The Four Festivals

Four a year, on the solstices and the equinoxes. For one week the host city is given over to it, and there are things to be had that cannot be had the rest of the year.

The four

• the Greening (Spring), held at a different port each year.
  The thaw is on, the rivers are up, and everything that was going to survive the winter has. The Greening is a festival of beginnings — of seed, of the first catch, of ground worth walking again.
• the High Sun (Summer), held at Sunhaven.
  The longest light of the year, and the week the realm settles who is hardest. The High Sun is arms and endurance, held in the open because there is nowhere better to be.
• the Reaping (Harvest), held at Westmarch.
  Everything is in, and for one week nobody is rationing. The Reaping is the table and the still and the workshop — a festival of what was made from a year of work.
• the Long Dark (Winter), held at Highreach.
  The nights are at their longest and the work moves indoors. The Long Dark is the forge, the archive and the hearth: a festival of what is known and what is made when there is nothing else to do.

Where

Three of the four have a fixed home. the Greening is the roving one, and it moves through 6 host towns so that the festival comes to the whole map rather than the same square of it.

Favour

Placing pays 400, 220 and 120 favour, and simply scoring pays 25, because turning up has to be worth something. Favour is banked and never decays: a festival you were good at ten seasons ago still counts.