Bondsday

Held after the final harvest, Bondsday is an allday festival celebrating the connections between friends and family. The celebration sees families and friends across the land spend daylight hours together eating, sharing stories, and renewing their connections. Households hosting a Bondsday feast garland their buildings with strings of brightly colored flowers and prepare a large array of cold and preserved foods in the days before.

It is considered very bad form to refuse a relative entry to a Bondsday feast, no matter how distant or strained the relationship. In fact, the day is often seen as an opportunity to offer apologies and mend broken ties. Weddings are almost never held on Bondsday, as it is seen as a time for reaffirming existing relationships, not establishing new ones. For similar reasons, it is considered unlucky to propose or enter into any new business dealings on the holiday.

Traditionally, the only food prepared on the day are soft pastries filled with summer fruits and shaped to resemble a buckle. These are consumed at dusk, after which the celebrants exchange simple handmade rings formed of 14 cloth, flowers, straw, and the like. Communities signify different relationships with specific designs or materials in a way unique to each settlement, and more recently political allies have begun trading these as well. Only worn till dusk the following day before they are burnt, these tokens are said to strengthen the bonds between givers.

Game Mechanics

The giving of a Bondsday ring creates a connection between celebrants. For 1d6 + 1 days after Bondsday, if a creature uses the Help action to assist a creature they gave a ring to the target gains an expertise die as well as advantage . A creature can’t benefit from this effect more than once per long rest .