In the mountains far to the east snow is everpresent. The extra snow accumulated over winter brings the risk of dangerous unpredictable avalanches to highland settlements and the trails that connect them.

Fallsday sees pairs of the bravest members of those settlements, known as honreas, deliberately triggering avalanches. Their aim is to alleviate the danger by funneling the snow down established channels and from sun up to sun down waves cascade down the mountainsides. Honreas must have enormous trust between them, as there is much danger and little chance of rescue if they find themselves in trouble. Often siblings and relatives work together, but for romantic couples it is seen as the ultimate test of their bond and compatibility.

As well as serving their community, such duty is seen as a religious observance, and local temples to Honie and Oreas, the deities of winter, organize the volunteers and provide blessings before they set off. Fallsday itself occurs on the day before Kassag, the day when the temple celebrates the deities’ wedding, though particularly snow-heavy years may mean the artificial avalanches must also be triggered before or after the actual day. Only those who serve as honreas may be married on Kassag, and such weddings are considered especially blessed.

While the honreas work on the slopes above, everyone else remains tucked away in their homes during Fallsday. Family and friends of the Honreas spend the day in a somber mood, prepared for either celebration or grief. Regardless of the result, tradition dictates last year’s cirani, a spiced raspberry wine, is consumed that evening.

At dusk, a fire is lit in the steeple of each temple, and throughout the night honreas find their way back to them to be cared for, fed, and allowed to rest. At midday, each temple swings wide its doors and each honreas is presented with a Kassag coin. These large golden coins are uniquely stamped each year and only given to the honreas who returned to a temple on Fallsday night. Any remaining are melted into rings and presented to those who marry at the great feast that evening.

The feast of Kassag begins In the hours before dusk, ceremonies are held for those permitted to wed, then, and as the night closes in, the temples provide many barrels of freshly made cirani. Incredibly sharp and potent, the Cirani lowers inhibitions and suppresses animosity and the saying goes that “a Kassag truth is free of anger.”

Game Mechanics

Adventurers who serve as honreas receive the blessing of the winter deities. They can use the Help action to aid their Fallsday partner as a bonus action for the next week.

Among the Golanti tribes of the northwest, Firsthunt is a celebration and rite of passage held in late spring. The tribes gather each spring as the elk that are their primary diet begin the migration north, and hold a celebration that lasts long into the night. During the festivities, stories are told of how the first human is said to have undertaken the very first hunt around this time of year, guided by the lessons of the four most honored figures in their traditions: Hachi, the wily and persistent wolf; Karo, the ferocious, protective bear; Vaska, the wise lynx who sees beyond flesh and bone; and Khaasas, the otter; in stories she is the trickster, but also the source of joy and laughter. These stories often have a visual element, with performers acting out the part in accordance with the narration—sometimes leading to a degree of comical improv on the part of the actors, depending on the narrator’s whim.

There are several routes to adulthood in the Golanti culture, depending on the tribe, but the most ancient is the First Hunt. The morning following the celebration, any youth judged worthy by their tribe’s leaders may decide to undertake challenge of the First Hunt. Stripped to just a light tunic or loincloth (usually made specifically for the occasion by their family), each is provided with a spear and heavy cloak as they leave camp with the first light of dawn—anything else they need they must find or make. Once the hunt begins, the participants are not considered adult members of the tribe unless they arrive at the tribe’s location before midsummer and present a token from an animal they hunted and slew with their own hands.

After the participants leave, the bulk of the tribe strikes camp and heads north, making finding the tribe again part of the challenge. Some families make sure to store sufficient food to remain in camp for a week or two after the rest leave, while others leave bundles of food, supplies, and even weapons.

When a participant returns, they are tattooed with symbols of the animal they brought back to the tribe. Now culturally adults, they are considered reborn and begin counting their age from the day they returned. While those who slay great predators are praised for their daring, those who bring a token of particularly elusive or clever animals are also lauded for the achievement. Those who come back without any token are considered children for the next year, denied the privileges and responsibilities of adulthood until the next First Hunt.

Game Mechanics

Adventurers that take part in the storytelling of Firsthunt gain a boon depending on the part they played. For the next week, actors roll their next saving throw of the appropriate ability with a 1d6 expertise die : Hachi—Constitution; Karo—Strength; Vaska—Wisdom; Khaasas—Charisma; the first hunter—Intelligence.

In some parts of the world, legend has it that the lady of summer visits her brother’s home each winter and only her presence brings light, warmth, and joy to the lord of winter’s kingdom. Every year he tempts her to remain with him just a little longer by crafting items of beauty in ice and snow. Only mortal voices raised during Dawnsong remind her of the beauty summer brings to mortal realms and encourage her to return for another year.

Only the most devout truly fear a failure to celebrate Dawnsong might lead to an endless winter, but one needn’t be quite that pious to want to carry on this night-long festival and the day of rest that follows it. Music and songs celebrating summer begin as the sun fades from view on the last day of winter. In smaller communities, each family takes a turn in maintaining the song, but in the cities and towns of the Westfold March bands of minstrels are employed to ensure the songs continue until dawn. During the hours between dusk and dawn food and drink are readily consumed and dancing is commonplace.

At dawn, all the singers gather and the Dawnsong, a simple nursery rhyme taught to every child, is sung:

In every treetop’s hanging bower,
All the buds and every flower,
The climbing rose, the fanning fern,
All long for your foretold return,
Come back to us, come back to us, we need your
warming power.

Thigh-high grass of brightest green,
Hides blooms in every shade between,
Poppy red and cornflower blue,
Each sparkling with the morning dew,
Come back to us, come back to us, our fairest
summer queen.

A shining and a golden day,
A sun that ripens wheat and hay,
Spreading oak, swift-running stream,
Grazing sheep and clotted cream,
Come back to us, come back to us, please lady
don’t delay.

Game Mechanics

Adventurers who sing the collective Dawnsong at the end of the celebration are filled with a sense of hope, optimism, and good fortune. Once during the following week, they may choose to re-roll a failed ability check .

Villagers tend to live an isolated existence, but
they have a community to rely upon rather
than just themselves. However, because the
community is small, hard work is an important
facet of daily life, with community members
each having their own critical role to play in the
survival and flourishing of the whole.

Cattle Horn. This sturdy horn is used to call cattle in from the pasture. Its sound is pleasing to domesticated animals and strongly associated with food and comfort for them. Blowing the horn attracts domestic cattle up to a mile away. At the Narrator’s discretion, wild animals may recognize the sound and investigate in search of easy food—either the cattle’s feed or the cattle themselves.

Food Dehydrator. This set of open-weave, stackable trays is designed to turn meat into jerky and to dry fruits and vegetables. Drying food in this way not only preserves it (turning fresh, but perishable food into Supply that can be carried) but also concentrates the flavor, making it into a satisfying and satiating experience. A food dehydrator can be used in concert with a fire to turn fresh meat, fruit, or vegetables into Supply over the course of a long rest .

Protective Apron. These heavy leather aprons are favored by smiths, veterinarians, and others doing word where getting cut, scratched, or burnt is an occupational hazard. While worn, if you would take fire damage or non-magical bludgeoning, piercing, slashing damage from a single source, that damage is reduced by 1d6 (minimum 0). Once an apron has reduced 12 points of damage, it is considered broken. The apron is heavy and cumbersome, imposing disadvantage on Acrobatics checks and Dexterity saving throws while worn.

Seahberries. These small, bitter red berries taste awful but help the body flush out toxins. Eating a handful of them as an action gives the you an immediate saving throw against the effects of any ongoing poison , which is made with an expertise die .

Tasked (perhaps by themselves) with taming a frontier of some kind, settlers are gritty, pragmatic…and often a bit paranoid. These folk must rely upon themselves and perhaps their neighbors even in dire circumstances, and the frontiers where they make their homes have a variety of dangers—potentially including other settlers. They are therefore often concerned with security and emergency measures..

Barbed Wire. The quintessential frontier fortification, barbed wire is thick metal wire with sharp metal barbs along its length. A square with a barbed wire fence or coil across it is difficult terrain, and requires a DC 13 Dexterity check to avoid being grappled as the barbs snag on clothing and flesh alike, dealing 1d4 points of piercing damage and requiring DC 12 maneuver check to escape. Each attempt (successful or not) inflicts a further 1d4 points of piercing damage on the trapped creature, as does any physical movement beyond speaking (or, more likely, shouting or screaming). Settlers will often hang bells on the wire, giving them an audible alert if a creature becomes stuck. The wire can be cut; it has an AC of 11 and 5 hit points per 5-foot section. It comes in spools, each one suitable for building a coiled fortification of up to 50’ in length, which takes an hour. If used to make fencing, it stretches 5 times as far, but requires a full day of work.

Settler’s Glass. The settler’s glass is an extremely durable (and heavy) spyglass. Designed to stand up to the worst punishment that the frontier can dish out, a settler’s glass can be used as a normal spyglass, but is ruggedized to the point it can be used as an improvised weapon that deals 1d4 bludgeoning damage. However, inflicting a critical hit with it destroys the settler’s glass.

Trip Lantern. Another security device, a trip lantern is a heavy, hooded, bulls-eye lantern that can be rigged to a tripwire and is typically mounted atop a fencepost. Triggering the tripwire aims the lantern toward the tripwire, ignites and uncovers the light source, and shines dazzlingly-bright light through a focusing lens at the triggering creature, which must make a DC 12 Constitution save or be blinded until the beginning of its next turn.

Wide-Eye. A powerful stimulant brewed as a bitter tea, wide-eye can allow a person to stay awake for 36 hours (starting when it is imbibed) with no penalties for missing sleep (though spells and similar resources recovered on a long rest are not restored), but the crash afterward is awful. Immediately after the 36 hours ends, the user suffers 2 levels of fatigue , which must be removed normally, and is rattled until they finish a long rest . Still, it’s a rare settler that doesn’t have some on hand in case a disaster or attack requires an all-nighter.

The great advantage of an Imperial society is the ability to do things like infrastructure at scale, freeing up citizens of the empire to specialize. But that scale also typically comes with bureaucratic hierarchy, need for communication, and the drafting of residents to help during times of trouble.

Boon Coin. The very definition of a status symbol, a boon coin has no monetary value. Rather,they are minted and issued by a powerful individual or organization as a way of indicating a level of favor or association with the holder. They typically incorporate symbolism or phrases relevant to the issuer as part of their design. These coins are sometimes bought and sold, but doing so often carries social consequences, if not legal ones. They also typically do not convey any formal authority or privileges, but holding the right boon coin can raise the holder’s effective prestige rating by 1 or more points with the right audience, at the Narrator’s discretion.

Fire-Suppressant Bomb. This deliberately fragile clay pot is filled with a dry powder that smothers fires. To use it, you can make a ranged weapon attack with a range of 30 feet. The pot shatters on impact, instantly extinguishing a 5-foot square of non-magical fire. Imperial cities, especially ones relying on flammable building materials like wood, like to keep large stockpiles of these bombs on hand in case of a fire outbreak, allowing citizen volunteers to quickly deal with even large blazes in groups. They are never expensive, but in some cases, they are even provided to building owners and residents for free.

Manual of Imperial Protocol. This “basic” (but still incredibly thick and heavy) guide to imperial etiquette and bureaucracy allows you to spend 1d10 minutes finding and referencing relevant sections to gain an expertise die on Culture checks for the culture it is tied to for the next 10 minutes. At the Narrator’s discretion, this manual may provide its benefits to other skill checks as well. In a pinch it can be used as an improvised weapon, dealing 1d4 points of bludgeoning damage.

Signal Flags. These brightly-colored flags are designed to be seen from a long way off, such as across the water during a naval battle or across the span of a long bridge. They allow the wielders to communicate basic concepts (“danger”, “clear to dock”, “enter battle formation”, and the like) as an action at a range of up to a mile away without the need for hearing or a shared language beyond that of the signals.

The specific signal language being used varies wildly from society to society and may involve different colored flags, angles of presentation and so on. To be effective, the person sending the message with the signal flags must be in bright light and the receiver must be familiar with the specific signal language. If the sender is lightly obscured (such as by bad lighting or battlefield smoke), the receiver must make a Perception check (with the difficulty set by the Narrator) to correctly interpret the message.

Learning a signal flag language requires a week of training and practice. Characters from the Imperial culture with the Sailor or Soldier background know one signal flag language used by their culture. Adventurers of other cultures or backgrounds may also know a signal language at the Narrator’s discretion.

Many collegiate societies revolve around a university campus and even the exceptions have developed specialized equipment for speeding the acquisition, distribution and protection of knowledge as well as the comfort of the scholars who produce it.

Book Carrier. Typically made of waxed canvas or leather, this sturdy multi-layered case can hold up to 3 books, preventing water damage from anything short of actually being submerged in liquid.

Campus Umbrella. A cousin of the parasol, this is a small, lightweight umbrella with a sturdy waterproof canopy. It is designed to keep the user dry on short jaunts between buildings during rainy weather and is treated with an alchemical compound to aid in shedding water more efficiently, allowing it to be quickly shaken out and closed up without worrying about mildew. When using the umbrella, as long as precipitation is not accompanied by high winds, you can remain dry while traveling. Due to its lightweight construction, high winds negate the effectiveness of the umbrella.

Tracing Paper. This very thin, translucent paper is useful for making copies of diagrams or other images when it is not permissible or practical to bring the original along. They are especially favored by beginning artists who will make tracing of the works of various masters as a training technique.

If you have good light and charcoal, or some other similar means of tracing, you can quickly reproduce a low-detail approximation of a 2D artistic work in 1 minute using tracing paper. If you have 10 minutes, you can produce a more detailed copy. If you have an hour, you can make an extremely detailed reproduction.

In none of these cases can the tracing pass for the original, but the one-minute version will be enough to provide a general idea of the piece across to others, the 10-minute version will be good enough to capture some artistic nuance, and the 1-hour version can be used for detailed study.

Extremely complex or otherwise difficult works (ones rendered entirely in light colors or in watercolor, for example) may require more time, require a skill check, or be impossible to copy at the Narrator’s discretion.

Writer’s Case. A favorite of many different scholars across a wide array of disciplines, this small, but handsome leather case keeps the tools for writing and even a bit of field sketching close at hand in one convenient package. The case includes a compartment for paper, sleeves for two quill pens, a small compartment for extra nibs, a small bottle of ink, a sand shaker, and a pair each of sticks of chalk and charcoal. More well-to-do scholars will often have theirs personalized with monograms, their noble or academic house’s coat of arms or crest, or similar personal or organizational insignia.