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A Harvest Day’s Reaping

Harvest Day is an annual holiday to the people of crossroads, celebrating the bountiful harvest born from the fruits of the refugees left behind in the wake of the old Planeswalker wars. In those days, untold horrors were seen all around as Planeswalkers-of-old conjured any number of ferocious beasts, monsters, and war machines to do battle alongside their conscripts.

These days, the people enjoy relative safety. The weakened state of Planeswalkers means the flood of these dangers has been permanently stemmed, to the point where they can be mostly controlled and curtailed. By embracing the spookiness of the season, Crossroad’s people honor both the hard work of farmers and raisers of livestock, but that of their ancestors who established the civilization they enjoy today.

Of course, to a man like Volpes, such displays have multiple purposes. With every day, more and more people flock to his cause, hoping to take him up on his promises for a new lease of life as they transform themselves in much the same way he did long ago.

Since most of his recruits came from poor families and colonies on the fringes of Crossroads, outside the reach of the Magistrum, it naturally made sense to forge accords with these isolated communities. The titan and his fellows would help work the fields, in exchange for a fair and equitable portion of the harvest to feed their own.

Never one to decline a chance to show off what his body could do, Volpes himself often took to the fields, scythe in hand. His boundless endurance and sharpened senses ensured that he and his growing army could work tirelessly, well into the night. Where ordinary men would begin to falter, cuts growing imprecise and sloppy as fatigue set in, he would experience no such symptoms, maintaining the perfect slice through each reed of wheat, each pick of an apple or berry with only the lightest beads of sweat soaking into his fur.

As an added bonus, the fox used his alchemical knowledge to brew potent fertilizer to ensure that the yield was grand enough to feed everyone involved and then some. And if more members of these communities were so impressed with the work of his forces that they themselves wanted to undergo the enhancement, all the better.

Volpes was nothing if not generous with his potions…

Nothing beats combining a spooky, Halloween-themed YCH with a bit of world-building, and this piece manages to accomplish that beautifully. Diaszoom was the pinnacle of kindness and professionalism while working on this back in October of 2021, and the results speak for themselves.

Though we often associate the fall season with Halloween, it occurred to me that it’s also a signifier of the harvest season as well. Thus, even in Crossroads’s fictional culture, where the pagan traditions of our world are absent, it would make sense that the harvest season is still celebrated.

And as a crime lord with a close relationship to the working man, Volpes would naturally be busy for the season. It was surprising to me know well all the pieces came together, since I can’t say I planned for them to.