Oberfest

The Oberfest (also T’Oberfest amongst the peasantry, Crux T’Oberfest by the offworld tourism bureau, Raven’s Rest, Drinktide, Font of the Spring Provinces, Rite of Downing, Austerfjalon, Ausmass, Feast of St. George-Michael, Asumir, Wintermare, Woaden Fete, or Staggruein) is a great feast lasting at least a week in the Autumn, and said to have originated as a regional celebration in the Spring Provinces before expanding and amalgamating similar traditions across all of Hiera. The planetary board of tourism recommends every visiting noble spend at least one T’Oberfest Eve gorging on festive beer and sausage at Heliaugustein, capital of the Spring Provinces, to get a real Hieran experience.

Festivities

The merriments of the Oberfest often include copious amounts of spiced liquor, salted grains, sweetmeats, bonfires, fancy dress, charcuterie, awkward folk dancing, and light animal sacrifice. Large family estates and city squares are opened to the public, and vendors from all over Hiera traveling to various venues and festival hubs, Heliaugustein chief amongst them. Many Hieran nobles pride themselves on either providing an exceptional Oberfest experience or enjoying one to the limits of their abilities.

Various competitions are also popular during feast-week: wrestling, foot races, hunting, skiing, shooting, grav-sledding, mag-skating, polar bear swimming, tiddlywinks, caber toss, and sword fighting, amongst many others. These feats tend to be decked in the pageantry of proving one’s divine right to rule, reaffirming covenant with the peasantry, bragging rights, and asserting dominance within the social hierarchy.

While at some point The Oberfest was likely born out of some myth or act from before the Scream, it is now largely a secular affair, insofar as anything can be in the Empire. Still, many Hierans give thanks to God as part of the festivities through religious services or generous donations to the High Church on Hiera. These nods are often relatively brief compared to the duration of festivities as a whole, which quickly become about camaraderie, joy, and celebration for celebration's sake.

Associated Myths

The subsequent commercialisation and homogenization of the holiday has resulted in a few primary tales being attached to it. Parables of the Avengarde pantheon from primitives of the early third millennium are particularly popular. There is a large mosaic in the primary cathedral-hall of Heliaugustein that depicts the epic cycle of love and war between the brothers Hidel and Heimswar.

The Wyrmlock

Legend tells of a primordial alien terror which emerged from the world’s depths; woken by some old terraforming process. Some stories assert the beast was an ancient alien psychomancer, others name it the vile progenitor to modern ice wyrms, and still yet more say it was a blend of both. Like many creatures of fable, it’s names are manifold, including but not limited to: the Vile Wyrm, Wyrmvile, Wormlock, the Winterwyrm Warlock, the Elden Vinterjarl, Old Winterjaws, and Walt-Krampus. It slowly thawed its great draconian bulk and then, slithering through shadows, began to steal away the wicked and impious. This denied the planet much of its needed workforce, preventing their right to correction and remonstration for faulty behavior.

The Warrior-Celebrant

St. George-Michael is a gestalt folk hero of several Terran Arhats and early Hieran historical figures (‘Saint’ is more, just a part of the name rather than denoting any official Arhat status). There is less of a specific personality for the legendary Crux than a lengthy list of attributed deeds. Their most famous accomplishment was chasing the great beast Wyrmvile across the circumference of Hiera. They cornered it at last where it was hiding in a deep, dark forest. For a hundred days and a hundred nights didst the wyrm and the hero do battle. All through the coming of a long and preternatural winter, struggled they; until at last the wyrm, and thus the winter, was broken.

Thereafter

Grievous wounds were traded. A gash had been drawn across to the wyrm’s gullet so that no matter how much it ate, it would never cease being hungry. This had the added effect of allowing all the abducted people to escape the wyrm’s belly and return to their dutiful places in the Chain of Being; having learned a valuable lesson about prices paid for their unfortunate ways. St. George-Michael in turn lost half of the light of the world. One of the deadly lashes of the wyrm’s tail took out the hero’s left eye, leaving a dreadful scar upon their face. Never again would their awareness or beauty be what it once had.

The broken, injured wyrm holed up in a narrow valley, a depression, a defile within the earth of the forest floor. It lashed its tail and piled up high ramparts of earth, walls of stone, palisades of hewn timber, and at last a crown to its lair. It was a cold hammered tower of raw, brutal iron deemed the Isendrachtor. Old Winterjaws would forever after conserve its energy for the warmest parts of the year. It hibernates, coiled around or through the base-to-spire of the tower, waiting. Some modern tales separate the Warlock and the Wyrm into different entities, one riding or obeying the other as an avatar. St. George-Michael vanquished the cold, and brought an end to winter. Hiera warmed even if the wyrm lingered on and threatened to return each year.

The Hero's Trials

St. George-Michael wandered the world for many decades after that, doing various mythical deeds correlated with various real-life historic Hieran figures. There is a particularly amusing tale of how they went through a series of challenges against other mythical figures in order to obtain a new eye. It ends with the Crux-errant dueling with the Void Itself for one of Its eyes. Sometimes this is a sword fight, other times a duel of starships, a gamble on strength, or even comparing sound legal arguments. 

In some tales, the Ellis system used to have two stars in the sky. The second became the hero’s new orb, so that in their endless wanderings across Hiera they brought heat, light, and enlightenment to the surface. This warming is often confused with the end of cold from slaying the wyrm, in the usual way fables tend to blur over time.

Apocrypha

There used to be tales about how a noble Cygnus companion called Swayne, Signi, or Swansly gifted St.George-Michael a new eye. Those stories now tell of how it was ultimately tainted, slowly poisoning the hero and sapping their strength, cunning, and resilience. The hero then cut out their eye anew, shoved it down the throat of the treacherous, trickster goose, and then wrung its foul fowl neck. St. George-Michael threw the body into a blazing pyre to purge its corruption. The bird’s meat turned grey and tar-like upon the fire, running away like quicksilver and leaving a trail of withered plants, crumbling stone, and twisted life in its wake. Where Swayne was once remembered as a loyal knight-retainer, now they are a fiendish abomination of false faces.

Modern Mythos

Walt-Krampus lives in the Krampuswald, a phantomigrational forest that is connected to the deepest, darkest parts of every other Hieran forest. The Wyrmvile can no longer keep food down with the hole in its tummy, so instead it gnaws ceaselessly on the bones of its victims. During the heart of winter it prowls in the darkness, seeking criminals who disobey regio-historical laws in particular, and children guilty of filial impiety. Its favourite food is those who fail to study hard for C.O.A.T. Such persons are sometimes referred to as ‘Marked by the Wyrm.’ 

Children across much of Hiera, serf and noble alike, are traditionally told varying morality fables about the perils of ignoring duty or disregarding the Chain of Being. Those kids who do not follow and respect rules -- moreover, those who cannot remember and recite them -- are often said to be ‘drawing the Elden Vinterjarl’s attention.’ For the most part, by the time any noble scion is nearly of age for C.O.A.T, they have long since ceased believing in Walt-Krampus. However, by then they have probably already studied hard for years and well-heeded their familial obligations.