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Harvest Festival - IC
Through the high heat of the summer months, the most vibrant kingdom of humanity became all the more alive.
Its rolling fields ignited with colours of brilliant warmth, verdant green and healthy red, russet brown and brightest gold. Crops to last a year would grow across those fields, tended by the toil of the kingdom's common labourers, the hardy peasantry of rural Lordaeron. Stout, sturdy folk, but not unkind; and truer in their faith than any other across the kingdoms.
This time of labour would also be a time of celebration. Midsummer marks a fortnight of celebration, a pagan holiday adapted to a Lightly tradition. The longest, brightest days of the year were said to mark the height of the Light's power, and it has long been held that the first prophets of the Light appeared to the people of Strom on the summer solstice.
Highest lord and lowly peasant alike would partake in two weeks of revels and dances, games and tourneys. A bonfire would burn in each town square to ward off evils. Farmhands would race on their best horses while knights would clash in sportsmanly cheer astride theirs before roaring crowds. Great sermons as long as the days would run in the Temple of Light in holy Stratholme, powerful words of conviction and goodwill from the Archbishop's own lips.
The cooling of the weather and the first fall of autumn rains would mark the start of the harvest, and this, too, was marked with celebration, for it was this harvest that would keep Lordaeron strong and secure for another year. Well-off commoners would converge on Andorhal, the beating heart of Lordaeron's agriculture, to sample the first crops in a grand feast. Thanks unto the Light would be given for such a bountiful harvest, and on the last day of the tenth month when the harvest season was over, the people would gather to burn away their woes and worries on a wicker man.
But now the fields lie blighted and blackened.
No harvest has been brought in for a decade.
Andorhal is a ruin inhabited by vengeful spectres and savage monsters.
Few give thanks to the Light for anything in Lordaeron today.
But that last day of the harvest season is still celebrated before the walls of the capital, for it coincides eerily with the day that enslaved sons and daughters of Lordaeron retook their freedom. A wicker man is still burnt on that day. And as is tradition, Lordaeron's reigning monarch still stands before those in observance to speak, although the throne sits unoccupied, and the bloodied crown lies lost and forgotten.
At the turn of the new year, a band of like-minded Forsaken declared their intention to reap a different sort of harvest for their new, darker Lordaeron. They announced that they would make do with its blackened and blighted fields, embrace what so many would lament as a curse. If crops would not grow and the Light would not answer their prayers, they would seek alternate means to strengthen and secure their nation.
And so they have.
The only rains that begin to fall on Lordaeron's fields this year carry the same vile taint that pervades the soil, but these reapers pitch their tents on one such field to mark the harvest season nonetheless. They lay down their tools and take their ease as they reflect on the Harvest they strive to reap.
Harvest Festival - OOC
It's not just an awful pun and it's not just a guild plug, but the Black Harvest are throwing a party. Yep. In the interests of preserving and honouring Lordaeron's proud cultural heritage - or corrupting it for the Forsaken's purposes, depending on who you ask - they are reviving a traditional Lordaeronian festival, one that heralded the beginning of the autumn harvest season; the same season that officially ended with the festival of Hallow's End.
The purpose of the festival is threefold. In its essence, it is being held to honour the memory and the customs of a Lordaeron that's gone, but not forgotten. But more than that, the festival is intended to celebrate Lordaeron as it is today, an ode to the Forsaken nation and what they've accomplished in the form of a revel, and and to look boldly forward to the Forsaken's future, encapsulating the Black Harvest's vision of a Lordaeron strengthened and secured anew as a haven for the damned.
The guild will be hosting the festival, sure enough, but by no means will attendance be restricted to BH. The event will be hosted on Argent territory near Hearthglen under Argent guard, and while the majority of those in attendance will be Forsaken, any willing to pay their respects to Lordaeron's past, or express solidarity with Lordaeron present, is welcome.
. . . No, you're not alone in thinking that this sounds like a stack of fireworks waiting to go off, and by all means, if your character thinks the Forsaken (and the Harvest in particular) are despoiling the memory of Lordaeron, or are generally a corrosive influence on the world, then they're free to show up in protest or within intent to cause a stir. This, after all, is a deliberate propaganda stunt on the Black Harvest's behalf - go ahead and ruin it, if you please. The conflict and drama such an event might stir up is half its purpose.
A timetable of festivities will be produced when a time and date are decided upon - see the poll above.
Quote:Brothers and Sisters, Friends and Foes Alike
The First week of the Ninth month has long been the date of the Great Lordaeronian Harvest Festival, where a summer of Toil and Labour would be celebrated across our Grand and Noble Kingdom as the First fruits of the Harvest were sampled in Feast.
The Reapers of the Black Harvest have chosen to mark the commencement of this Season with a Revel in echo of the Past. With the Kind permission and Direct supervision of our Compatriots of the Argent Crusade, we invite All who would share in the Festivities to take their ease with us and join us in Remembrance of Customs that should not be Forgotten.
Those who would call our Forsaken people Friends or Allies are equally welcome to Celebrate alongside us as we Commemorate the Toils and Labours of our Forsaken people. Through the Crucibles of Sorrow and Suffering, we have emerged a Strong and Unifed nation, and in Strength and Unity we will continue to grow, like the Crops of Lordaeron old.
We will gather Peacefully and any Bloodshed is forbidden under Argent watch. Stand beside us as we say, Lordaeron is Eternal! Lordaeron Never Dies!
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