The Forging is a week-long celebration in late May commemorating the creation of the Republic, when Dwarven and Fae peoples formally joined together into a single nation. It begins with a festival, highlighting the cultures, rituals, and customs of both peoples’ ancestors, and then proceeds through the rest of the week with exchanges of gifts and evening meals consisting of traditional foods of both cultures, and then culminates in a grand outdoor feast with copious amounts of alcohol for anyone who wishes to partake and magical light displays and fireworks in the evening sky.
A day in early March celebrating the official completion of the mapping and the marking of the edges of the Three Labyrinths, Demarcation Day is traditionally a boisterous festival where the leaders of the community organize games and competitions involving maps, scavenger hunts, and orienteering challenges. Most schools spend the month prior to it going over maps of the local area in class and teaching students orienteering and survival techniques, turning the festival into a learning opportunity as well as a day for fun and excitement.
Every year in early October, the city of Kivuli holds a three-day-long extravaganza showcasing the most cutting edge technologies, beautiful arts, and wondrous magics from around the world. The World’s Fair is a whirlwind of important people, brilliant mages and inventors, and the best and most avant-garde artists and performers from across the Continent. It leverages Kivuli’s wondrous engineering, taking full advantage of the sheer power-generating capabilities of the city’s famous windmills to power every magical device and ritual brought to be shown during the Fair, Technomantic and otherwise. It is considered a high honor to be invited to showcase your work or discuss your research during the event, as the competition for a time slot or a booth is incredibly fierce. Attending the Fair is almost a national pilgrimage for every Sundal child or young adult, as the event is a distillation of all the wonders of technology and progress that their nation prides itself on so much.
Dark grey is the color of death in Sunderwyl, the muted tones of a life without joy and of steel that has lost its shine. Sundalfolk in mourning wear grey shawls and, where possible, dull the polish of any metallic decorations or gear they wear to indicate their grief.
Both Dwarf and Fae cultures within Sunderwyl have their own unique burial customs. Over the centuries since the arrival of the Wylding Fae there has been a slow shift in which families practice which of the two customs — Dwarves who grow up in a primarily Fae town are quite likely to ask to be Sundered, for instance, and Fae who grow up in the depths of the Dwarven Halls often ask to have their remains incorporated into an Ancestral Ashcraft. Both practices are viewed as perfectly valid by Sundalfolk, and more an expression of whether the deceased wished their earthly remains to be returned to nature or to be incorporated into their family’s treasures and equipment.
Whichever funeral tradition is used, the dead of Sunderwyl are always celebrated with a memorial service, held before the Ashcraft is forged or the Sundering is begun. The body lies in state for family and friends to say their goodbyes, and priests of Bakharos and Alethos speak of the deceased’s accomplishments and all the good that they brought into the world. Family and friends share memories of the deceased and drink a toast in their honor. Once everyone’s said their piece, the gathering disperses, and those closest to the deceased carry the body to its final destination.
The traditional burial tradition of the Dwarves of Sunderwyl is known as the Ancestral Ashcraft. The remains of the deceased are cremated in the flames of a forge, and their ashes mixed with metal to forge the Ashcraft. The Ancestral Ashcraft is traditionally either a weapon, a hammer, or a piece of armor, though many modern Sundalfolk ask to be turned into a tool of their profession or that of one of their family after they die. Particularly diverse families that incorporate significant numbers of Fae have recently started to forge their Ashcrafts into jewelry and other less immediately utilitarian items.
When another member of the family passes, the Ancestral Ashcraft is sent to the forge alongside the body, to be melted down and have with the deceased’s ashes mixed into it. A single Ancestral Ashcraft can contain dozens, if not hundreds, of generations of a Dwarven family. Ancestral Ashcrafts are sacred to Sundalfolk, but they prefer to wear or use the Ashcraft in everyday life rather than hanging them up on a wall for display, believing that putting the item to good use is the best way to honor the ancestors whose remains have been incorporated into it.
The traditional Fae burial tradition is known as the Sundering, and harkens back to the rituals that were used in Faen’miir before the Godking’s fall and Titania’s rise to power. The body is cleansed and brought to a wilderness location of the deceased’s choosing. There, the body is laid out and a druid performs a ritual dedicating the body’s flesh to nature and Druathos, making cuts with a ritual dagger, binding the body in place, and warding the area against large scavengers. Over the next few months, the druid will visit the body to reconsecrate it and check its level of decomposition.
Once the body is reduced to nothing but bones, the Sundering has been completed and the druid collects and cleans the remains, delivering the bones to the deceased’s family. What happens after that is up to the family and the deceased’s wishes; some distribute the bones amongst themselves and those who knew the person in life as memento mori, while others gift the remains to the local Druathan temple for use in rituals. The more traditional families send the sternum to Faen’miir, keeping alive the connection to their ancestral home. Those who have a substantial number of Dwarven members choose to have the bones turned to ash and added to the family’s Ancestral Ashcraft.
The jerbatte is a small rodent that lives in the arid regions of Sunderwyl, digging complex burrows and dragging rocks and sticks over to make “fortifications” that slow down predators and alert the residents of the burrow to their approach. Tamed jerbattes are known to be devilishly good at disassembling complex devices, apparently in search of parts to make their own traps. The Sundalfolk adore the little creatures, both for their ingenuity and for their cuddly and sociable nature when they’re raised in captivity.