Harvest Festival (Promptober 2025 #30)

Many cultures celebrate the end of the harvest season with festivals. Ionians have Meditrinalia, a wine-soaked party and feast dedicated to Meditrina, the recently-named goddess of wine and longevity. Dunhill still celebrates Samhain, a more sober festival featuring spirits walking the waking world and ushering in the darker half of the year. The Cappadocia region in Okular boasts many varieties of grapes, so their Üzüm Hasadı Festivali lasts for a week slightly earlier in the fall. The Alfinwald holds their Amaro Emel'glir, literally the Festival of Singing Hearts, raising their voices to thank nature for providing for the elves' needs, and as a promise to protect and nurture plant life, especially as the plants slumber the winter away.

But what about Fellport?

The city proper has some green space, primarily Highgarden, the meditation gardens and labyrinths surrounding the Divinity Sanctum, the quad at the heart of the College, the gardens in the public square near the Council House, the Penny Chestnut, and the smaller Brinemist Preserve closer to the harbor. Some homes have smaller gardens growing in containers or in their tiny yards, and a few abandoned houses in Talltown have been overrun with weeds. But you need to leave the city proper to find any large-scale agriculture.

So Fellport's citizens don't usually dance to the rhythm of planting and reaping. But the merchants in town look for excuses to hold festivals and get more coin flowing. Fellport hosts a week-long Harvest Festival at the fairground outside the gates, ending on All Hallows' Eve. All Hallows' Eve came directly from Dunhill's Samhain, though Fellport's Merchant Chamber pushed the renaming to sell more food and All Hallows' Eve merchandise.

Merchants from far-flung towns around Fellport come to the city to sell their wares. Many small-town craftspeople store up their wares all year and raise enough coin to ensure their survival over the winter. Farmers bring their best crops and compete for prizes for the largest, tastiest, and best-looking food items. Everyone has the opportunity to play games and win prizes, and even the wizards from the College sell their wares and line up mercenary work during the Harvest Festival.

Rumor has it the merchants in Fellport want to update the Harvest Festival again, though nobody really understands how changes to the decades-old festival will do anyone any good. Not all things need to go fast, change merely for the sake of changing, and get broken.

Note: The Amaryllis Estate sprawls north from Fellport's city walls, surrounded by its own smaller wall. Their fields of wheat are impressive, but they're not nearly large enough to supply all of Fellport's food needs. Not even the half-dozen greenhouses could possibly make up the shortfall. And yet, the city thrives on the food that the Amaryllis Estate produces. Wheat continually flows into Imperial Mills through an underground tunnel for processing, then they distribute flour throughout the city. We'll leave that mystery for a separate post.

Part of the Promptober project for 2025.
Since this is about Fellport, it's listed in the Fellport Almanac as well.