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🍂 HARVESTWANE in Ashkarin
(Sacred Month IX – September)
Festival: Feast of the Hollow Smile (Samadi)
🌦️ Weather in Ashkarin
The skies are often overcast with brooding, low-slung clouds rolling in off the gray sea. Morning fog drapes the docks and the cliffside walkways like a shroud, lingering until midmorning when the wind stirs and peels it away in tatters. Occasional drizzles and salt-scented gusts sweep through, but the storms are not yet violent — rather, they are melancholy and insistent, like a bard repeating a sad verse too often.
The air is crisp, and there’s a bite in the wind that reminds sailors and townsfolk alike: winter is creeping closer.
🏘️ The Streets of Ashkarin
Streets are slick with rain-darkened cobblestone, the gutters carrying rust-colored leaves toward the harbor’s grates. The sea’s mist clings to wooden eaves, and lanterns burn a touch earlier in the day — flames flickering behind amber glass, casting long shadows on soaked storefronts and sailor’s shrines.
Garlands of withered sunflowers, dried apples, and skull-shaped gourds hang across thresholds. Not all are macabre; many sport broad smiles or painted expressions, mockingly joyful, in honor of Samadi’s Feast of the Hollow Smile. This festival is one of bittersweet humor, where even the grave is laughed at. It's not uncommon to see actors in skeletal masks and puppet shows of bumbling ghosts performed in tavern corners.
Children chase each other with painted bones tied to strings, while elders drink black-currant cider and tell stories of fools who outwitted death — or thought they did.
🕯️ Holiday Touches
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Feast of the Hollow Smile (Samadi):
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Street altars bloom with incense smoke and candle stubs, each adorned with a cracked mask or an offering to a loved one passed — often something humorous, like a joke scroll, a carved chicken bone flute, or a fish head with a monocle.
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Public mock trials are held where “Death” (played by a hooded actor) prosecutes townsfolk for absurd “crimes,” like laughing too loud at funerals or drinking holy wine too freely. The convicted are fined in sweets or forced to sing badly in the square.
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Shops display dark humor-themed goods — death bells shaped like ducks, spiced gravebread, or “laughing liqueur” known to cause hiccup fits.
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⚔️ A Season of Beginnings Beneath Falling Leaves
Though Harvestwane whispers of endings—of harvests concluded, ledgers closed, and the laughter of the dead—the season is paradoxically a perfect time for the beginning of adventures.
Just as trees shed their leaves to make room for new growth, so too do adventurers cast off comfort, predictability, and routine. The dimming light invites contemplation; the cool air sharpens the senses. This is the month when unquiet spirits stir, not always from malice, but often out of longing—for closure, for justice, or for a final tale to be told.
As townsfolk honor the past with hollow smiles, the gods watch the roads, their attention drawn to those bold enough to step into the unknown. Samadi, the jester of mortality, reminds mortals not only that death is inevitable—but that life is most vividly lived when it dances near the flame.
Wanderers, seekers, and oathers often take this month as an omen-laden threshold. The Feast of the Hollow Smile grants a certain permission to be reckless, to tempt fate, or to rewrite one's story before winter seals the book.
In Ashkarin, it is whispered:
"He who laughs at the grave will find his feet fall sure upon the old road, where ghosts cannot follow."
So the roads are not empty. Horses are saddled beneath low gray skies. Sails are mended for one last voyage before the gales. And in dark corners of seaside taverns, maps change hands, secrets are traded, and oaths are sworn in cider and candlelight.
The season of adventure begins—not in spring’s bloom or summer’s blaze—but here, in the twilight between the harvest and the frost.