The Long Wake Begins

As the last of the Kzinti bands break camp from around the Necropolis and return to their roving, and the showing of the Fortress Moon's full face in the night sky above, the Night of the Watch inaugurates the month-long festival of the Long Wake.

The long red evening fades into darkness, the stars appear as they course across the sky, and the Fortress Moon looms huge and craggy over Dirac's Sea; but the dual-city of Cothon-Gadeed does not sleep. Drums are sounded throughout the city, their beat echoing up the great thoroughfares and down crooked alleys; pipes thread the narrow notes of elegies through the nighted sea air, and to their voices are joined the high-pitched keening of women crying mourning hymns.

And as these sounds grow throughout the city, the streets come alive with ghostly processions of figures dressed in dark robes, carrying with them timbrels that they sound as they go through the streets crying out, rending their shirts, beating their breasts and their brows, and crying high to the moon in Mourning.

Such will be the nightly fare of the city, as the Poor Brothers of the Dead and other mourning-societies take to the streets during this time of public mourning. Cakes of sweet wax and oat will be left out on doorsteps for the spirits of the dead, and processions that begin in the city at each of the major taverns, and many of the lesser establishments, will wend their way out the Gate of Mourners, up the Pallbearers' Way into the Necropolis, there to make public offerings to the dead and to the heroes of old who lie interred there.

Those with greater wealth will outfit great processions of professional mourners, spending lavishly to display their wealth by the number of mourners hired, and the ostentatious biers and effigies of heroes and ancestors that will be sent to the Necropolis; even those of modest means will spend what they can, for this month is one for public spending on honoring the dead.

This festival will continue for four weeks, at the end of which will be a week of Games (mainly athletic competitions and gladiatorial contests). During this time, characters may join fellow residents of Cothon-Gadeed in spending money on public mourning; the table below presents typical amounts and what they entail descriptively, but characters are willing to spend whatever they wish, and to describe for themselves what the money is doing--creative and ostentatious use of wealth will provide a bonus above and beyond that which I'm about to lay out.

For indeed, spending money in this way will provide certain benefits:

• those who spend at least 25 gold on public mourning during the next four weeks will receive +1 on one downtime activity of their choice within the city
• those who spend at least 100 gold on public mourning during the next four weeks will receive a permanent +1 to reactions within the city of Cothon for the next year
• further, for every 100 gold spent on public mourning, a character will receive +1 on their roll if they take part in the special carousing at the time of the Games concluding the Long Wake

Gold Spent	… On Public Mourning
5 gp	Purchase some sweet wax and oat cakes to be laid out for the dead
10 gp	Purchase libations of milk and honey, and hire a professional mourner to  pour them out in the Necropolis
25 gp	Cook a kettle of pottage and hire a pair of the Poor Brothers to carry it to  the Necropolis to be set out for the dead
50 gp	Hire a procession of torchbearers to traverse the Pallbearers' Way chanting  hymns to the dead and paeans to the heroes of old
100 gp	Hire one of the Poor Brothers, or another mourner, to act as a  tomb-watcher in the Necropolis for a week
250 gp	Secure the services of a gladiator to dress as the spirit of a dead hero, and  to lead a procession of Poor Brothers bearing a sweet wax cake effigy of  the hero on a bier to the Necropolis