autumn festivals

Autumn Festival - A procession through town, marking the boundaries of a community or property towards the site of a trading fair is typical.  Showing off the fruits of this year is normal and competitive streaks are encouraged by nobles to exhort commoners towards excelling in the field.  Martial prowess is also celebrated, after the harvest and before the winter is often chosen by ambitious lords as a season for battle. 

Songs and prayers to Corellon, Erathis, the Raven Queen and especially Sehanine, are offered to celebrate hearth and home, offering thanks for the harvest and acknowledging the oncoming winter.  Offerings are made to honour the dead who have fallen this year and those dear to the living.  Gifts of nuts gathered during this season are often made to guests.  At ports, Kord and Melora are commemorated together. While many sailors batten down for the coming winter, there are games of strength and skill to keep them from sinking into idle drunkenness.  Those lost at sea are also commemorated.

The Burning Weave - In the Feywild, processions are made with great woven effigies of animals led through those communities held by the Green, Gloaming and Winter Fey.  These effigies are finally brought to a stone circle where they are burned.  Reprisals against the fomorians and goblins (who themselves prepare for great sieges) are launched before winter takes it's toll and in Brokenstone Vale, great hunts mark territory.

The Candle's Wake - In the Shadowfell, the procession is a slower affair, almost funereal, each bearing a lit taper in commemoration of those who have died.  The shadar-kai set great wicker men alight holding chained corporeal undead to send them to the Raven Queen and her compassion - some even dare to leap the flames of those corpse-fires in order to feel exhilaration and warmth.