Rite of Self-Purification

"What? You think we're going to kill you for a sacrifice? Please, we're not savages. That's why we raise animals. Someone fetch me a goat."

  According to ancient traditions, to mark the end of the winter and the start of a new year there must be a sacrifice. And it is supposed to be one of blood, though the exact nature of this has been lost to uncountable centuries of time. Scholars are not quite sure where, when, or why this tradition began on Erisdaire. Many cultures kept it active over countless generations, and as such it has steadily changed into something which might be unrecognizable from the original. (But there are none who would know the original and care to share it with the rest of the world.) Currently the "Rite of Quickening" lives on in many variations, and by many more names.

The most common form within the Rhyliss Empire is done on the thirteenth roughly equivalent to one month of the year. Beginning the day after the New Year's Address, towns and cities set aside a day to observe the "Day of New Beginnings". It technically begins with the symbolic sacrifice after the sunset the previous day. Community members bring an offering with personal value, though this offering must be flammable. Thus often these offerings are a wooden effigy, or an article of clothing with a lock of hair bundled inside, and cast it into a firepit to burn. This symbolic sacrifice replaces the blood sacrifice, though it still must be representative of something close to the person. The next day is spent preparing a communal feast, which is shared amidst a large party where everyone can relax and greet the new year to come. Many communities leave it at this, but some who value a devotion to the full pantheon of Twelve Gods will find some way to insert some activities to represent each of the gods after the burning of offerings.

Outside of the empire, the variations quickly become wildly different from each other. In most cases the sacrifice made is actually a blood sacrifice, usually in the form of an animal from local livestock. Some villages "keep the old ways" and instead make it a slash across the palm of each person into a lit brass brazier. Others have altered it to be a symbolic sacrifice of another sort, making an oath to leave something behind and setting it down in writing. This is kept in a tome, along with notes if the individual has transgressed against this oath. The focus is on self-improvement, that the next year might lead someone to become better than the person from the previous year. The sacrifice is seen as a necessary cost to be paid, often taking the form of forsaking a bad habit or unhealthy attraction to something.

For the most part, Myrisians have left behind the tradition of the rite of quickening. Taking its place culturally is a bath in water which has been purified, to wash off the remains of the previous year and greet the next one "clean and new". The exact nature of "purified water" is debated on between small divisions, from using magic to remove all impurities to distilling it from another source. One settlement even makes use of 'elemental water' which issues from a wild spring, claiming this would be the purest form of water available anywhere. Another settlement actively boils a large copper tub for an individual to dip their whole body into for ten seconds before being pulled free.

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