High Harvest

High Harvest is an annual festival in the Calendar of Harptos, taking place between September 30th and October 1st. It is traditionally a feast to celebrate the harvest and the abundance of food, but also the time when those wishing to travel leave on their journeys before winter sets in.

Preparations for the feast start as early as a tenday before, while preparing, cooking, and preserving the harvest for the cold winter months. Traditions vary from community to community, but examples of festive activity include food-related contests; races and challenges of skill and strength; receiving homemade sweets from the local clergy; and priests blessing larders, wine cellars, grain bins, and food preserves.

This day is an important anniversary to various governments. Often, taxes and tithes came due, rulers hold "open courts" to hear the concerns of their citizens, oaths are publicly renewed, troops receive marching orders to new duty stations, and guilds meet to confer on prices and rate changes for goods and services.

Tavern jests say dwarves only drink water and elves drink only dew on this day. However, these traditions are completely false.

Legends claim that children born on this day are favored by Tymora to have lifelong good luck, but smitten with wanderlust.

Another legend says that females born on this day have control over their reproductive system (i.e., get pregnant only when they want to) by force of will alone, and that they could instantly sense when they have been poisoned, either by ingestion or bitten by a venomous creature for example.

On This Day

 * Worshipers of Lliira open a holy festival with the Swords Cast Down ritual in which weapons are thrown on the ground with chanting and covered with fresh flowers.
 * Worshipers of Loviatar celebrate the Rite of Pain and Purity by dancing in a circle upon broken glass or other sharp objects.
 * Worshipers of Malar celebrate the Feast of the Stags and pledge to hunt through the winter for selected people unable to hunt for themselves.
 * Worshipers of Shiallia celebrate fruition on this day, inviting friendly creatures to join in feasting, dancing, and singing.
 * Worshipers of Silvanus consider Highharvestide holy, and often give sacrifice by breaking and burying an object constructed of wood.
 * Worshipers of Talos call for storms and lightning.