Ashburn

for four days, Gladerunners take ashes that have been gathered over the past month and wear them all over themselves, making the ash and charcoal into a paste that they then plaster over their entire bodies, and sprinkling dusts of ash on their clothes. No trade, work, or much socialization occurs, but rather every family contributes a certain amount of wood to a great bonfire that the whole community keeps continuously burning for the four days. People gather around the fire and live in tents around it until the end of the four days. Then, they wash themselves of the ash and use the water to extinguish the fire. A new tree is planted in the heart of the pile of ash.

[5:59 PM]

Ashburn is also when a Gladerunner storyteller tells the story of all Gladerunners, from the scattered history still known from before the war with the elves, to the elven war, the great burning, and then the survival and story of the clans from then until the present day. The 4 day period is symbolic of the 4 days it took for the great tree of the Gladerunners to burn before it fell.

[6:02 PM]

Every tribe has a different storyteller, with different stories from each clan after the war, and different pieces of history from before the great burning. However, the story of the tree burning is always told the same way by all storytellers. It is, in fact, a test to be able to perfectly reproduce this one story during the long hours of Ashburn that one must do before one can take on the role of storyteller within a tribe. A tribe can have two or three storytellers depending on their size, though usually only the most senior/experienced is the one who performs the ceremonies of Ashburn.