The Dampwake
The Dampwake is the Withered Elves’ springtime festival, held at the first signs of thaw, when the ice-slick bark runs with moisture and the earth begins to pulse with new fungal life. While the Great Fall honors decline and the dignity of decay, the Dampwake celebrates rebirth through rot—the uncanny vitality that arises from decomposition.
It is a season of stirring, of spores blooming in silence and half-buried bones feeding sprouting mushrooms.
History
Dampwake marks the reemergence of hidden life: not in sunlight and blossoms like other cultures celebrate, but in the moist, dark warmth of things breaking down beneath the surface. It honors the Fungal Gods' promise—that from the ruined, something wondrous will always rise.
It is also seen as the time when Whisper Spores are most potent, and dreams carry prophetic messages from the Rot.
Execution
- Sporekindling: Small offerings of wood, mulch, and old bones are heaped into mounds and seeded with sacred spores. These are kindled not with fire, but with alchemical moisture and fungal heat, allowing the sporemounds to sprout overnight. The more bizarre or luminous the growth, the more favorable the omen.
- The Murkmarch: At dawn, masked participants trek barefoot through the sodden forest or bogs in silence, listening for the “First Breath of Rot”—the moment the forest stirs with audible fungal bloom. Some claim to hear ancestral whispers in the damp air.
- The Mycelial Naming: Infants born during the year are presented to the Rot-Speakers, who read the patterns of mold and moss upon their cradles to divine names, fates, or affinities.
- Sporesongs: In contrast to the Hollow Choir's autumn chants, the spring Sporesongs are breathy, rhythmic tones mimicking fungal release—performed at night with instruments grown from sporewood or hollow bones.
Observance
To the Withered Elves, Dampwake is not a soft spring of flowers, but a primordial rebirth—rooted in dampness, death, and transformation. It is a festival of murk and marvel, when the world is still ugly from winter, but undeniably alive again.
“Bless the rot,” they say, “for it wakes what slumbers.”
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