“
The bread pulling sounds very, uh, visceral and, um, important.”
The Tide of Embarkation is a week-long festival on Palisade. It celebrates the founding of the Fabreal Duchy and commemorates the Divine Principality leaving Palisade to conquer the stars.
History[edit | edit source]
Typically, the Tide of Embarkation is only celebrated by Palisade's ruling classes. In response to the invasion of the Bilateral Intercession, and to bolster the resistance to that invasion, some groups allied with the Cause decided to celebrate their own version of the Tide of Embarkation, emphasizing that the Principality left once and the resistance can make them leave again. This new version of the festival is held on the Isle of the Broken Key.[1] It was arranged in part by BIS spies in Violet Cove in service of the Adagio in G.[2]
Festival Days & Festivities[edit | edit source]
Each day of the festival commemorates a different historical event.
- Day 0: The Principality's massacre of the city in which the final remnants of Advent resided. (This city is now Carhaix.)
- Day 1: Chimera's Lantern lighting for the first time, apparently in response to the massacre.
- Day 2: The rising of the tides.
- In the newer version of the festival, this symbolizes Chimera's Lantern calling "on the tides to lift themselves up and flood the nascent Principality and harm them.
- Day 3: Aram Nideo's death, and famous speech about going out into the stars.
- Day 4: Saint Luster, the founder of the Fabreal Duchy, destroying the Principality's enemies.
- In the older version of the festival, this is celebrated by the Fabreal Duchy as the scouring of "enemy forces", though nobody remembers who these enemies were.
- In the newer version of the festival, this is commemorated as a tragic loss.
- Day 5: The coronation of Saint Luster as the first Glass Duke.
- Day 6: The embarkation of the Divine Principality, who leave behind a group of Divines for the Fabreal Duchy. (Those Divines would later be turned into Delegates.)[3]
Festivities[edit | edit source]
Festivities include baking and sharing tomato flotbread, a gigantic communal flatbread that resembles a float or raft. On day four, festival goers commiserate with one another over Saint Luster's tragic mass murders by ripping pieces from the tomato flotbread and sharing it directly.
During the festival, the Glass Archive is opened to the public - for walking through, not for accessing or studying texts - so that festival goers can appreciate the holy text of the Dim Liturgy.[1]