This months prompt for the
RPG Blog Carnival is by the long-time host of Dice and Dragons themselves -
Feasts and Festivals in Your TTRPG Campaign.
In honour of this I will be adding in a 'background festival' to tweak the existing carousing routine. My Hexcrawl25 table has proven receptive to burning off their gold for XP by carousing so I have 'used up' a fair few entries on the previous
d20 Carousing table for the ruin-filled swamplands.
Inspired by player activities to trample in trade routes and try to forge a realm out of the various swamp peoples, we see a revitalisation of the old festival of Leafwander. Here herbalists of all sorts trek a great circuit of the swamps visiting all sorts of communities they would not often to swap and sample leaves, herbs, berries, roots, nuts, fruit and seeds.
Reason for Celebration: The ancient rootes of this are fey, when the veil between worlds was thinner, and the fey courts visited. Now it is an early harvest festival, effectively marking the end of the summer markets. The number of travellers abroad for Leafwander is taken as an omen of how hard the winter will be, that generosity to strangers now will bring a good harvest. While not wrong, the truth is that hard times and unrest block travellers and herald foraging parties taxing the harvests and/or slaying / drafting the farmers.
Traditions and Rituals: Mostly marked by hanging out dried sprigs from doorways and setting an extra place at the table in case of a traveller. Should a travelling herbalist turn-up, often there will be an improptu gathering at a hosts house, with samples of all the best local things brought to try, news and tales exchanged, music played and the herbalists wares tried.
Herbalists themselves partaking of Leafwander will wear a crown of simple greenery - grass, common leaves or twigs - that they make afresh after each sharing. A traveller with a wilted crown will often be stopped by whatever others they meet - be they shepherds or charcoalers - to share whatever they have.
Atmosphere: for a smaller place, Leafwander will strongly resemble a village feast with the wanderer presiding. For large places, where many travellers have come together, Leafwander more resembles a market that goes on into the small hours with little to no coin changing hand. Strange smells of smokes and scents of teas are common, as cookfires roasting and boiling a variety of oddly spiced dishes. Weirder things like biting and stinging insects and frogs to be licked may also be found, at the asking of seekers, rarely openly offered.
Leafwander typically extends over a week, often sprawling to ten-days, as a relatively relaxed celebration of the variety of herbs, spices and food to be found in the swamp-lands.
At table
Thematically this is a small festival that can be used as a back-drop for other events or - as I need - something to modify and renew an existing carousing table - use as you see fit.
d6 twists to carousing during the Leafwander Festival
1. A provider of fine (strong) cigar-like leafs is here, enthusiastically joining in and rendering all proceedings somewhat breathless and dizzy.
2. An acrid tarpot burns beneath a pan of bubbling frog-sweat. Needles dipped and licked render participants langorous and intensely focussed.
3. A somewhat jittery traveller is serving a very spicy stew, giving handfuls of spicy leaves to everyone and insisting folk use them if people start acting not themselves.
4. A serpent-folk purveyor offers oddly-fitting vials filled with herb-steeped nectars, invigorating and clearing the mind.
5. A young herbalist toting an enormous ancient tome offers cold-teas brewed in pitcher-plants, astringent, calming and mildly-painkilling, they quiz people a little impolitely on how they like what they try.
6. A swamp trader with a wide range of goblin fare - fruit, seed and root combinations that yield psychadelic results, no two the same nor any effect replicable in true goblin fashion.
