Day of Vivid Life
The third day in Bedlam's Week of Days festival. The Day of Vivid Life presents the ancestral culture of the city's descendants from the smaller Human tribe of the Sandsage Nomads, the Valdéra.
Execution
Daytime Celebrations
Valdéra descendants begin setting up stalls and public spaces throughout the city before the sun rises. When the city wakes the streets and stores of Bedlam are decorated with vibrant lengths of fabrics, each of which is a distinct color from other fabrics around it. Event spaces, which yesterday held contests to honor the Groshkata tradition of challenges, now host fashion shows displaying traditional Valdéra clothing styles and contemporary designs influenced by tribal dress. Art displays are featured in the streets, most of which are available for purchase by the general public. The Valdéra people revere individual self-expression; while most art displayed and sold during this festival is not of a traditional tribal nature, this core cultural value is preserved and represented.
In Bedlam's largest public areas, Valdéra markets are built to showcase the historic trade skills of this people and raise money to support the Week of Days for future years. The tribe's reputation is rooted in their skill at making pigments and dyes. Many descendants spend all day mixing and crafting colors from customary ingredients. These pigment mixes are usually sold as powder or are withheld from direct sale for use in dying garments intended for purchase by the public. The fashion of the tribe has been very influential in local textiles history, so tribal-inspired clothing is available for purchase throughout the city.
The Valdéra tribe's love of color and pigment did establish a small tattoo tradition, though it is frequently overshadowed by the tattoos of the Groshkata tribe. Tribal tattoos are not commonly imagery or anything of symbolic significance; traditional tattoos among this people are usually geometric or abstract patterns intended to highlight one or more unique colors of pigments. The tattoo stalls used the day prior during the Day of Ivory and Ink are today worked by Valdéra descendants, who encourage customers to pick out unique pigments from the festival's markets.
Revelry in the Dark
Once evening sets, the city's central plaza fills with guests around the Week's main stage. One final fashion show, which is really more of a general beauty contest, takes place with contestants all being of Valdéra descent. During this event, guests are finally given access to the infamous libation of the Valdéra tribe: cactus juice. This beverage is a strong intoxicant with some hallucinogenic properties (especially to those who've never partaken before) and it generates more funding for the Week of Days than any other single product of the week.
Spaces for cactus juice drinking contests can be found once the beauty contest begins, and many festival veterans make a point of challenging first-timers to slam the substance and have friends compare who had the more amusing experience.
Once the beauty pageant is complete, the stage quickly fills with Valdéra descendants as well as the Halfling and Gnome descendants of the Balapyup tribe. The Valdéra and Balapyup tribes are closely integrated with one another out in the Sandsage Ancestral Lands, and together these two cultures are known to make enchanting music. The final event of the Day of Vivid Life is a traditional musical celebration which never fails to send the public back to their lodgings with a song on their lips and a rhythm in their feet.
Components and tools
Many material goods are needed to support this festival intended to honor one of the major "crafting tribes" of nomads. They include:
- cactus juice (and lots of it)
- various ingredients used for making pigments and dyes, such as minerals and plant matter
- raw materials for displays of weaving
- textiles for commissioning garments from festival guests
- pre-stocked garments for sale
- tattooing supplies
- pre-mixed dyes and pigments for sale or use in tattooing
- musical instruments
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