It’s World-Building June!  So I’m building Worlds!  Aerax/Expectant Woods over on Patreon, and Bear Empire and a new thing here!

It’s also June WorldBuilding – so we’re getting two sets of prompts.  

Still going on the catch-up!

10. What holidays & traditions are observed in your world?

Major holidays in the Bear Empire include:

* A major feast near the end of autumn

* a day called the “day of sleep” after the first major frost.  

* A spring-thaw celebration

(these three above together are referred to as the Hibernation festivals)

* a mid-summer day of Languorous and laying about

* harvest festival of gift-giving and clever feasting.

Smaller holidays include: the Emperor/ess’ birthday.

A day in each district called the Day of Joining that is the day they joined the empire.

In the Bear District, there is something called River Day, which is when they reached the river; that is, when they ran out of land they intended to take in to the Empire.

Once every 28 days, there is a small festival; each of these has its own theme.  For instance, the Festival of cleverness, the festival of nimbleness, the festival of wisdom, the festival of strength, of durability, of beauty, and so on.

Traditions include

the Toss Out:  this is like Bear Kon-Mari meets spring cleaning, a time when one cleans out one’s den both physically and mentally.

The greeting:  You walk towards the nearest foreign nation until you meet someone new, and there you greet them and give them a gift (Generally in early summer, but also done at life changes).

Cal Questions

GOVERNMENT/ECONOMY

11- How many different governments does the story interact with? How are they different or similar, or why is the one isolated?

The story is set, at least so far, entirely in the Empire of the Bear.  But it refers heavily to the nearby nation Dekleg and less-heavily to the male protag’s home nation, Halor.

Among differences are the ways in which the governments are controlling (Halor and Dekleg are superficially more similar to each other than either one is to the the Empire, including in poaching punishments; the Bear Empire openly allows magery but does not allow sorcery, while Dekleg openly decries magic of all sorts and uses sorcery on the down low and any magic at all can get you executed in Halor); the way that they deal with other nations (the Empire tends to use a “two-hand” approach, standing aloof and engaging in very small, slow-moving diplomacy with one hand while interfering broadly through the use of agents on the other hand; Dekleg tends to be much more direct and prefers honesty to that sort of approach; Halor tries to stay out of the way of all of them).

Because the Empire of the Bear is larger than any nearby nations, and because they engaged in quite a bit of empire-building for over a century before suddenly stopping, the nations that surround the empire tend to distrust it.

Because the Empire uses magic (magery) in broad and myriad ways they tend to be uncomfortable with the way that the Deklegion and Halorian governments handle magic.  They also have other reasons that I haven’t quite determined yet to be uncomfortable, some of it based on the totems that almost everyone in the Bear Empire is connected to.

Questions? Thoughts?  Tell me!