There are many varieties of festival about the land of Avalon - significant dates in a city or guild's calendar, or remembering a great event in the land's history - but the most important festivals, in an ongoing sense, are those relating to the Gods; festivals of consecration, of holy significance, whose enactment provide the most significant contribution of the priesthood (see HELP PRIESTHOOD) to their patron's ongoing Avalon agenda. Festivals are the source of icons and statues honouring a deity. They are the precursor of the ongoing holy rituals; little sequences of actions perpetuating the effect of a festival and often bestowing benefits on the mortal carrying it out. Festivals serve to consecrate holy ground, and to render holy statues and icons - to spread the divine word - to be a constant presence about the land. Finally, festivals and their creations are the target of the iconoclasts: those bent on the destruction of icons, statues and the defilement of holy ground.
Syntax: PARTICIPATE
If you wish to participate in a festival, and providing you are in the presence of the member of the priesthood presiding over its rituals, you may type PARTICIPATE to declare your involvement active. You may cancel participation by simply moving to another location - and if you do so you will automatically leave the congregation. To rejoin you will need to declare participation again. If you successfully see through a festival as a member of the congregation you will invariably receive a significant boost in experience; unless the festival requires experience to be sacrificed for its completion.
Syntax: CONGREGATION
When you are a participant in a festival (providing you have a patron), or if you are presiding over it, you may use this command to list out all members of the congregation, the festival being run, together with the deity it is honouring and the individual member of the priesthood presiding.
There are six major festivals common to all divine priesthoods with each serving a distinct purpose, all important in their own way as expressions of religious spirit and assertions of mortal resolve in the face of the all-powerful pantheon.
Look through HELP CONSECRATION for info on the two festivals whose purpose is the consecration and blessing of holy ground on behalf of a deity or in opposition to a deity whose influence is unwanted. HELP VENERATION covers the two festivals whose end-result is the creation of religious articles of unique significance: the icons and the statues depicting a god or goddess. HELP GLORY documents the two festivals of perhaps most significant import: where the mortal congregation empowers itself to perform the revival of a stricken, helpless deity as described in HELP REVIVAL.
