Atruozan Summer Festival

The Atruozan Summer Festival is effectively a New Year's Celebration, lasting 10 days starting on the southern summer solstice (the start of the new year). It thus cancels the working week, ensuring a 15-day, and thus week-long, period of celebration, and then rest. Only some essential services workers do not get the entire period off work. The festival is primarily rooted in Atruozan Spiritualism, as the beginning of summer marks the end of the harsh winter spent under the pressures of the Great Snowy Owl Spirit and the Great Southern Wind Spirit, and marks the beginning of the reign of the gentle, yet fickle Great Northern Wind Spirit. However, this latter's gentleness means that she cannot hold off the two former for very long, so the period of her maintaining control is but a fleeting 89 days, two months as per the Atruozan Calendar. This short, fleeting summer warmth is thus celebrated, as in most of the Atruosphere, temperatures reliably above freezing last only three to six months (two to four in the Atruozan Calendar). Thus, the festival has a very large and integral spiritual aspect to it, including many days dedicated largely to introspection, meditation, and spiritual ventures, primarily with family. For the purposes of this article, the traditional festival as still seen in most villages and small towns in Translira, Nolcik, and Southern/Insular Osteria will primarily be discussed, with some local variability included.

The Festival

On the summer solstice, the first day of the Atruozan Calendar, the ceremony customarily begins at dawn. In those regions experiencing near-full day light to midnight sun conditions, tribes vary between sleeping little to none the previous "night", and simply beginning once most everyone has awoken. Traditional garments are worn starting on this day, varying somewhat by tribe and region, but generally consisting of some form of small skirt, underwear, or loincloth made from pelt or tanned animal leather (most commonly shabirs, sea lion, or muskox). Everyone then gathers in the centre of the village (and thus usually before the shaman's tent, hut, or cabin) to participate in a large ceremonial dance, which primarily varies in nature by tribe, with regional similarities. Regardless of the content of the dance, everyone able-bodied enough to do so participate, and it ends with the lighting of a large communal fire which is then kept burning for the remainder of the festival. This first lighting almost always involves everyone offering up a small personal effect, morsel of food, or dedicated craft to the flame as a sacrifice to the spirits–usually in thanks to the spirits of summer, or to appease the Great Snowy Owl Spirit. More rarely, offerings are made to one's ancestors.

After this initial bout of song and dance, most go down to the nearest river, lake, or sea, and fish until evening, returning with their best catch. In some inland communities, hunting for birds or other small, easy game is observed instead. While this is ongoing, most semreittu and menaippo take the time to prepare for a large communal meal, the former mostly foraging for any seasonally available fruit, herbs, vegetables, or nuts. In northern communities, harvesting early "garden crop" and/or harvesting/milking livestock can be alternatively observed instead (in the case of dealing with livestock, the longqeuwo then take part). Once the fishing/hunting and gathering is complete, the menaippo prepare what was gathered for the meal, with one of the fish (or birds, etc.) per ten people being set aside as a show of goodwill to the Northern Wind Spirit. This meat, with a strong preference for fattier fish, is then traditionally placed under a pile of rocks with some salt, and allowed to dry and ferment for anywhere between a couple calendar months and a year, with some tribes adding uric acid initially. This is then sometimes dried or smoked, depending on tribe, but is universally used by shamans as a way of connecting with spirits, including on this first day of the festival where certain elders (mostly qwuumal) are also allowed to consume it for spiritual reasons on this day alone. The ferment is also used in coming-of-age ceremonies by a majority of tribes. After the communal supper is complete, it is commonplace to see people spend the rest of their day in either a sweat lodge or sauna, most often with their families.

The following three days are mostly the same, with a lot of dancing, music, and communal festivities which vary by tribe and region, but always involves plenty of games (including mock war games, which can become very large-scale in some areas, such as in Northern Insular Osteria, around the Nonkwouz region and in the Central Interior Plateau of Translira, and in the Northeastern Uplands of Nolcik. Each of these three nights, with the exception of the second west of the Ancestral Range in Nolcik (where a meal with one's clan is most common), and the fourth south of the range around the Uboz Bay Complex (where fasting on this day is the norm), the tribe eats a communal supper together around the fire. These days also tend to involve a large amount of sexual intercourse within atgolc after hours.

Of these three days, it is the fourth where day-specific events next occur, with the village's hunters (or, all able-bodied longqeuwo) who are over twenty years old being carried by the tribe crowdsurf-style to the edge of the village in their traditional festival garments, with the addition of a ceremonial shirt, sash, or headdress worn only from this morning until the end of the festival. These hunters are then sent out with minimal gear to hunt over the following six days with the aim of catching either one Shabirs per 20-40 people, a beluga-sized whale per roughly 20 people, a decent seal or sea lion per 10, or any combination of these (even a wild muskox per 40-80 or deukogrex per 10 is aimed for in some regions). Before their departure early in the morning, a small ritual with ceremonial cannabis pipes is performed to ask the spirits of whichever animal(s) they are targetting for a good hunt, before being sent off with a firm slap to their bums by the elders and shaman(s). Depending on the region, this may be performed with a ceremonial stick or cloth, or it may instead involve slapping the pectorals, which are painted during the ritual in most tribes in Translira, as well as in the north of Nolcik's Western Plateau region. The remainder of the day is spent by those who remain to continue the festivities, with most tribes dedicating part to fishing or hunting small game as on the first day of the festival, the resulting meal and offerings being dedicated to the spirits of their surrounding environment and the Great Northern Wind Spirit in hopes that the hunters' travels to be safe and warm. The exception to this is around the Uboz Bay Complex in far southern Translira and Nolcik, where hunters are instead sent out on the second day, with the fourth day being one of fast. Some tribes in this region will still fish, but bring in less and offer it all to the spirits (some instead put all of that gathered on this day under rocks as another batch of ceremonial ferment. It is customary for the dancing and music around the fire to go very late on this day.

The fifth to the eighth day of the festival marks a general period of calm and introspection. During this time, people by far act primarily within their families, working on spiritual ventures and meditation, as well as on arts and crafts, their song, dance, and spending time simply relaxing in the summer warmth. During this time, young adults also begin preparing to court prospective interests. The primary event observed during this time is an endurance competition engaged in by those adults between the ages of 16 and 40 (or 20 and 40 in most of Southern Mainland Osteria). This traditional event, most commonly referred to as the "Trial of Blood" or something similar, involves competing to stay awake and active the longest, all the while rotating between sweat lodges, hot saunas, and/or steam baths, and the still-frigid waters or remaining snowbanks. In areas substantially south of the treeline, this is usually done sober, as it is also done in the Central Transliran Coast and in Northern Insular Osteria, while in other areas it is often performed under the near-continuous influence of cannabis. In the farthest north Atruozan tribes in mainland Osteria, as well as in the Osterian Northwestern Island Arc and on Translira's Fog Islands, psychedelic mushrooms (most commonly psilocybins) are used instead in the competition. Saunas are most commonly seen in the more northerly tribes, with an especially strong prevalence in Osteria and Northern Translira in and east of the Translirockies. Steam baths are especially prevalent along Nolcik's Northern Shore and throughout the northern half of its Western Plateau, with sweat lodges dominating everywhere else, although saunas are being seen increasingly further south as modern developments and trade networks allow for improved access to the necessary construction materials.

On the ninth day, the winner of the competition is celebrated during a large communal breakfast and temporarily granted the title of something to the effect of "Chief of Hot Blood". The winner is then granted the, usually unique, right to walk around fully nude for the remainder of the festival, albeit with dark-painted genitalia (in some tribes, the shaman(s) spend most or all of the festival also in the nude, rather than wearing unique ceremonial dress). In the northern Translirockies, further north areas of the Atruozan portion of the Ancestral Range and surrounding foothills, and along the Gaflekmages River, it is instead commonplace for a special needle or leaf-based garment created by the shaman annually to be worn instead. In the far south of the Atruosphere, a special garment, most commonly knitted intricately from muskox qiviut, is worn instead. After the meal, the winner enters into the shaman's hut to undergo a special ceremony universally involving the use of psychedelic mushrooms to become the physical link between the cold of winter and the soothing warmth of the newly arrived summer for the spirits who have come to pass, will come to pass, and who are yet to come for new life, until the end of the festivities. The rest of the day is most commonly spent in meditation at home, except for those lone young adults between the ages of 16 and 30, who finish their preparations for, and begin partaking in a traditional courting period, the core of which lasts until the end of the weekend. The communal meal on the ninth day is very meagre, if food is consumed at all during an evening gathering of the village, after which parents hoping for strong-bodied children pray to the spirits of winter to have mercy on their future progeny and to the spirits of the summer warmth to protect the children's growth and the day of their birth. Most often, prayer is also directed to the unborn souls beneath the dawn. This usually involves splashing some water on, or praying through the Chief of Hot Blood's genitals, which are treated as a spiritual medium able to connect with the souls that are yet to form human spirits. In some small minority of tribes, mostly in Translira's Northern Interior Plateau and along the Northern Shore of Nolcik, strongly grabbing/carressing, tapping, or blowing on the genitals may also be seen.

- on the tenth day, the hunters return, hopefully with a good hunt, and the remainder of the day is spent in preparation for a massive feast which bleeds into a lot of dancing and music which goes late into the night - the hunters are thrown high on blankets immediately upon return - the children are sent home, and then the remaining adults perform a usually tribe-specific ceremonial dance to close off the festival, often involving a burning of the traditional garment for that year as a final offering, alongside one last large offering of meat, before the menaippo elders and shaman(s) put out the hearth with water hauled by longqeuwo and emmeirsup. this dance is usually performed after a ritual passing of the shaman's summer cannabis pipe, generally smoking shattered resin in this particular instance. - after the hearth is extinguished, the atgolc return home, while the other young adults usually remain to attempt to court for another hour or so in the darkness before going to sleep themselves, thus concluding the festival.

- the following five days of weekend are taken fully as rest, with families focusing on personal and home projects, aside from the young adults who mostly spend their time courting. After the week is over, the courting period, while not the "main/core" period, is considered to extend for the remainder of the 45-day month.