we're all just working pieces trying to fit somewhere
We wander 'round in circles and we talk in squares




PARTY PLANNING
Dawn arrives and brings with it another group of Strangers. Unlike the first group, you wake to a comfortable bed and cheery birdsong. Unlike the second group, you are expected. As you rise, a vase with spring flowers appears on the table beside your bed. Tucked beneath the vase, you find a message of welcome inviting you to join the Queen and her residence for breakfast.

Following directions given by footmen throughout the residence’s winding halls, you make your way toward breakfast, only to find that breakfast is a beautiful disaster.

Maids and footmen rush around you, choreographed by a red haired witch standing on a chair in the middle of the entry hall. She wears an apron and a look of fierce concentration. Beside her, a list floats in the air. Pinned to her hair, her Tiger Eye Jewel flashes and swirls with power. You suspect you should just sneak out, but she’s too observant.

“You there!”

You freeze. Maybe you had a mother with eyes in the back of her head who always knew where you were. Maybe that was a teacher or some other kind of mentor. Regardless, you know this voice. You know this tone. This is a person harried and pressed, and she probably doesn’t care that you haven’t eaten breakfast yet.

“Yes, you! Stranger!”

You turn toward her and abruptly find your arms full of banners. Closer inspection will reveal each flag sewn to the cord bears a different symbol: one for the Guilds (a hexagon with circles at each joint), the Ebon Council (a pair of Jewels side by side), and Fayura’s Court (a strange, spiraling spear against a mountain peak); a sun and a moon; a cloud flush with rain and lightning; and a sprouting plant.

“Make sure those get hung on the eaves outsi—no, I haven’t seen the Lady, Carlisle, but if you—”

A Blood male has distracted her, but you’re left with the distinct impression that if you don’t hang these banners, the Head Housekeeper will hunt you down (you would be correct). Not to worry: you’re not the only Stranger living in the residence, and it takes you little time to locate someone else with an equally bomb-blasted look on their face to help you help the residence prepare for the spring festival! There are flags to be hung, simple breads to be baked, stalls to be built in the Bazaar, and so much more. Your hands work, and so you work.


HOPE BLOOMS ETERNAL
At sundown, the festival begins in earnest: people take to the streets in every section of the city, pouring into the Old Town Bazaar with rosy cheeks and broad smiles. The spring festival will last for the next six days. Three days to celebrate, and three days to work.

All around the city, banners hang from and between homes and businesses. Some fluttering banners bear flags emblazoned with only the Guilds’ symbol or the Council’s or the Court’s, and there are far more Guild banners than any other—a result of the Strangers’ providing support to the Guilds no doubt. But mixed among them are flags bearing both the Queen’s mountain, too, just not as many, and the only place the Council’s flags hang are over Blood homes.

As you make your way through the Bazaar, you hear…


Near the pavilion at the heart of the Bazaar, the landen Guilds have erected technological wonders. A carousel of glittering bronze and metal lights up the night with rainbow colors. Music spills out of it, cheerful and bright as its three rings turn in lazy revolutions. Unicorns and dragons and centaurs and mermaids stand as mounts for the young and old. Nearby, the Elektriline Guild prepares a light show, projecting fantastical shapes in dazzling colors on the sides of buildings and into the night sky itself. Around the park to the south of the Bazaar, the Transport Guild has set up a racing track for unicycles and tricycles.

Booths with games line the streets. Knock down the glass bottles! Throw the ring around the spoke! Win prizes to dazzle your loved ones and delight your children!

While food has certainly been scarce, the bakeries and charcuteries have brought out their best fare at surprisingly reasonable prices. This is a time to celebrate the end of winter and the beginning of spring, and celebrate the city will.

While the Blood dress in nice clothes, the landens bring out costumes. As is tradition, some dress as Father Sky, wearing crowns of gold and flowing robes of white. Others cloak themselves in the vestments of Mother Earth: wearing costumes of green and brown, painting vines over their faces to disguise themselves and crowning themselves in garlands of crocuses and tulips. Whispers through the Bazaar say the Queen is among them, disguised as Mother Earth.


SOWING THE FUTURE
The fourth morning of the festival, the entire city rises with the dawn. Over the past three days, a strange rumor wound its way through Draega: Fayura will join the planting to give a gift unique to the Queens of the Blood.

Members of the Ebon Council and the Guilds organize groups, directing the bodies of the entire city to go to this farm or that as they step out from behind Draega’s tall, protective walls. But before you are dismissed to help till the land or plant grain seeds, you join a larger crowd at a nearby farm. The Blood airwalk, standing above the landen crowds to gain a better view.

At the head of a recently tilled field, Queen Fayura stands with a landen farmer. He grasps his hat, wringing it fiercely in his hands as her Steward, Master of the Guard, and Consort stand guard behind her. Dressed in greens and browns, crowned in a garland of crocuses that drips dried stalks of wheat down her hair, she kneels before a bucket. She calls in a knife. When she speaks, she doesn’t raise her voice, but Craft projects it across the assembled onlookers. “Blood sings to blood. This is a gift: freely offered,” she says. “Freely given.” Bright red blood blooms across her palm as she drags the blade through skin. Vanishing the knife, she closes her fist and squeezes, allowing the blood to fall into the bucket of water and mix with it.

Her Consort heals her wound when she holds out her hand, and then he steps back. She rises, picking up the bucket and taking hold of the ladle on the ground beside it. Her voice lifts in song. Though the language is unrecognizable, the melody is beautiful and full of the vibrant hope of spring. She sings as she walks along the furrows, sprinkling bloodied water on the land. Blood and Strangers alike feel the pull of magic as something in the earth itself unfurls, shuddering awake at the call of the Queen’s blood.

For the next three days, nearly every man, woman, and child in Draega assists with the planting. Children do small, simple tasks, and the older children watch over the younger ones. The adults drag plows through the warming land and spread seeds in the furrows the plows create. Queen Fayura visits each field in turn, and planting doesn’t begin until she’s sprinkled her water over the earth. Throughout the day, her vibrant song echoes around the city, and a few Blood girls, too young to yet wear a Jewel, take up the song and hum along with it.

You would do well to help the farmers. You may not have a strong arm or strong back, but there’s planting to be done and people to organize, feed, and care for.


AIR TIME
Whether you catch the news on a Far-caster in the city or you’re spinning the dial on your own device, you’ll hear…

etiquette with evandra and aren
[Evandra's voice is a little bit rough and a little bit husky, the kind of voice that gives bad ideas to young men and headaches to fathers.] …do we make of a Warlord Prince’s reaction to his Queen’s blood?

[Aren, whose voice is typically chipper and bright, sounds today much more seriously than usual.] It’s a dangerous thing. Elemental, you might say. Like a storm. Every Prince is dangerous when his Lady’s blood spills.

[Evandra:] So, are we in danger when the Queen does whatever ritual she’s doing?

[Aren:] No. The Blood put great importance on, well, blood. It’s the memory’s river. Power sings in blood. It carries strength and Craft. I’ve never seen a Queen do anything like this before, but her Princes—and her court—treat it like ceremony. And it probably is.

the weather
[A soft-spoken man’s voice rumbles out of the Far-caster. He’s pleasant to listen to, with a soothing cadence to his voice.] …continued rains with intermittent sunshine over the next few days as the days grow steadily warmer. Remember that rains coming out of Askavi are dangerous to your health, and salves for lesions from exposure can be purchased from the Medicos at…

the news
[Garret speaks at his brisk pace, hurried and harried as though he has too much to say and not enough time to say it.] A new development in the story of the young landen man who shot and killed Councilwoman Vera last month: the Strangers have influenced the Queen to bring together a Tribunal not of other Queens—

[Wilt, as usual, is put upon and nasally.] As though there are many of those to go around.

[Garret, continuing as though Wilt didn’t interrupt him:] —but of the landen man’s peers, both landen and Blood.

[Wilt, sighing:] That’s correct, Garret. It seems this Tribunal of three landens and three Blood will listen to the young man’s account, as well as the stories of other witnesses, and determine a suitable punishment. This will be presented to the Queen, and she will carry out the sentence.

[Garret:] Looking now to the warming weather and what that means for trade with the mercenary settlements outside of Draega—