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The Feast of the Winter Solstice

This is post is for this month's RPG Blog Carnival topic: feasts and festivals hosted on Of Dice & Dragons.  This post covers a beggar's feast as part of the Feast of Winter Solstice.

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Feast of the Winter Solstice

This feast is done on the evening of the longest night of the year, right before New Year's day. 


During the day, people seek to pay off debts and settle grudges. Everyone also makes sure their fellows all have an invitation to a feast gathering, as it is believed those left out will easily invoke Hekate for a curse on those who have spurned them. The wise among the wealthy and powerful ensure a beggar's feast for the destitute and the sheltered, supplying good food and inviting the everyone in their area to make sure they have a place to socialize and make merry.


In the evening, people gather for their feast. An hour before midnight, they take a good serving to a crossroad, and lay it out in honor of Hekate.  It is usually eaten by dogs.  If all the dogs have eaten their fill before midnight, people take it as a sign Hekate is content, but if dogs are still eating at midnight, people believe there will be three bad things before 


The beggar's feast usually has two of each of the following dishes, with some ingredients provided by the well-off members I'd the community: 

Salads

  1. Spiced coleslaw with pears and olives, spiced with black pepper and coriander. 

  2. Shredded carrots braised in apple cider with paprika.

  3. Pickled beet roots with cranberry raisins and smoked herring. 

  4. Potato salad with sour apple slices, olives, and fennel.

  5. Kelp salad with fried squid rings and prawns. 

  6. Chard with capers and beets. 

Soups

  1. Mashed pumpkin and roasted octopus tentacle soup with nutmeg and cinnamon. 

  2. Pork and cabbage soup with carrots, olives,  and potatoes

  3. Chicken soup with half shell noodles, carrots and parsnips.

  4. Fish head soup with barley, potatoes, and cabbage. 

  5. Lentil and kale soup with potatoes and goat. 

  6. Braised onion and garlic soup with soft goats cheese and crab dumplings. 


Main Course

  1. Baked fish fillets with rice and pickled peppers. 

  2. Slow braised pork shoulder with roasted beets, carrots, and potatoes. 

  3. Cabbage rolls filled with beef and pork, rice, and ginger. 

  4. Beef goulash with pickled peppers, potatoes, and carrots, flavored with paprika and garlic. 

  5. Goat and lentil casserole with carrots and potatoes, and aged cow cheese. 

  6. Chicken and hare sautéed with rice, pickled tomatoes and peppers, and dried rosemary. 

Desserts

  1. Buttered cinnamon bread twists. 

  2. Roasted apples and pears

  3. Dried berries in clotted cream

  4. Shredded apple and pear cake

  5. Sweatmeats in a puff pastry.

  6. Rice pudding with raisins and pummeled hazelnuts. 


Boons 

  1. High Spirits:  For the next month,  treat your next failed fear save as a success. 

  2. Favored: One of the locals enjoys your company enough to share a basic meal with you up to once a week.  If you balance the relationship, this could go on indefinitely. They have a 1-in-3 chance of sharing a rumor with you each visit. 

  3. Blessed: The locals include you in their prayers.  For the next month, the next time you are cursed, it fails. 

  4. Treasure by the Community: For the next week, each morning to gain 1d8 temporary hit points, which lay last until the next dawn.

  5. Fortified: You gain advantage on poison and disease saves for the next week. 

  6. Hekate's Hound: For the next month, a dark dog follows you around from a distance.  If you are attacked, it will come in to assist you, 

Banes

  1. Shaken by Doubts: All reaction rolls for the next week are at disadvantage, as you keep thinking of awkward conversational turns that you had at this meal. 

  2. Disfavored: You got on someone's bad side at this meal. They tell you a rumor which is false. 

  3. Shunned: You did something to offend a number of people. Disadvantage on your next save against a curse or disease. 

  4. Disliked: For the next week, roll a Constitution check each time you would heal: On a failure, you only heal half the expected amount. 

  5. Flatulent: Roll a save against disease or have gastrointestinal issues this week: save each hour or have bad flatulence at an inopportune time, or on a critical failure, suffer an accident. 

  6. Hekate's Mark:  Dogs don't like you this month. Make reaction checks with them at disadvantage, and they bark at you fiercely even on a neutral result. In combat with them, they check moral at advantage. 


Events

  1. Old Netty demands One eyed Jack pay her back the coin she lent him, but he refuses, saying this was from last year and he has already paid her back. 

  2. Jane, the orphaned daughter of John the Fisher, breaks down in tears because she's pregnant and the father has spurned her. She lets slip that the father is married, and she's worried he'll invoke Hekate against her

  3. Peter the Greeter is a slow man who directs travelers to the services b they need.  He looks pale as dinner starts, and eventually shares that he saw a traveler kick a dog in an alleyway and hide the dog. Dogs are sacred to Hekate, and he's worried about getting cursed. 

  4. The maid Lily and the stable boy Harris want to get married. It turns out she's now with child. Harris asks if he can come with the adventurers, so that he can have more money to buy a cottage for them. 

  5. Mother Edna shares that she has seen a dead man at the crossroads the last two mornings during her early walks, John the Fisher. He hasn't said anything to her, but he looked sad. 

  6. Karl the old gardener has seen glowing lights in the Eastern Marsh for the last few weeks. He knows better than to go in there by himself. He's not sure if it was bandits or fae, and didn't want people to think he's going mad. 

  7. One of the local liege lord's men comes to ask for help because he has passed out, and his men are all ill. 

  8. A runner for a local midwife asks for help, as someone’s baby is now on its way.  Why do they need extra help?

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