#enjoyed some really beautiful sunset and blowing snow and fields

[landwriter]

sun coming over the mountains this morning

[emsartwork]

Oh, could you tell us about specific festivities or holidays each planet has? Like, are they significant to events or locations, are they based on legends or mythos, that kinda stuff!

They’re based on all kinds of things! 

below the cut this is hella long

Starting with the basics, Day of the Rose is a reference to a famous lady magic user(Lesya) who focused on caring for outcasts in society, she used a mix of Fairy transformations and Witch style magic but her title is Mage of Roses. When she died, thousands of people placed roses over her grave, and started giving roses to women who were similar to Lesya and the flower itself became a symbol of honor and respect for compassionate and inspiring women.  It originated on Magix but is celebrated Dimension wide. Mothers are the most common recipients of roses, but anybody can give a rose to any woman they want to show appreciation for.  Magix city has a large parade with floats and dancers and street food and carnival games, other parades vary.

Hala, or, The Storm Celebrations. Andros has a a lot of rain in general, but early spring is monsoon season, boats don’t go out and people stay inside unless absolutely necessary. Hala is both a celebration of the rainy season which brings life afterwards, and a ceremony that is supposed to ease the potential damage from the storms. Always held on a full moon, Hala is celebrated with feasts, traditional/ceremonial dances, and large bonfires in the evening(with more dancing and food). Hala also includes a commemoration of Queen Nephele, who protected the capital city from a record breaking storm for more than a week(she survived but had lasting health complications due to over use of magic). Aisha is pictured here in Hala ceremonial dance wear, featuring a headdress, braided cords, shells, and fan leaves. 

The most practical of Holidays, Zenith “celebrates” the end of winter with a few days off and a relieving breath of fresh air. Zenith technology keeps the most bitter cold out of communities, but the difference in air temperature can lead to the snow melting and re-freezing at the boundary. Eventually this leads to a build up of packed ice creating a “zenith snow globe” as its jokingly called. Once the temperatures rise enough that the dome won’t reform, the dome is shattered and the ice packed up and shipped out for various purposes. The shattering of the ice dome is considered especially beautiful to off-planeters, but zenithians consider it a matter of necessity.   

Solaria has the Summer Center Festival, held twice a “year” when the planet is in the center of it’s orbit. It a huge, three day party, Solarians feast, dance, drink, and decorate themselves, their hair, and literally everything else with ribbons gemstones and glitter. Each day is supposed to represent one of Solaria’s suns, the Dawn Star, the Dusk Star, and the Second Sun of Solaria(not a real sun, a magical power source), but much of the distinctions between each day have been lost as the festival has gotten older. Another holiday on Solaria is a much less popular one called Iahlayculi (ee-ah-lah-koo-lee, don’t ask its a mash up of like three words and languages) or the Night of Many Eyes. Its celebrated once a year, whenever the most moons will be around the planet (calculated with astronomy and physics and shit). It’s much more somber than The Summer Center Festival, and is considered a time of great self reflection and magical potential. Practitioners wear a loose draped dress, a wreath around their head, and craft a lunar lantern(usually magic but sometimes by hand). The wreathes are burned, and the lanterns released to the sky as offerings to the moons of Solaria. This celebration is a favorite of witches(especially Mediums and Psychics) but the general population views it as a little too occult. 

Firefest is held at the height of summer. There isn’t really a central location for the celebration, though the capital city is known for it’s fireworks display. Each community puts together it’s own local festivals featuring a large bonfire, large and small fireworks, and food/game booths. The Firefest honors the first king and queen of domino, Volenae(queen) and Zaphiric(king). They were also the first holders of the Dragon Flame and Phoenix Flame.  They aren’t a married couple but siblings, sharing a joint reign over Domino and eventually creating two bloodlines for the dragon and the phoenix to flow along. Volenae’s symbol is antler like horns, and Zaphiric’s symbol is a black feather, both of these feature prominently in folk art and Firefest masks.

Celebrated in late summer, The day of the Singing Whales is the one time a year the whales surface for a breath of air. It is unknown if the Whales are Natural Animals, Fairy Animals, or Ethereally Blessed beings. While the Whales only surface in one specific bay, music festivals are often held inland, and everybody participates in fireworks and festival type games after sunset.

The day of Returning is an odd holiday for non-Lynpheans. While Lynpheans are known for their nature preservation and association with living plants, the Day of Returning celebrated the ever present death in nature. Lynpheans are very familiar with death, and don’t view it as a “bad thing” most of the time. Untimely death or unwarented violence is frowned upon but Lynpheans understand that death follows life and life follows death. In fact in some Lynphean dialects, “death” is refered to as “returning” (ex: Old Uncle Bush returned peacefully in his sleep last may.)  Mushrooms are the central icon of “returning” being organisms that live off of death in a very tangible way. The Common Lynphean Green Cap is the most popular to use. The cap of Green Cap contains psychedelic substances that can very often result in death. However, the stalk of the Green Cap contains the anti toxins. When taken alone the cap results in severe hallucinations and eventual death. When the stalk is taken alone it clears the body of toxins and has pain relieving effect. When taken together the cap and the stalk produce a mild euphoria, sometimes with (usually auditory) hallucinations(basically its kinda like acid). On the Day of returning Local Temples/Sanctuaries open up the use of the mushrooms as a way to come in to hear the voice of nature and connect the spirit with the physical manifestation of death. These Mushrooms are easy to get addicted to, and are a controlled substance limited to ceremonial or pharmaceutical use, but possession isn’t criminalized and the Lynphean community is very involved with addiction recovery programs.

A Lady I’ve mentioned in passing a few times, Reagis the Cruel, Fairy of Lace. When the Anscestrals first started looking for the Dragon Flame, they placed a Fairy on the throne of Eraklyon as pawn, “blessing” her with their power and tying her core magic to the planet itself. Reagis is Eraklyan, and reigned with an iron fist. She had no empathy for basically anyone, but hated men especially(bad childhood and lots of trauma combined with a superiority complex and power equals big yikes), placing them lowest on the social status and promoting women like her above them. Compassion was a social sin, an act of kindness towards another could lead to public censure and imprisonment, and the people of Eraklyon started to abandon each other emotionally. Sky’s Grandfather and Grandmother, Oris and Edra(along with a young Erendor), resisted and became anonymous figures who helped people in trouble. Eventually they had enough of a following to hold a proper rebellion. Oris and Edra lead the charge and Edra(a warrior) fought with Reagis while Oris(a magic user) worked on disconnecting Regis from her power sources which revived her every time Edra did manage to land a blow. When Reagis was finally un-linked her magic core freaked tf out and Edra landed one final blow with her spear to make Reagis’s magic go completely berserk and burn her up. Edra unfortunately took too much damage and passed after that. Oris was crowned king, established New Earklyon Day, and ruled for a few years before also passing away (due to complication in his core magic because of the way he un-linked Reagis’s from the ancestrals and the planet), and Erendor took the throne. New Eraklyon Day is celebrated with a parade in the capital city and is a national holiday(ie, day off work). Street fairs along the parade route are also common. Reagis’s reign is partially why women aren’t trusted in positions of power or the emotional realm of decision making, and are instead usually pushed towards physical fighting and enforcement.

Vaonaa celebrates the Festival of Threads! The festival is to honor the Ethereal Fairy known as The Threaded One. The Threaded One is unusual for Ethereal Fairies, in that they have regular, benign, interactions with a specific people at a specific time in a specific place (ethereals are usually much more unpredictable). But for whatever reason, The Threaded One seems to enjoy the Festival of Threads. The Festival is centrally located at the Woven Temple, but smaller scale local festivals are also common. The event happens over four days, with a different activity and group each day. The first day the grass fibers are gathered by the youths in the community, this is preformed as a game with kids leading lines with a flag and running/ducking in a pattern across fields to grab the grasses. The second day the adults preform the spinning dance, rotating and using drop spindles to spin the grass fibers into threads. The third day is when the elders groups together and weave the story of the year into the textile in a mix of group chants and oral poetry. The fourth day is for everybody, and the fabric created for the ceremony is burned in a hug bonfire as a sacrifice to The Threaded One. The bonfire is usually when The Threaded One publicly appears but some years they appear periodically through the other four days.

(psa: Vaonaa is very heavily based on Navajo native american culture, I very loosely based this festival on some of the four/nine day healing ceremonies, but ultimately I didn’t want it to just be a weirder version of a religious and culturally significant ceremony so I changed and added a lot. As always, please let me know if you have issues with this im always willing to listen and learn.)

Another practical society, Zhen’s featured festival is the Spring Shear. Just as winter is ending, local communities on Zhen start a flurry of activity. The domestic herds of Argali are sheared, and the wild herds are searched out and counted, hunted, selected for domestication, or moved to a different location. While Argalis do produce a wool like substance, they do not absolutely need to be sheared the way our sheep do. Their wool is shed or scrapped off by the sheep naturally, and it comes off in fluffy chunks, but the Zhen people find it useful and easier to shear their herds for a clean fleece. The fleeces are carded, spun, and wound onto spools in huge huge amounts, a lot of weaving is done at this time as well but its not the main focus. After the majority of the work is done, Zhenese relax and eat/drink/play in a fair like environment, usually held in market squares of estate courtyards. 

On Koyu, the Koyuvian Silk Moths are an iconic animal. Uniquely adapted to it’s environment, the Koyuvian Silk Moths are one of the only creature to live in the outer reaches of the Tangles, feeding off the radiation and burrowing into the living fungal limbs. However, the pupal stage is too fragile to survive the outer Tangles, so the moths travel inward to lay their eggs. The caterpillars eat a the leaves of a luminescent plant called Naemtaj, and eventually produce a silk strand cocoon and transform into the moth. After the moth wiggles out of the cocoon, they’re wings begin to glow and they begin to flock together to travel to the outer Tangles. This is the signal for the Koyvians to begin hunting for the cocoons when begin to give off a faint glow as they deteriorate with out the moth’s body chemicals to keep it intact. The Koyuvians must move fast and usually have several locations in an area with a boiling pot to stabilize the strands as they hunt for the cocoons. Eventually the searching dies down and the silk strands are brushed and wound onto spools for future use. The anticipation before the moths are born is buzzing with energy and bets are placed on who can find the most cocoons. After the work, the Koyuvians relax with food and drink. 

[seetheworldwithmeblog]

Our tent, bought with the best of intentions when we were living in Colorado, has been gathering dust in a trunk for the past 2 years. This week, we decided to give it some time in the sun with a really quick trip down to Switzerland. We started packing early – double checking everything from a newly-purchased blow-up mattress and collapsible chairs to snacks and bottles of wine. We packed it all away in the car and started the 5 and a half hour drive late Friday afternoon.

The drive down was mostly uneventful. There is only so much to keep you entertained as you drive through the rolling hills of Germany until you make it to the foothills of the Alps. The drive started getting pretty about 15 minutes before we reached our destination, as we skirted Lake Brienz near Interlaken. We rolled down our windows as we turned into the valley we would be staying and sucked in the cool, crisp air of the mountains. It was at this point, 8 minutes away from our campsite, that I shivered and thought to myself how nice it would be to snuggle up in our tent on our new blow up mattress at the foot of a giant mountain. And then my jaw dropped.

“Ryan, did we bring blankets?”

Yep, 5 hours and 22 minutes into our drive, we realized we forgot one of the absolute essentials of camping. (Upon retelling this story later, Ryan’s Grandpa reprimanded us for not having a list. We promise to always use a checklist in future, Gramps! You might just need to send us yours.) As we wound along a river and pulled into Camping Jungfrau, at the foot of Staubbach Falls and in the shadow of snow-capped peaks, we let our optimism carry us away and convinced ourselves it would be okay.

After a few false starts in the restaurant (okay, it is more glamping than camping) we were guided to the field to pitch our tent. We unpacked in the mostly-empty field and set up our home for the night. After pitching the tent and blowing up the mattress (like I said, we were glamping) we popped down some chairs to watch the sunset and enjoy the beauty of Lauterbrunnen in the quickly fading light. After a couple of beers and a quick trip to the bathroom to brush our teeth, it was time to try out the tent.

  Luckily, we did have one blanket that always stays in the car, a leftover habit from a childhood in the midwest. With the dusk light still streaming into the tent and one blanket between the two of us, we tugged some hats and wool socks on and tried our best to fall asleep. I have to admit, it wasn’t the best night of sleep I’ve ever had and there was quite a while where I wondered if I would just stay awake the whole night. But each time I got impatient, I heard the sound of the waterfall hitting the rocks, the river flowing by, or the big bells around the necks of goats and cows in the neighboring fields and drifted back to sleep.

I wouldn’t have minded a bit more shut-eye but we were up with the sun and having a breakfast of cold bagels with peanut butter in our fold-up chairs. We took the chance to pack up our backpacks with snacks and double checked our water before heading to the reception area to check in and get some suggestions for a hike. Armed with knowledge from Rick Steves, we knew we wanted to make our way to the tiny village of Gimmelwald but weren’t sure of much else.

The woman at reception seemed to have a lot of faith in us because she recommended a path without a pause. “Follow the path that leads you down to Lauterbrunnen. Then you’ll start to climb up, following signs for Mürren. You’ll walk behind Staubbach Falls, then keep going to Mürren, then on to Gimmelwald. From there you will walk down to Stechelberg and from there head back here.” We asked if it was supposed to rain, which she assured us wouldn’t happen until later and, armed with a map and our packs full of snacks, we were on our way.

We started our walk through the little town of Lauterbrunnen. Walking down the main (only) street, bedecked with Swiss flags, we felt a little overdressed with our packs and hiking boots as we passed the men and women seated on patios, sipping coffee. We took a left halfway through town and started our ascent. My calves made it a few steps up the hill, not even out of the small clump of houses before they were on fire. That feeling continued for quite a while.

After passing by the houses, we were suddenly surrounded by the forest. With the exception of one man and his dogs, we were alone in the woods for the next 3 hours, trekking up a steep hill, crossing a few rivers, pausing midstream by some waterfalls, and taking a few well-deserved breaks at various huts and picnic tables. We had a mini lunch (granola bars and apples) at the top of Staubbach falls before continuing on along the wooded path.

As we climbed higher, the trees thinned out and we reached a pasture that was filled with the sounds of ringing bells. We dipped between some fenceposts, following the painted signs for our trail, and walked towards the sound of those bells for another ten minutes. Coming around a copse of trees, we found ourselves face-to-face with some quintessential Swiss cows. And I’m not talking just-over-the-fence-so-close-I-could-almost-pet-them close. I’m talking eating-from-the-middle-of-our-trail close.  10 cows were meandering around the field that our trail led us through and a few of them were using our nice path as a comfortable grazing spot.

I snapped a few pictures and then took a few minutes to enjoy just how quintessential the scene was. Two of the cows slowly made their way toward me, at which point I realized those Swiss cows also all had horns. One paused a foot away from me and let me rub her nose but another decided I was standing right where she wanted to graze and shooed me away. We gave her all the space she wanted and hustled up the hill, following our trail through a farmer’s field.

The scene played itself out three more times at higher elevations, each time the groups of cows growing larger. By the time we reached the highest edge of the field, we were surrounded by 25 cows, all of them ringing with each step as they grazed their way across the mountain. I didn’t want to leave what felt like a picture from a storybook but the promise of rain later in the afternoon kept us hightailing it up the mountain. We left the field, made our way up a bit further, took an unintended detour beside some train tracks and made it back to the path at a train depot at the peak of our hike for the day.

This was the first time we were in contact with anyone other than cows in about 4 hours, as tourists piled off the train and made their way along the flat path towards Mürren and Gimmelwald. Some would probably say they were the more intelligent bunch. We paused here for a second mini lunch of cheese and crackers, watching the groups go by and enjoying the view. After our legs felt less jello-y, we got back on the path and continued on to the village of Mürren, half an hour down the trail.

It was here, walking through the town in our muddy boots, that we decided to stop by a restaurant with a breathtaking view. I didn’t even pause long enough to catch the name but they were advertising kaffee und kuchen and I couldn’t pass that up. Two coffee cremas and a slice of both apricot and cherry pie later, after watching some paragliders as they rode the wind 700 meters above the valley floor, we were back on the trail, always conscious of the impending rain. The sun was still shining but we had lived in Colorado long enough to know that weather in the mountains is always unpredictable.

Kaffee und Kuchen with a view

Finally, our next stop was Gimmelwald. We had an extra pep in our step as we headed down the trail, spurred on by the astonishing mountain views that were appearing to our left and up ahead. The path was level and easy and it was a quick half an hour later

Mid-hike views

that we were walking into what Rick says is one of his favorite villages in Switzerland, the tiny village of Gimmelwald.

We did the full tour, walking up the main street to get a full view of the mountains, then passing back through the sweet chalets, stopping to admire the cheese hut before passing into the self-serve shop/workshed where they sold the cheese itself. We selected a hunk of cheese and some sausage, deposited 12 Swiss Franc in the tin, made our own change out of the money left there, and waved at the owner of the house as we made our way back down the path. We stopped by one more self-service refrigerator to get some more Alpkäse (mountain cheese) before finishing our tour of the mountain village.

It was all downhill from there, quite literally. We headed towards Stechelberg, following some loud, echoing sounds which turned out to be the gun club (they were celebrating their 100th year). The loud cracks of the guns aside, the valley was a beautiful refuge of birds, cows, and happy hikers. The walk down took us beyond more waterfalls (I think we saw about 15 in all), over the river, through pastures, and alongside constantly breathtaking views of the peaks all around us. We were dragging our feet just a bit as we got back to Camping Jungfrau but Ryan convinced me to stop by the gift shop for some bottles of Swiss wine and a few commemorative Swiss Army Knives. It was with great relief that I pulled off my hiking boots 10 minutes later, having completed a 12-mile, 7-hour hike.

The self-service cheese shop

The cheese hut

After a refreshing shower and a glass of that Swiss wine, it was time for dinner at the campground restaurant. The waitress looked at us like we were crazy as we ordered the fondue for two with salad and a glass of house wine as well as a large french fries. I’m proud to say, we polished it all off, stopping just short of licking the bottom of the fondue pot. Without room for dessert, we made our way quite slowly back to our tent to start digesting.

At this point, it was about 7:00 pm and, feeling stuffed, I was tempted to just go to sleep. Mother Nature had a different plan though and, in a matter of minutes, a nasty thunderstorm had rolled in. We zipped up the doors of the tent quickly but, after a particularly loud crack of thunder sounded directly overhead, I wised up and googled if it was safe to stay in a tent during a thunderstorm. The chances we were going to be struck by lightning were slim but, given the fact that there was substantial shelter just a few steps away, we opted to make a break for it and headed to the Wifi/TV lounge to wait out the worst of the storm.

The restaurant (pre-rain)

Mother Nature did her worst for thirty minutes, soaking everything and everyone in sight. We waited until the worst of it had passed and, still dodging some rain, sprinted back to our tent to investigate the damage. The tent had held up pretty well although there was one spot directly above my head seemed to have developed a tiny leak. All things considered, we were pretty lucky. We were relatively dry and, with our extra layers on, still somewhat warm as we fell asleep on our slowly deflating mattress to the sound of the rain pitter-pattering on the tent and the waterfall rushing nearby.

We woke up with the sun again on Sunday although, after falling asleep at 8:30, we were feeling much more rested this time. It didn’t take us long to deflate the already-flat mattress, pack up our clothes, and put everything but the chairs in the trunk of the car. We had a last breakfast with our view, finishing just as the sun broke through and the peaks began to show. We took one last walk through Lauterbrunnen, stopping every 10 steps to try to get another picture of just how beautiful the valley is. Then, after contemplating leaving the world behind and moving to this tiny German-speaking village, we packed ourselves in the car and reluctantly started the long drive home.

Really roughing it Our tent, bought with the best of intentions when we were living in Colorado, has been gathering dust in a trunk for the past 2 years.