taxfest log | open

[sterngaze]

Who: Alenroux residents and visitors!
What: It's Taxfest: an Abadaran holy day celebrating the local community on the day taxes are collected
Where: The settlement in Alenroux
When: Mid April (Pelu)
Warnings: None expected (Warn as appropriate in headers!)

A HOLY DAY FOR TAXES

Every spring, after last year’s profits have been tallied and Alenroux’s snowy winter has melted away, the time comes for the local citizens to bequeath a portion of their earnings back to the growing little town; it’s tax season.

Over the past century, a tradition has grown in the quaint little settlement, influenced by the local church of Abadar: the holy celebration of Taxfest. On this special day, citizens celebrate the town, each other, and the future they hope to build together. It is a day for business, but also for contemplation, as priests cite the public works the citizens’ past contributions have funded and speak on those planned in coming years.

The business of the day is conducted in person. Rather than mailing cheques, residents hand theirs directly to collectors who go door to door all throughout the day, each accompanied by one of the temple priests or acolytes, who observe to ensure the proceedings are respectful and just. Abadar’s clergy thank each citizen for their contributions, offer comfort to the poor, and hear any concerns or suggestions about how the money should be best used.

Throughout the day, tax collectors from the town can be seen accompanied by white-robed acolytes, or priests in yellow-trimmed raiment. Aside from these busy individuals, most of the town’s folk spend their day on leisure, having earned a respite from the last year’s labours.

EVENING AFTERNOON FESTIVITIES

Traditionally, the festivities of Taxfest would begin with sunset. Due to Alenroux’s 48-hour day–night cycles, however, business is typically concluded well before noon, and the day’s celebrations begin when the sun is still high in the sky. Just as the morning had been dedicated to reflection on the year’s efforts, so the rest of the day is spent in celebration. Local tradition dictates that partying hard on Taxfest both honours the work of the past year and brings good luck in the one to come, so locals and visitors alike are encouraged to let their hair down and enjoy themselves thoroughly.

Throughout the town, entertainment and refreshments are on offer, organized by the Abadar’s temple and provided by local businesses. Offerings vary by neighbourhood, and over the years different parts of town have become a little competitive over who can throw the best festival celebration. Priests officially begin the festivities with a brief dedication to Abadar, to Alenroux’s town and to its people, and the rest of the day is devoted solely to merriment.

On the town’s eastern side, a spacious park hosts a cheerful, whirling mass of dancers in groups or in pairs, dancing to the tunes of talented musicians from around town. Food and drink stalls line the perimeter, luring people from their revels with sweet and savoury scents.

One of the stalls, selling little sweet buns with coins stamped on them, swears it’s good luck to find someone bearing a coloured token matching one you find inside your own bun. (Not all the buns have tokens, of course, so better buy a few!) Those with matching tokens will feel more trust and closeness with their matched person for the rest of the festival.

A broad plaza on the town’s west side sports a slightly more carnival air, with entertainers and game stalls taking up much of the available space, some offering rather strange prizes. One of the games, involving a spinning wheel covered with paper balloons, advertises a free drink at the associated tavern for anyone who can hit five balloons without hitting any “bad” ones. Bad balloons will burst in a puff of coloured smoke, causing a minor magic effect lasting for the next hour:

• Higher or lower voice
• Slight intoxication
• Ability to blow smoke or bubbles
• Small objects you hold float away (for a while) if released
• Small objects you touch stick to you as though magnetic
• Other harmless, temporary effects (Pick your own!)

In front of Abadar’s church, the clergy themselves host a cheerful (if quite obviously religious) celebration with tables of food and a hearty ration of wine for everyone in attendance. This year, it seems the clergy member to bless the wine was over-zealous, as partaking may instill feelings of contemplation even in those disinclined to melancholy. Hymns to Abadar are sung, and everyone who attends is given a token for an extra wine ration, which can be traded in by those who attend a church service within the next month.

Comments

[sterngaze]

Ah…

[Choosing to politely overlook Hayame’s fussing, Liem instead considers the bizarre experience that had been his awakening at the end of the Repose, only scant weeks ago. At the time, he had been too overwhelmed to really dwell on it; there had been too much to become accustomed too, and too much to do. Now, though, he has to admit that Hayame is not the only one to find things strange since waking up.]

Yes, I would expect that must be a bit off-putting, to say the least.

[He doesn’t wish to imagine waking up to find that people had enjoyed the run of his home for the past century while he’d been in deep slumber. It’s bad enough that he woke up in a glass coffin and found out that his house was now floating way up in the sky.]

My caretakers may have chosen to let my beard grow in, but at least I haven’t found any unfamiliar knickknacks hiding in my personal residence. They were all confined to… [—he grimaces briefly—] the altar.

[warmare]

[Hayame... is the same, in some ways, even though she does not easily have the vocabulary to articulate it, most of her attempts ending in frustration, in dark silences, or in disappearing into the woods in the hopes that amongst the trees she could pretend that time had not passed, that those she had known were not dead, and that the world she had come ton know as a home had not changed.

... She could not, but.]

... It is strange.

[She will admit that. Even if she had not... seen it, sleeping away, she was now very well aware that strangers, strange people, had been in and out of her home, something she had kept so very private and guarded before the Repose, still somewhat awkward even with her few friends about how best to entertain them, interact, or invite them over. Liem's words bring her halved gaze back to his face, to the hair on it... that she does not find as off-putting as she did the first time she saw it.]

... Claude woke up similarly. Apparently one of the centaurs who watched over us considered it more fitting for a man to have an entire bush on his face.

[And Hrid, unlike a jinba, came from a land of magic... He was still alive, if not fatter and greyer. She would have words with him after having to wake up to a man who looked almost like a stranger at first blink, her lover's thin beard confined to the edges of his jaw having taken over his entire lower face. But for now... She has an opportunity. She will not be a coward about it. It does take her a moment to straighten back up, but when she does... it is to gesture again, open-palmed this time, towards the grove-shrouded house's direction.]

If you are not busy... perhaps we could take a brief respite?

[... There was much that could be discussed. Whether it was beards, things she had left in the care of his church's priests, or things she had been asked to do in Alenroux that she did not wish to do without him.]

[sterngaze]

[The fact that Hayame refers to her own lover’s beard as a “bush” does not give Liem any confidence that her opinions on facial hair have changed since the last time he went bearded around her, many months (and years) ago. Still, perhaps being more accustomed to the view has at least made her more willing to tolerate it without voicing her displeasure openly. Even if Liem might not share the same dislike of facial hair that she obviously feels, he wishes he could shave his off without feeling beholden to the attitudes of an entire community that seems accustomed to the sight of him with it.

Perhaps not all that coincidentally, the man to have begun that trend among his clergy is still alive and well also, though also fatter and greyer than Liem recalled him being. He hadn’t anticipated this might be a danger when he’d accepted a dwarf as one of his acolytes.]

I was just considering doing so, actually.

[After the hours he’d spent accompanying tax collectors and preparing for the afternoon’s festival, Liem could certainly use a break. The chance to do it somewhere private and away from wandering townsfolk is even more appealing.]

It would be nice to get out of the sun for a while.

[warmare]

[… Look, it’s not her fault Liem looked far better clean-shaven. Or that, having grown used to Claude’s facial hair as it was, growing tolerant of that much, it was a shock to wake up beside a man with a great bushy beard. Thankfully her lover had shaved down already, so if her friend required a razor…

Well. More importantly,]

… Then please, allow me to host.

[She should have done it more… before all this mess. She should have done a lot of things. Turning her head towards the grove she sets a leisurely pace for them, along a familiar path with now unfamiliar surroundings.]

It is far shadier now. Perhaps more to your liking?

[She gestures next to the trees as they approach and then step into the protection of leaves and branch, passing a rather large and wyvern-shaped clearing on the way. Naira was out with Claude astride towards Skysong for the day, but the mount had taken that spot of her own Repose for her continued sleeping purposes. There are a few scales glistening in the half-dead grass.]

I had planted a few fruit trees just for… for sustenance, but in our absence they have grown stronger than I ever thought to see.