murderers Out of Buentoille – an Annual Protest

October 30th – The Festival of the Wishing Fleet

Wishing wells are a common sight in Buentoille, as are wishing fountains, both of which adorn many a square of plaza. There are other ways to send your wishes to the universe, other forms to attach them to; in the rocky heights of Guilgamot district there are two houses with a great gulf between them, over which are strung two lines; a washing line and a wishing line, which holds thousands of pieces of cloth embroidered with someone’s wishes. If you go to Rennario Shill’s Bar and order the ‘wishing soup’ you will be given a thin soup with a sheet of rice paper, a quill and some edible ink. It is the custom to place your wish in your dinner date’s soup, but if you are eating alone it is perfectly acceptable to place it in your own. And there are, of course, always the stars.

For those looking for another way to trust the important aspects of their life to enigmatic and potentially non-existent forces, there is today another opportunity; the Festival of the Wishing Fleet. The festival is hosted in southern Buentoille, at the Temple of Great Moway, a small but ancient religious group which spawned out of Escotolatian spirit cults around the time of the City’s formation. The Temple, dedicated to the worship of the river that runs through Buentoille, the Moway, is located on the inside of a bend of said river, and is formed of a small collection of buildings and a long, wide set of steps that reaches down into the waters, where the acolytes bathe every day (this is part of the reason the temple is built upstream from most of Buentoille).

This Temple is fairly new, even though the religious organisation which uses it is very old. For a long time there was no infrastructure that served this religious group; they merely went down to the river to pray every morning, wherever they happened to be at that point (which was never far from the river; according to doctrine, acolytes of the Temple aren’t allowed to travel more than three miles away from the banks of the Moway or its tributaries). This was because of long held persecution from the Chastise Church, but later, when the Church’s powers were curtailed, because they were considered to be dangerous fanatics, terrorists even, after they poured several barrels of toxic industrial waste down the chimneys of the Parliament building, in protest over the dumping of the same waste into their holy river. The Temple still maintains that the re-routing of the Moway in the fifteenth century was an act of revenge for their protest.

In recent years, the Temple has become rather trendy, and has opened its doors to visitors, even allowing them to take part in some of its rituals. Worship of the river that runs through the heart of their City seems in some ways natural for many Buentoillitants, an easy thing to understand and believe in. Yet there are concerns from more ‘traditional’ Temple-goers that allowing folk who do not adhere to the doctrines, who travel beyond the bounds of the river and who travel over the Moway by bridge rather than swimming as they should, to participate in their rituals will offend the Moway. For now, those who believe in an open Temple are in the majority, buoyed by the influx of new members, many of whom have become fully signed up to the doctrines. They argue that Mother Moway will know who amongst them are pure of heart, and will not blame them for trying to bring more worshippers to her watery glory.

What all of this means is that, for those looking for another way to make the universe hear them and grant their wishes, they now have the chance to join the Temple in doing just that. The Temple-goers believe that today was the day that the Moway first met the sea, and fell in love with him. As a result, today that love will be renewed once again, and in a fit of good spirit, the Moway will grant any wishes provided to her by the correct methods. Today is the day that acolytes of the Temple normally get married, and most of their wishes centre around that union, but for the single or already married other wishes are permitted too. The marriages are conducted all together on the steps of the Temple, and are sealed by the couples walking down into the river together and kissing underwater for as long as possible, circulating their breath between them. It is not until evening that the wish-making commences.

The small wax boats are intricately carved with various designs intended to grab the attention of Mother Moway, but space is left between the designs for each person to carve their wish. These ‘wishing boats’ are given for free to Temple members, and are available for a small fee to anyone else. Anything can be written on them, but traditionally the wish is expressed in a small poem which fits in one band around the ship’s hull. Those who have just been married are given larger boats, with sections on their tops where colourful flowers are placed. As the sun sets, the Temple band begins to play slowly and quietly, giving the signal for everybody to cease carving, then walk down the steps, light the wick protruding from the top of their boat, and place it in the water, to be swept downstream. Atop the water their reflections pool beautifully as they are dragged out of sight, and below the earnest wishes are illuminated, where the river can read them.

Other festivals happening today:

  • The Festival of Honesty
  • The Festival of the Bright Cave
  • Chopped Off Nose Day

October 31st – The Festival of the Fungal Heart

At this time of year there are plenty of mushrooms around in the forests and fields, and plenty of Buentoillitants will happily go out in search of them, especially on days when the weather is bright and dry. There are chanterelles and morels in the forests, field blewits and wax caps in the fields, honey fungus grows in great conglomerations and chicken of the woods hangs from the trees. At this time of year, nature truly is a larder for all comers, and whilst there are some more dangerous specimens hiding amongst the delicious, most Buentoillitants are taught how to tell the difference at a very young age, both with their parents and formally at primary school. Bearing this excellent education in mind, it is always surprising that so many go out searching today for the Fungal Heart.

The mushrooms that we see and eat are actually just the fruiting bodies of the fungal growth that lies beneath; mycelium. This root-like structure can be very extensive, especially beneath forests where it can interlink in a ‘mat’ just below the topsoil, spreading for miles and growing mushrooms where the conditions are right. This explains why mushrooms grow so quickly and seemingly from nowhere; there is a near-invisible structure lying beneath the leaf mold just waiting for the right moment to produce them. According to most of the Heart-hunters out in the forests today, the mythical ‘Fungal Heart’ which they search for is essentially a tangled, concentrated ball of these mycelial tendrils, from which all the other mycelium supposedly sprouts. There are no documented instances of anyone actually finding a Heart, but the myth persists nonetheless.

There are actually various theories about what a Fungal Heart is; some think that it is another fruiting body, not part of the mycelial mat, and that it is something like a very large truffle. Others think that it is where the mycelium grows around some other object (a stone, a dead tree, a buried heart?) or that it is some other part of the fungal life-cycle, entirely separate to mycelium, mushrooms or spores; that it is the ‘mother’ of all fungi. To fully understand all these differing ideas, we have to look back to what they are modifying; where did this idea of a ‘fungal heart’ come from in the first place?

There is an old story, which features in both Escotolatian and Helican mythologies (that is, in the myths of both of the major ancient cultures which intertwined to create Buentoille). It varies a little between the two, but in both a god-like figure is slain, and its heart is buried underground. In the Escotolatian version, the figure is a forest spirit, whereas in the Helican he is a giant whose domain is a forest. The Helican giant was slain by one of the gods, and has its heart buried by another giant ‘as was their custom,’ but this causes its ‘malign influence’ to spread, causing rot and decay where none existed before. The Escotolatian forest spirit’s ending is stranger, but perhaps more positive; it was slain by a monster, who wished to eat its heart later, when it had ‘softened up’ in the earth. When he returns, however, the heart has sprouted fungus, and the monster is disgusted enough that he leaves. The good creatures of the forest, however, see that these fungus are a gift from their murdered protector spirit; a way of turning the rot and darkness of this world to some good.

The most probable cause for both of these cultures developing very similar myths is that they talked, and the story passed between them. The idea that the two were entirely separate until the development of Buentoille is a nonsense; despite the physical distance between the two groups there was still trade and conversation, probably more so than Buentoille has with its neighbours now, proportionally at least. Still, this idea of virginal civilisations persists in some sectors to this day, and it was certainly a belief held by Basten Weerwyrd, the so-called ‘cultural historian’ who is behind today’s festival. Weerwyrd made several logical jumps with little or no evidence when he theorised that the reason for the similarity in the two myths must be that there is some natural phenomenon, the Fungal Heart, which inspired both stories.

To help explain the inconsistencies in this theory, such as the glaringly obvious ‘why has nobody seen a Fungal Heart in living memory?’ Weerwyrd suggested that firstly they are very rare, and must be very tasty, so have been ‘hunted’ almost out of existence. He also said that small details from each tale (or rather, very specific versions of each tale, which, being oral tales originally, have been modified many times before and since) suggested that the Hearts would only appear on a day a year, when they raise from deep in the earth beneath a forest to nearer the surface. That day, ‘the final day of October,’ is, not surprisingly, today. According to Weerwyrd it is ‘only a matter of time’ until someone finds one, but despite it being nearly three hundred years since he wrote that, three hundred years of Buentoillitants travelling to the centre of the local forests with spades, digging random holes here and there, nobody seems to have had any luck just yet. Perhaps this year will be different? If not, there’s always next year.

Other festivals happening today:

  • The Festival of the Dark Corridor
  • The Annual Live Worm Eating Competition
  • The Modeller’s Day

November 1st – The Festival of the Squid

For the last few days, and indeed this morning before the sun rose, most of the anglers and fishers of Buentoille will have broken from their normal routines and swapped their normal nets and other such equipment for specialist squid poles and lures. These lures, or ‘jigs’, to give them their proper name, sink down to near the sea floor, and have many spiked barbs designed to catch hold of a tentacle or two with ease. Most of this kind of fishing is done close to shore, in the bay, and generally before it gets too bright, when squid, with their large eyes, tend to slink off to murkier depths. There are those, however, who have more specialised equipment still; thicker lines, heavier weights, enormous rods to catch enormous creatures. These fishers go far out to sea, into the inner ocean where its gets incredibly deep, and if they are very lucky they will pull up gigantic squid, metres long, not even counting the tentacles.

All of this is in aid of today’s festival, The Festival of the Squid, where the streets and plazas of the dockside districts will be heaving with folk munching on this seafood delicacy. Brightly coloured stalls line the streets, selling fried and battered squid rings, squid soups, squid-ink pasta and rice dishes, stuffed squid, pickled squid, squid salads and stir-fries. There are squid sauces and pieces of salted, dried squid to dip in them. For the brave there are whole squid, freshly killed (serving live animals of any sort is illegal in Buentoille, so please do not believe these myths), fermented squid, or squid marinated in super hot chillies. Squid potato cakes are there for those who don’t want to be reminded that their food lived recently. The stalls centre around Saint Fibrass’ Dock, where the central event, the giant squid, are unloaded and butchered into large steaks, which are served in a number of ways.

Other than a nice boost for the fishing industries, what is the real purpose of today’s festival? As with many of Buentoille’s food-related events, the festival is tied in with the early days of the Communal Reconstruction, when hunger was rife and starvation waited patiently at the window. No longer able to depend upon imported food after the Revolution, when the Seven Cities Trading Company attempted to destabilise Buentoille by cutting off their supply, the City was forced to look to neglected sources of sustenance. One instance of this was foraged foods and peas, as is celebrated on Pea Day, but also many more folks gave up their jobs and became fishers, where a more immediate source of food could be found. Before this point, squid and other tentacled creatures were seen as ‘dirty’ and not worth eating by Buentoillitants, and fishers would throw them back into the sea, but it didn’t take long for these attitudes to shift once hunger came knocking.

The real turning point of these attitudes was this day in 1909, the day that today’s festival commemorates, when starvation in Buentoille was looking most likely. This time of year is supposed to be the most bounteous, when the harvest has recently been brought in, and nature is a larder. Yet there were serious issues with the harvest in 1909; the weather had been awful and destroyed many crops, and a plague of squinnich beetles had overrun the fields. This latter detail was an extremely rare occurrence, and the beetles were almost definitely planted by the Trading Company or monarchists. The terrible weather had also meant that the City’s fishers hadn’t been able to go out on the water safely, although many had tried nonetheless and had been killed. For now there was still a small stock of non-perishable foods, but these were being kept for the long winter months when even less food was available. Things were beginning to look desperate.

What a relief it must have been, then, to see Warral Bastian and his small fleet returning safe and sound through the stormy waves, an enormous catch filling their hulls! They had gone out a week before and had been presumed dead, but now they were back with enough food to feed half the City, if you counted the gigantic squid dragged along by Bastian’s vessel, an enormous fishing ship called ‘The Smell of the Morning’. Stories of the squid’s size have no doubt been exaggerated over the years, but documentary evidence can prove that it was well over twenty metres long, too big to be hauled aboard. Bastian had apparently fought with the monster for seven hours before it succumbed to its harpoon wounds. Since that day nobody has caught anything even approaching the size of that squid, the nearest being fourteen metres. Perhaps the terrible weather that year stirred the monster of 1909 from the depths? It’s not that they haven’t been trying; every year before the giant squid are cut into steaks they are measured and the catcher of the largest each year is awarded a trophy, hat and title (Feeder of the People) as their prize.

Ultimately, this sudden influx of food was just enough to tip the scales in Buentoille’s favour. Whilst by itself it would not have fed many for long, it meant that the winter foods were not eaten straight away, and whilst many went hungry and malnutrition was rife, a tiny minority actually starved to death. Today those hungry days are long passed, and the celebrations are more about gorging oneself silly, rather than avoiding starvation, but why not? This was what those pioneers, those Communal Reconstructors dreamt about in bed with any empty stomach, after all.

Other festivals happening today:

  • The Festival of Venerating the Deep Fathers
  • The Festival of Plant Feasting
  • The Sky Looks Lonely Day

November 2nd – The Festival of Hunting the Greedy Lord

Looking out over the marshes from atop one of Buentoille’s hills of a morning is often a rewarding sight, as the morning mist is slowly evaporated away by the morning sun. Alternately there is that which crowns the hills of Ceaen Moor, occasionally reaching down into the valleys below. Mist and fog are common in the spaces that surround the City, and sometimes in the dead of winter misty tendrils work their way into the streets themselves, but the kind of blanketing, suffocating fog that covers the City today only happens once a year. It’s always at the start of November, or sometimes the end of October, that it comes, creeping over the City in the night so that, in the light of morning when you look outside it is as if someone had placed a white sheet over your bedroom window.

Today Buentoille is a dreamlike place. People and places suddenly strike out of the white seemingly from nowhere, as there is usually only a few feet of visibility, and it is easy to get lost if you don’t know your way very well. It is possible to feel entirely alone in what is normally a bustling, busy street. It is impossible to drive safely, so for today (and possibly the next few days – the fog can last for some time) the automobiles, trams and carriages of the City are all left well alone, excepting of course the emergency vehicles which are still active, just a little slower. It can be quite startling to have your little quiet world suddenly interrupted by a blaring siren and bright lights dissipating strangely through the clouds.

With the restricted visibility and hearing range, today is perfect for performing secret tasks and rituals. It’s likely that more of these happen than most are aware of; the Coven of Irah for example, are very cagey when questioned about what they get up to in the fog (this doesn’t necessarily mean a lot, really, seeing as they are cagey around any questioning), and tales abound of lone walkers stumbling upon strange scenes in the parks and streets. If these are to be believed then there are trees full of men hanging from their feet chanting Chastise Church liturgies backwards, naked women dancing around stones, black-garbed strangers burying goose eggs on the beach. Some of these are simply stories told indoors tonight by the fire in the pub, but some surely have an element of truth to them.

One ritual which definitely occurs today is the Hunting of the Greedy Lord; it’s been going on for hundreds of years although those who participate in it claim that it has not, or at least that they aren’t involved personally. They say this with a knowing wink. If you hear their horn calling out in the mist today, get quickly to the roadside, lest you be knocked over by a masked rider going hell-for-leather, seemingly careless of anyone in their path. This reckless manner is part of the reason for their masks and hooded grey riding cloaks, to protect themselves from prosecution, not that anyone is under any illusion as to who hides beneath. For a long time this garb has been worn mainly out of tradition rather than as an actual disguise; everyone knows that the riders are all priests of the Chastise Church.

Thankfully there haven’t been any deaths from the festival for many many years, although after a Tallboys district woman had both her legs broken by the wild horses of the Hunt in 1743 many local folks hunted down the hunters and beat them thoroughly. Similarly, when the Hunt attempted to enter the Warrens one year, they found themselves severely punished. Eventually the violence got so bad in Tallboys and the surrounding districts (the locals lay in wait each year with nets and clubs) that a route was set through several wide streets, through which the riders had to keep off the walkways, which were fenced off accordingly with bright red tape. This has remained same the way ever since, although the hunters have been known to go off course, whether by design or accident, considering that the priests are usually inexperienced riders.

The quarry of these hunters is, as the name of the festival suggests, a lord, or rather, someone dressed as a lord. This person has their own horse, and is decked out in traditional aristocratic riding gear; a gaudy jacket in bright red with several golden tassels. This ‘Lord’ will these days actually be another priest, usually one who lost some arcane forfeit. The longer they stay out of the clutches of the hunters, the more reparative wine they will be plied with later on in the evening. Once they would also have had to spend a night in the stocks, as did the Lord of Iglow’s Garden, Kannis Moldreddi upon whom their character is based, but this has now been replaced with an effigy instead.

Moldreddi was a dilettante and a carouser, who held lavish parties in his father’s mansion that were notorious across the City. He was famously cruel to his servants, and had a hatred of all things to do with the Church, which he saw as stuffy and boring. When his father died he forbade any of his staff from going to church, and turned the abbey attached to the manor into a brothel. He also stopped paying any tithe to the Church, which was traditionally taken at harvest time. The clergy decided that something had to be done, and since Moldreddi seemed to care not a jot for the shame of his actions, they decided to take more drastic action. When the thick fog of November fell that year they masked themselves and attempted to abduct the carouser on his way home from a drinking club. After a horse chase they had him, and publicly shamed him in the stocks outside the district courthouse, inviting folk from all around to come throw the contents of their privies and bedpans at him.

Initially the events were re-enacted to keep the Lord’s memory of the event sharp, to display their power, but eventually it became tradition, and a good way for normally stuffy priests to let off some steam anonymously. The event is still technically disallowed by the Hierarchs of the Church, but that does little to discourage more junior members, for whom the event is almost a rite of passage. Not every priest is actually involved in the Festival; there are plenty who are vociferously opposed, so in this regard the masks do still serve some purpose. Be careful out there in the fog today.

Other festivals happening today:

  • The Festival of the Closed Space
  • Mittens Day

November 3rd – The Festival of the Fog Moon

It can get quite stifling on the second day of the November fog. Whilst some enjoy the feeling of anonymity, privacy and peace that the dense fog imparts, others long to look at a distant view, or even just to the end of their street. It can get a bit much, the feeling of constant enclosure, so much so that those Buentoillitants who suffer from claustrophobia are offered temporary MHS funded residence outside the City in a country retreat.

For those of you looking to have a breather of your own, who don’t want to travel far, there is another option; the BBS Television Tower. Today and yesterday there will be special viewings inside the cafe near the top of the Tower; an odd, brutalist structure that was built on top of an existing tower block due to be knocked down. The block was mostly filled with concrete for structural integrity, but still outwardly maintains the illusion of being inhabited, even down to a number of lights in the windows that turn on and off randomly throughout the night. The tower itself is formed of three ‘needles’ poking out from the tower block, all angled in so that they meet just above a hexagonal viewing platform and cafe.

Being the tallest structure in Buentoille, the Tower just pokes out above the banks of mist that fill the Buentoille basin, only petering out when they reach the moors and the western forests. Coming up from the whitish darkness below, it is searingly bright for new arrivals, what with the bright white clouds hovering below, reflecting the sun. Still, these short sessions (kept down to ten minutes per person as the platform can only hold 500 people safely and there are plenty queueing down at the innocuous street entrance) are not only a spectacle but something of a lifeline for those getting increasingly fed up of the strange sense of entrapment that has spread across the City.

It’s not often that the full moon coincides with the November fog (the last instance was 2009), but when it does they tend to make the most of it in the BBS Television Tower. Whilst the moon isn’t technically full until early tomorrow morning, it looks full enough tonight to make it worth the celebration. The lights inside the viewing platform are turned down very low or off entirely to eliminate excess reflections in the glass (there is no outside section due to safety concerns), giving the richly mosaicked space a quiet, relaxed feel. The gold and silver tiles laid out in intricate and representative designs still have a residual lustre in this low light, but even with this added glamour, all eyes will be fixed outside.

At night, under the light of the full moon, you can better see all the swirls and eddying currents atop the pearlescent fog ocean below. The moon herself is as always mesmerising, her reflection catching on the spectacles of the open-mouthed viewers inside the cafe, which sells moon-themed cocktails to the assembled masses. To keep the feel of the night ponderous and calm, there is no ten minute rule tonight, merely a very small guest list, chosen by randomised selection from the electoral register. The invites are delivered via post, but also, obviously, by television; the names were drawn and read out live on BBS1 two weeks ago. Apart from the prestige that this lends the invites, it also discourages folk selling their invites for vast amounts of money.

At about 8:00pm the band, Cerz Mayer’s Players, will start up, playing relaxed jazz and mournful folk songs. They know they are the sideshow, and don’t seem too bothered by it; if you’re going to be upstaged by anything then it might as well be an amazing natural spectacle that only comes once every 5-10 years. The event is filmed and broadcast live on BBS1, as part of the BBS’s new Relaxation Season. There are no annoying interruptions from presenters, no commentary; it’s just shown as it is, the camera occasionally cutting between the inside and the out, a shot of the band, the tower from the ground, the hands of two lovers entwined.

To top it all off, the bats arrive at about half nine, usually. They dip in and out of the mist like playful dolphins, they scatter up and around the tower, they skim of the mist’s swirling surface, creating ‘spray’ that splits the moonlight beautifully. Nobody’s ever studied this behaviour in depth, but it’s likely they aren’t just going it for the cameras; presumably they find navigating in the fog tricky, given that they use sound, which is dampened, to see their way. Perhaps these elated-looking aerobatic twirls are simply attack-patterns, ways of hunting moon-led moths and other insects that aren’t easily visible to the humans, or perhaps they, like those humans, are just happy to see the moon, the view, the white swirling sea below.

Other festivals happening today:

  • The Festival of the Drinker’s Call
  • The Festival of the Retreating Herd
  • Blankets and Hot Chocolate Day

November 4th – The Festival of the Welcay Transmission

It’s a good job that the fog is expected to disperse today, because it means that the amateur radio enthusiasts all across the City will not be disappointed. Of course, a lot of other folks, especially those who didn’t get the chance to go up the BBS Television Tower last night, will be happy to have more normal weather return to Buentoille, but radio enthusiasts have particular, additional cause. Thick fog such as that which blanketed the City for the last two days has a tendency to interfere with radio signals in a minor manner. This usually isn’t problematic; the interference is so minimal that it causes no issues; but today a specific signal, the Welcay Transmission, is going to be studied in minute detail, and any changes, no matter how small, might throw off this intense research.

Considering how long the Welcay Transmission has been going on for, it’s strange that we know so little about it. It was first identified in 1826, shortly after radio receivers were first invented, and was thought to be a natural phenomenon, given that the first radio transmitter came in 1831. Quite what this regular sound, a steadily descending tone that loops over a period of two minutes and twenty two seconds, was caused by in the natural world was unknown, but the scientist who identified it, Estee Welcay assumed that it could not have been deliberately man-made. It’s possible that this misconception was because Welcay mistook the Transmission for a ‘whistler’ (a naturally caused signal which sounds like whistling caused by lightning strikes), but whatever her reasons, Welcay was such a giant in her field, known for humiliating anyone who disagreed with her theories, that her assertion was merely accepted for many years, until 1844 when Grieve Balant tuned in on November the 4th.

This was a time when there were perhaps only one hundred receivers and a single radio station in Buentoille, Egg Street Tidings, run by a group of scientists and enthusiasts, so unlike today it was highly unlikely that anyone would tune into the Welcay frequency on the correct day. It was only because Balant had been using the strange noise as a relaxation aid whilst bathing that she heard it at all. At 3:21pm the Transmission suddenly broke off from its undulating tone and there was the sound of a voice, low and gravelly, speaking in an unknown language. The exact same recording plays today at the exact same time; the recording is poor and full of static, like a dusty record, and the language is entirely undecipherable. It sounds a little like Lowest Canaring, but only to the untrained ear; according to extensive research there are simply no known languages that match this unnerving voice.

Unsurprisingly, Balant was pretty shaken up by the sudden interruption to her relaxation experience. At first she thought that it was a trick played on her by someone; that they had overlaid the signal with a stronger one produced locally, but if they had nobody owned up to it. Eventually she put the incident aside and forgot all about it, not expecting to hear that voice ever again. Five years later her neighbour knocked on her door, shouting that she needed to tune into Welcay’s Transmission, where, lo and behold, the same voice was at it again. Her neighbour, also a student of the electromagnetic sciences, had been looking through his diary from five years ago on a whim, to see what happened on that day, and, reading the report he’d written of a rambling Balant turning up at his door, he absent-mindedly tuned to the correct frequency.

A lot of the research going on today, by amateurs and scientists alike, will be directional studies trying to locate the source of the signal. This is a complicated matter, as the Transmission is a shortwave signal, propagated by being ‘bounced’ around the planet between the ground and the ionosphere; in this manner it isn’t stopped by barriers like mountains, and can travel vast distances, right around the globe even, to places where Buentoilliçan geography is sketchy at best. Obviously the terrain of both these surfaces varies, and this can affect the propagation, and there is no real way of knowing how many ‘bounces’ have been completed before it reaches Buentoille. However, by triangulating these various different directional readings, and collating them over the years, the resulting theorised location of the source can be narrowed down. At the moment several locations are being considered, each further east across the globe, becoming less precise as they advance in that direction. The Chenorrians in the east have been contacted about the signal but they seem to know nothing about it.

Other pieces of research are concerned with trying to decode the strange words, or to analyse the background noise and speech to see if there are any modulations each year; it’s a possibility that the signal is similar to the ‘spy stations’ used by Revolutionaries during the rule of the Traitor King that modulated seemingly innocuous transmissions in minor ways that could be decoded by resistance listeners using a code book and specialist equipment. Any results which can be presented immediately will be heard at the Colbatha Institute in de Geers University this evening, and will be properly analysed there over the coming days and months. Whilst most of the amateur radio enthusiasts listening in today will be working from their homes, a small contingent of scientists will be gathered at the Institute all day, eagerly awaiting and then discussing the Transmission.

The main reason that the Transmission has endured for so long as a point of fascination in Buentoilliçan life is the mystery that surrounds it; who makes the signal? Why has it never significantly changed? Why does it transmit useless tones for most of the year? What’s so significant about today? Obviously there have been many theories, but none seem to fit well; if it were a ‘spy station’ it would function more randomly and frequently, surely? Others suggest that it is some kind of scientific test, or a beacon used to triangulate position, the reasons for both being explained by that unsettling gravelly voice once a year. Again, this makes little sense. Perhaps the most compelling explanation, coincidentally the one which has been sponsored by the Guild of Conspiracy Theorists, comes from unexpected quarters; in the Firrahm Mweni science fiction novel, the Welcay Transmission plays from an abandoned, automated station, the advanced civilisation who made it long fallen. In this novel it has been playing for thousands of years, announcing the birthday of a young boy over and over into an uncaring, unhearing world.

Other festivals happening today:

  • The Festival of the Good Woman
  • The Festival of Lacklustre Music
  • Spine Tingle Day

November 5th – The Festival of Changing the Guard

In 1733 a man called Oglaw McStannitch made three big mistakes. He was digging in Fallow Fields, the old-village-green-turned-allotments in Lost Palace district, when he found a small hardwood ring box. It was in a pretty sorry state; the hinges were rusted away and the cloth that had once covered it was almost non-existent. The wood itself had just about survived but it was ready to disintegrate. The first big mistake he made was not reburying the box deeper in the mud, letting his vegetable roots grow around it, and forgetting all about it. The second big mistake he made was prising the box open, allowing it to partly disintegrate in the process. The final mistake was plucking out the gold band inside and putting it on his ring finger. Later, when he looked back at that moment he didn’t know why he’d been so hasty. ‘It was as if she were compelling me to do it, now I think of it,’ he said to Buentoille Today magazine in 1942. By putting that ring on his finger, McStannitch had unwittingly caused himself to be possessed by a ghost.

If he’d grown up in Lost Palace he would have perhaps been a little warier; he might even have recognised the box from the stories and let it be. Every Lost Palace child knows the story of Beliah and Caster, though it spread little further. The couple were childhood sweethearts, fiancées due to be married, when the day before Beliah was crushed to death in an accident at her mother’s windmill. Struck with grief, Caster took himself to the church and asked that they be married nonetheless, so that he may never be separated from the one he loved. Apparently the priest was young and easily swayed by Caster’s passion, else he would not have granted the small ceremony, performed there and then with only the gablelarks as witness. From the moment he put on the wedding band, he felt her there, by his side.

Yet it was not all conjugal happiness between man and spirit, as one might hope. Though this was Beliah, to be sure, there was something changed about her, a certain melancholy which had not existed before. She constantly spoke to Caster’s heart of that place beyond, from where she had been so rudely ripped. The place where happiness dwells, a place of spices and honey sweet, of a sun that never sets, a place where smiles are worn constant and do not flower from sadness. And he felt that place call to him, sinister in its charms, where they would be together, and he would have been taken there were it not for some rancour, a sickliness to the honey that he detected, and he came back to himself, standing atop the belfry about to jump. It was then that Caster took off the ring, placed it in the box and tied his handkerchief around it tight, saying her name and the first words that they spoke once for each knot he tied, remembering the times they had spent so happy when she still lived. Binding the ghost to the ring in this way he then took it to Fallow Fields and buried her deep.

Some versions of the stories say he found another love, or that he would dig her up once a year, always careful to never place the ring on his finger, but just to be close. Some say that he changed his mind but that he forgot where she was buried, and that his spirit searches for hers, digging holes every night. It’s for this reason that Lost Palaceres call mole hills ‘Caster’s holes’. In none of the stories is the poor woman’s spirit released from its prison; she is trapped beneath the earth, growing ever more vengeful. When McStannitch opened the ring box he momentarily freed her, but as soon as he put on the ring she was once again trapped, this time in the body of this new man who had never loved her. He felt her presence immediately, but he didn’t, at that point understand what had happened. It was only later, after talking with another local, and to an Occultist that was recommended by that local, that he understood his predicament.

There have been various attempts to send back Beliah to that place alone, but the boatman only goes across the waters once for each soul. No matter the amount of rituals, consecrations or benedictions performed, the way is barred for Beliah. The only way that she could leave would be through eventual entropic decay, or by hitching a ride with another soul to which she had been purely bonded in true love. This may once have been Caster, but his spirit is seemingly lost or long departed alone. But love, unlike the boatman, may come again. This was, at least, the belief of Martha Belledere, the Occultist visited by McStannitch, and it was on the basis of these beliefs that today’s somewhat dubious festival came to be.

The first thing that happens is that everybody gathers in the early morning at the Lost Palace District Hall. Out of the gathered masses most put their names into a hat, and a single person is chosen to take on the burden for a year. You’d be surprised how many people are willing, eager, even, to be possessed by an ancient and possibly vengeful spirit. The hope is that, over precisely a year together, the spirit and volunteer will fall in love, allowing Beliah to pass back over the waters to that other place when they die, but so far most have simply guarded the spirit, stopping it from wreaking havoc, as it would if the ring were taken off and the spirit therefore released. Many of the volunteers report being asked sweetly, nagged and harangued by the spirit to ask them to take off the ring, but they are all trained to resist by the Society of Ghost Friendship. Apparently you only have to look to the alleged ‘Incident of 1847’ when one volunteer, Timothy Squealing, took off the ring for five minutes and in the process his house burned down, all the milk for three miles went sour, and several local elderly folks suffered simultaneous heart attacks, to see the danger of setting the ghost free.

After the volunteer is coached, the crowds reconvene for the main ceremony, the Changing of the Guard, in the evening. On the floorboards a member of the Society draws a special magical circle with sanctified chalk, into which the two ring-guarders step, alongside the Ceremony Leader, who places their ring fingers end to end and slips the ring between them. Often some form of sanctified grease is used in this process, to make it smoother, and if anything were to go wrong, the belief is that the chalk circle would temporarily keep the freed spirit close, and stop it doing any harm. Once the ring is transferred, the Leader says a few magic words, then passes their hand quickly between the two fingers, severing the connection between them. Only then may the three step from the circle.

Perhaps this year the ghost of Beliah will find her soulmate, and the terrible cycle will finally end. Various feminists throughout the ages have pointed out the hideousness of this yearly ritual, comparing it to forced marriage, but seeing as the spirit probably isn’t real most people don’t get too worked up about it. Besides, in modern times her influence and presence is apparently less keenly felt, so perhaps it will be by that first method, entropic decay, that she will find her long-awaited peace.

Other festivals happening today:

  • The Festival of Pine Scents
  • The Annual Buentoilliçan Modern Art Festival
  • The Candlestick Trick Festival

November 6th – The Festival of Submerged Sanctification

There are catacombs within the Unfathomed Archive, somewhere within its myriad ways. They are down there, next to the inverted copy of Saint Justin’s Church carved out of the rock, and are packed full of bones. Whilst the traditional resting place for bones is a graveyard, when graveyards are dug up, replaced with buildings for the living in an ever-expanding City (nobody wants a house built atop the dead), they have to be put somewhere, and sometimes the answer isn’t another graveyard, especially when the bodies are buried deep, their names lost to the ages; what would you put on the headstones? Bulch Road Graveyard was one such place that ended up being replaced (first with a public bathhouse, but this was later knocked down and replaced again with housing), and it was for the ancestors who rested there that the catacombs were first carved out of the deep rock beneath Ranaclois.

Nowadays, however, these catacombs are a little less full than they once were. Once the shelves were full to bursting with neatly categorised skulls, femurs laid like bricks, ribs stacked high, but now they are half empty. What happened? Thankfully there isn’t some demon dog eating them all (well, there is according to some people, but it is different bones, and that’s a subject for another day), but the truth isn’t much better: they lie at the bottom of the Buentoille Bay, skulls making homes for crustaceans, kneecaps blending in with the stones and algae in the murk.

On this day in 1499 there was an enormous storm over Buentoille. It came from nowhere; one moment conditions were clear, the next black clouds coalesced over the bay, lightning striking down into the water, a prodigious wind. According to the Chastise Church, this was caused by the spirits of the dead, whose bones were at that moment being sped out of Buentoille via a large sailing vessel. The weather came on so quickly, just after the vessel left the docks, that it was sunk only a few miles down the coast. The crew went down with the ship and likely drowned in the waters; their bodies were never recovered and as a result, nobody is exactly sure what they were doing, why they were making off with several tonnes of human remains.

The heist was discovered when a Church official went down to the catacombs for a weekly service, and found them almost empty. Most of the bones in there today are those that were recovered from the water, either washed up still in the crates they were packed inside, separately with the tide, or pulled from the waters by net and rod, sometimes long after the event. Very occasionally in the modern day another bone is recovered by fishers, and small toe bones or bone fragments, worn smooth like sea glass, are often gathered on the beaches by local children and sold back to the Church for pocket money.

Plenty had their theories when the bones started turning up in a steady trickle over the years. To most it seemed obvious that the bones were going to be sold to the Strigaxians for use in their magic, or that they were going to be ground down for fertiliser to use on the barren soils of Helmuud’s Hill. Others proposed that it the boat was unmanned, or they would have found the bodies; it was a ghost ship. Perhaps most disturbing is the theory that the bones that wash up today are not the same ones that were stolen, but some strange witch-made copies that Buentoillitants were tricked into bringing to the heart of our City, the components of some dark and complex spell. To proponents of this theory, the ‘sinking’ was all a deliberate ploy and the real bones were made off with beforehand.

Today, on the anniversary of this event, a small contingent of priests will row out into the bay, to the site where the boat originally sank. It is from there that they will re-sanctify, in accordance with the Chastise Church’s dogma, the bones that still remain submerged for another year. Any kind of disturbance of bones in Buentoille requires that this ritual is performed, lest the spirits of the dead do not rest easy on the Other Shore. Of course, the movements of the ocean and the creatures that live in it inevitably mean that the bones must be disturbed every year, so every year the ritual must be performed. An interesting side-effect of this is that all the waters of the Buentoille Bay are, technically, holy water; there are plenty of sinners who will enjoy a dip today, before the tides mix in too much normal water, and the holiness is diluted.

Other festivals happening today:

  • The Festival of the Cream Spoiler
  • The Wasted Repast Festival
  • The Sun, the Sun, Day