The annual five-day ‘Jaegerphagefest’ is
altogether something special. Tradition has ensured that the Assayers Guild
have sponsored this Festival for many generations. Currently held within the
hault-Zeyr’s (pronounced ‘hal-zerr’) family grounds of their estate
close to Guille in Telia, many Esterians and Telians trek to enjoy a five-day
summer break just before the great harvesting begins.
The grounds surrounding the family’s
manse are partitioned to allow guests of all classes to pitch their tents and
awnings to camp for the duration, while the nobility can stay in their
travelling caravans, or lodge in the local villages, inns and farmsteads, while
the most important guests will be put up in the hault-Zeyr family’s manse
itself. Other larger marquee tents are set up to allow for the sale of drink
and food, and yet more arrive to sell their wares and crafts. Indeed, many of
the other Guilds pay dividends to pitch their wares at the Festival too.
Several of the larger marquees are given
over to Tournaments of the Assayers popular board game, and others are set up
for theatre plays and music performances, sporting competitions and feats of
endurance, and the guests of all types enjoy themselves throughout, as it is
often a good opportunity to meet up with old acquaintances, make new
friendships and partnerships, conduct a little diplomacy or trade, and all
other manner of interactions. But the special feature of the five-day festival
comes on the penultimate day, with the Primur game day.
On the fourth day, the crowds move to
take up positions in the centre of the family’s formal gardens set in the green
vale in the middle of the estate. Here, in an amazing replication of the game
board, small square fields or plots of land, looking like ornate little
gardens, divided by hedgerows, walls and fences with small ornate gateways of
differing types, surround the Folly Tower, the starting point of the game.
Each Ward of the City of Estera, and the
wards of Guille, and each town or city in Telia are all allowed to send one
couple – their own ‘Knight’ and ‘Daughter’ – to take part in the Primur. Many
send their most agile of athletes, and some of the nobility have even been
known to take part. On the other side, estate workers and animals are ‘dressed’
up to act the part to resemble some of the mythical beasts of the tale, and a
man from the hosting family always plays the part of the ‘Sorceror’.
The crowd cheers their favourites, the
champions try to escape to the ‘Final Edge’, a lot more food and drink is
consumed by all the spectators, and the game goes on all day until only one
couple are left in, who are then decreed the winners, and are awarded a ‘Sword
of the Forest’ for the ‘Knight’ (a silver shortsword encrusted with small
shards of jade on the pommel and crossbar) and the ‘Glade Pendant’ for the
‘Daughter’ (a fairly expensive emerald set on a silver mount from a silver
chain).
It is a benevolent act by the Assayers
Guild and the hosting family and is one of the main highlights in the social
calendar, probably appreciated more by the middle and lower classes of
commoners and townsfolk truthfully, and reinforces the common belief that the
Assayers are the more genuine, friendly and honest of all Guilds (something
which occasionally rankles the Woollers and Clothiers).
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