Last of Dreams

Another year comes to a quiet end. The thirty-second day of the fifteenth month arrives without strife or distress, but with subdued merriment. Storms of approaching trouble are brewing all around, but none yet trouble a town being blanketed by the fresh snows of early winter. The third year since the summer’s flood that bore forth the entrance to ancient elven ruins from a riverside hill has only recently been an eventful one for the folk of Fenmoss-town. The merry band whose exploits have so enriched the town and its people have been long away north in The Cloakwood, allegedly involving themselves in the affairs of a backwoods clan’s religious occupations. May their fortunes favor them in the new year, and may yours likewise. Fortune and favor are forces we all seem to need more than ever of late, and yet have in such short supply. Before the snows came there was talk of killer trees and trolls just outside the walls… ‘Tis a very good thing that the earthworks and palisades of Fenmoss-town are so thickly built, well-lit, and well-guarded, a very good thing indeed.

"In the year one thousand sixty-and-nine since the founding of the first kingdom, following the disastrous Hunt of the Four Princes, old king Goren the Good, second of his name, succumbed to the disease of a broken heart at the loss of his son. So it was that Grenald Dremvie, pretender to the throne, tried to seize power over all of Valendon. After four long years of civil war, the Land Bleeding was finally ended when Téobard the Restorer defeated the deceiver and ascended the throne. Thus the third kingdom was founded. Gather we now for the last time in this seventh-and-thirtieth year since those events, to bid farewell to the moons’ diminishing crescent lights, to rejoice over another harvest, and to hope for continued prosperity. Drink now, then sleep, but let not your fires burn out. May you then light those anew with the last embers of this year’s spirit. By the name of Válunn and all the other gods, in the name of our king Arvern the second, son of Teobard, and to the health of all who have gathered here. Go forth!"

In Donnic tradition, the month of Úlmanad is often referred to poetically by the translation of its dwarven roots, the “Month of Dreams.” Indeed the dreaming month is a quiet one for the land, as many of the insects and amphibious noise-makers of the Dusking Fens south of Fenmoss-town have long since entered their yearly period of hibernation. By the solstice, the nights are alive not with various clatterings, clammerings, and buzzings, but only with the calls of owls, herons, and loons that fade into the growing whisper of a frost-laden wind. To begin the celebration of Kjól, and its commemoration of another turning of the great cosmic wheel, fires are traditionally lit on the thirty-second and final night of Úlmanad, which are to be kept lit all throughout the longest and darkest night of the year. This year seems especially one to guard the hearths from the outside, as a gentle snow has begun falling. Perhaps it is the beginnings of a storm? Oh well, that is no use worrying about on a night like tonight. Monsters beyond the walls are best fought in the light of day rather than the glow of a night-time hearth.