This time on Wyrd of the Week, we take a look at the Festivals and Festival Actions of Autumn Harvest! Your players can celebrate the season in spooky fun with these optional rules which are a preview of the forthcoming supplement Mischief and Merriment!
Festivals
If player characters are participating in a festival or celebration, the Narrator may allow them to take one of the Festival Actions described below. Each Festival Action is associated with a specific festival or celebration and may only be taken during that specific event. Festival Actions associated with a Lineage Festival may only be taken by characters of the appropriate lineage in most instances unless the Narrator decides otherwise.
Autumn Harvest
As summer fades to autumn and the land shows signs of sliding into its winter slumber, many communities prepare for the coming days where the darkness is long and the days are cold. Crops are harvested in the last days of warmth and stored for the winter. Sometimes called the season of mourning, Autumn Harvest is a bit less raucous than Spring Equinox or High Summer. Feasting is indeed a part of the festivities, but these are often smaller in nature and held between families in a community and not the community as a whole. Instead, the most common communal activity during Autumn Harvest is the literal harvesting of the last crops of the season. Farmers and field workers come together to help one another take every last seed that has flourished and might provide sustenance through autumn and a long winter. On this final harvest, each man and woman who assisted in bringing in the last of the crops is given a seat at the table so they might share together and show that even in darkening times they can still offer comfort and hope to one another.
No less important to Autumn Harvest, though more mournful in nature, is the tradition of honoring the dead. Many spend the evening after the feast of Autumn Harvest lighting candles for those who have left the Mortal Realm behind. The dead are honored for the deeds they did in life and the gifts given that last beyond their legacy. This is also seen by some as a supplication of the cursed spirits who wish the living ill fortune. Offerings are sometimes left on doorsteps or in fields for these wayward spectres and vanish without a trace as accepted offerings from those who now dwell in the Land of the Dead.
One of the following Festival Actions may be taken during Autumn Harvest by a player character:
Harvest Feast: After a day of bringing in the final crops of the season, the player character then assists the community in preparing a great feast that is shared by the community. The day of hard work combined with the fruits of their labor and the fellowship of the people who worked by their side helps them remember the importance and simple joy of sharing a meal with friends if a successful Resolve-based Attribute Saving Throw is made. If the Saving Throw is successful, the character gains a +2 bonus on all rolls to Relax Around the Campfire (see THJ2e, page 90).
Honor the Dead: The player character spends the evening under the dark of the night sky and lights a candle or leaves an offering for those who have passed on to the Land of the Dead in hopes that they have found peace in whatever afterlife lay beyond the Mortal Realm. If the character makes a successful Insight-based Saving Throw they are given a small measure of protection from malicious Undead creatures they encounter for the next year, increasing their Defense by +2 when attacked by such creatures.
Pilfer the Offering: A more mischievous Festival Action than most, the player character spends the evening of Autumn Harvest sneaking about the community, snatching up offerings meant for the spirits of the dead. This kind of flippant disregard for the power of the dead drives them to reckless bravery, granting them Advantage on all Despair Saving Throws made to resist Overwhelming Evil when facing Undead creatures, but they have drawn the ire of the restless dead. When facing Undead creatures in combat, they suffer Disadvantage on all Initiative checks as these lifeless horrors are drawn to them with unnatural ferocity.
Treehymn (Elf Lineage Festival)
Each leaf that falls is a mournful tear shed by the forest, or so the elves claim. Their bond with the natural world, and the forest in particular, is unparalleled among the Goodly Folk and when the first chill winds of autumn blow through the ageless woodlands of the world, they know that Treehymn will soon be upon them. On the first new moon of autumn, elves gather and for those three nights they sing songs of promise and mourning to the forest which will sleep until the coming spring. No spoken words are passed between the elves and no outsiders are permitted to attend. Only a choir of elves, the music of their voices joining with the wind and sound of falling leaves.
While the greatest and most common tradition among elves is to sing together a song for the death of all that will fade in the winter and the promise to protect what remains until spring, other silent rituals also occur. Some elves slip alone under cover of darkness with a single seed, which they set into the earth with a single tear they have shed, in hopes that it will grow fresh and new - a sign that life shall endure for all time as the elves themselves do. A rare few elves join in no songs, but instead sit and listen to the sound of falling leaves as a means to commune with the other natural creatures that dwell there in harmony with the land, hoping to carry a small part of that peace with them through the winter.
One of the following Festival Actions may be taken by during Treehymn by an elf player character:
Choir of Falling Leaves: An elf selecting this Festival Action has joined in the great Treehymn to honor the fading forest. With a successful Resolve-based Attribute Saving Throw they are able to find some semblance of peace in the fading places of the Mortal Realm and receive Advantage on all Despair Saving Throws made facing the sorrow of Fallen Allies (see THJ2e, page 79)
Seeds of Sorrow and Renewal: The elf goes into the forest in solitude and sets a single seed into the ground, then weeps for the winter to come and all the trees who shall not be reborn upon the coming spring in hopes that some of that lost life will be rekindled in this new seed. If the elf makes a successful Resolve-based Saving Throw, they are immune to the effects of crossing a Blighted Land (see THJ2e, page 88) provided that they return during the next Treehymn to tend the newborn sapling. An elf that does not do this suffers Disadvantage on all Saving Throws made to resist the effects of Blighted Lands for abandoning their promise.
Silence of the Woodkin: Sitting in silence among the creatures of the forest as leaves fall and these creatures prepare for the coming winter, the elf gains a new sense of kinship with the birds and beasts living in harmony with the natural world. In addition to the peaceful reaction received when they use their Friend of the Woodland Realm ability (see THJ2e, page 23), if the elf makes a successful Bearing-based Attribute Saving Throw while encountering such a beast they can get a sense of its current emotional state and even its most basic surface thoughts.
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