Weekly Challenge (Apr 30): Leisure, Pleasure, Relaxation

They float.

The space stations spin to create ersatz gravity. In the central hubs, it's weightless. Part of a station's water recycling/purification flashes it into a vapor and pumps it into the hub where it condenses into a thick mist.

Although it's outlawed because of possible contamination, sneaking in and floating in the fog is very popular.

The Untu(Warlike species: compare to Komodo Dragon times Grizzly Bear plus Gorilla standing on two legs) are fond of a competition that usually takes place after a few drinks and not infrequently before a friendly brawl. Both competitors by sheer force of will trigger their (compare to adrenal) glands in the same way they would in combat. The last one with eyes still red and spines still raised wins.

The Scavengers of all races(except the Freighters) on The Bulb(small planet literally made of 100% industrial trash and recycling) enjoy duels, gambling, consuming any and all home-cooked drugs available, torture, and pretty much anything else outlawed by the governments they self-exiled from. The lawlessness of The Bulb is what attracts almost all who inhabit it.

The Bazoye frequently engage in dance rituals, led by shamans, and always accompanied with strong psychedelics. The shamans of this culture are chosen because of a genetic mutation that manifests itself in two ways. One of which, is a bioluminescence in the skeletal muscle that is triggered when the tissue is impacted. The shaman will stand in the centre of the pitch black circle of other Bazoye and will be painted with different colours on different parts of the body. After the drugs have been passed around, the shaman will begin to dance, and their feet will begin to glow with the steps. Then they rhythmically pound parts of their body that glow different colours through the paint. All sing, play instruments, and dance along. The longer this goes on and the more bruised the tissue gets, the brighter the display becomes until the shaman has sweated off their paint and is glowing almost entirely white all over.

The Humans on the colony of Europa(Wall-E ship except it landed but no one got off and they're not fat) do what humans already do except, on average, they're far more sexually liberated. In addition disease and unwanted pregnancy is a distant memory. Therefore, more prostitution, orgies, dungeon parties, etc.

Genesis had different options. One of my favorites and most developed is the Crystal Pools resort on the border of Granite’s Keep and the Stygian Desert. Built up from a natural oasis.

Crystal Pools Resort

By day it was consider a luxury resort with a series of pools, cleansing treatments and of course the best food money could buy.

By night it was much of a place of party and pleasure. The pools remained up and the top tier pool used for VIP members. Bands often came in for performances and the most extravagant drinks west of Bastion. Parties lasted until mere hours before the day activities started.

Here is an excerpt from my book, hope you all enjoy!!

…That night we arrived at a massive oasis. It was gorgeous! It must have had a resort built around it at one time. The buildings were in shambles, they looked to be a couple stories tall with elaborate statues and paintings. Intricately carved stones lined the paths from all the buildings to the oasis. The tiered pools were surrounded by rich vegetation, offering plenty of shade and edible plant life. The top level pool was the smallest with the run off feeding the two lower levels. As we neared the water, we could see the pools were lined and intact. They were filled with beautiful, crystal clear water. At the bottom of the pool were glowing rocks, they illuminated the area.

All of us stood at a distance dazzled by such an amazing sight.

Helen yelled. “The Crystal Pools Resort is intact? You have got to be kidding me!” I’d never heard Helen sound so happy, she squealed with excitement.

Melody walked next to Helen. “You bet, and the water is fed directly from a clean spring. So hop on in!”

Everyone glanced at Eadric waiting for the okay.

“We really need to be prepared. Especially now that we are so close to the core.” Eadric turned his head to see a pool off to the side. “By Genesis! Is that a hot spring over there!”

Melody chuckled. “Sure is Eadric.”

Eadric straightened up. “Alright team, consider yourselves off duty for the moment, I’ll be on watch for now.”

Life for most folk in my setting, the West Fork, is simple and short. Though cultures, religion, and society vary wildly between the north and south, everyday life is mostly the same. Roughly 95% of the population are farmers, growing the food they need to survive, and this taking up most of their time, with usually one or two days out of the week left for resting and prayer.

Most leisure time in West Fork is to be found on holidays and festivals, or during bountiful seasons when folk don't need to work as hard to eat. These events are usually in celebration of the lord or king's birthday, those of his family, a holy day in dedication to a particular god, spirit, or local creature, or in celebration of a historical military event. At these events, folk are wont to play games in the commons, from riddles to dice, horseshoes to wrestling. In the south, jousts are common, and allow for the common man, with the right skill, to rise up to fame and fortune, if they can beat the best of the best in the land.

There are lots of different pastimes for citizens of Remnant, theatre and opera are the pastimes of the rich, the less well off gamble and visit bars, and the thieves of the city play a dangerous game that involves jumping off a roof with a bungee cord and picking pockets before they fly back up.

The balance of leisure and down-time has been thoroughly considered in the land of Pritam. In fact, the Pritamese religion specifically dictates that a period of time be spent each evening (anywhere from 15 minutes to well over an hour, depending on one's availability and level of spirituality) to do nothing except sit in silence and drink tea. The meditative properties of this activity allows the tea drinker to introspect and put contemplate the state of their life. Far from feeling forced to partake, a Pritamese person might in fact become quite irritated if circumstances do not allow for their evening tea.

In the city of Gharag, gambling is the preferred mode of diversion. Dice games are ubiquitous in the mining camps where leisure time is scarce but painfully boring, with tobacco being the usual currency. Playing cards were invented in the city proper and are still very common, particularly among the upper classes. Much of the Gharagite dialect reflects this, and you can often tell what class they belong to based on which metaphors they use.

Folks in Morcot just get drunk and fight, mostly.

In Sargon, before the desertification began in 2003, Denite Bay was a popular vacation spot.

Gliese 832 c, better known as Sargon, was a water-dominated planet. With just one continent, all the water was fresh water. The island continent, Fafrûn, has cliffs on all sides and contains only Sargonian Grass on top. Sargonian Grass produces a fine blue juice called Rit, can be mixed with adrenaline and boiled to create Hadéfo. For millennia, Sargonians survived off of Rit and Fronoi. Fronoi is a type of fish that lives underwater. They are very similar to the plesiosaurs from ancient earth. Unfortunately, the desertification started in 2003 and ended in 2238.

Denite Bay is a bay with caves on the side of the cliffs. Located near the Hills of Despair, Denite Bay used to be a beautiful resort of fresh water for Sargonians. Sargonians would come and relax there on the floating beaches of soft, porous sand.

It is now a decrepit old mining colony. The Underground Caves ran underneath Fafrûn and allowed the water from Garagon to flow downhill towards the cave entrances in Denite Bay.

Honestly not a lot for the average person, Most will eat and drink at the local inn/tavern. When events are on like a travelling circus, Duels (magic or otherwise), jousts, and tournaments. People will often flock to these semi occasional events. All in all mostly boring due to time and money constraints.

Those who can afford more however will have grand feasts and maybe in balls/parties of some kind. They will travel to far places like hotsprings, or rare spar "resorts" for pampering. However perhaps the most desired is the Dreamscape. People will contact the dreamwalkers (essentially mages with certain skills)where they will fall into a coma as their soul leaves their body and enters the dreamworld.

The dreamworld is essentially the blueprint for Ammora (the planet) and is simply filled with plants and no signs of life other than that. Other than it's serine beauty it's pure magic in its construction and gives a sense euphoria to most who enter it. As long as you don't stay to long it'll only give pleasant feelings, even after you leave the feelings linger for up to a week. It's a hard thing to do magically and thus it's very rare and very expensive.

Although Louisiana is a frontier kingdom currently at war on two fronts, inhabitants always find time for leisure activities. Gambling and drinking is a near daily activity, making music and dancing is also common, and everyone is usually carrying a stick to whittle on while they tell each other stories.

Now that the veil between worlds has become so week on the river, fishing has become a more adventurous act - you never know just what might be at the end of your line.

Student Hexmen engage in a unique sport west of Clarks Fort. They create aether kites and allows themselves to be lifted high from the ground (they have formed something like a surfing culture). Sometimes young women from the Blennerhassett Ladies School sneak over to join the fun.

• Ancap Commonwealth: for a bunch of rich anarchists who have taken over the galactic core (aliens get out, its manifest destiny!), they have an unsurprisingly morbid idea of fun.Some include the festivals celebrating anarchy where random cars or even small ships get blown up for fun and then they will dance around the fires trashing the local area. The hyperelite however have more class, and prefer dropping a recreational nuclear warhead on one of the communist villages. There are a lot more obscure things to do but this is tradition.

• Crimson Armada: They were a space fleet originated from the Soviet Union and was also engineered with Nazi technology and helped by escaped Nazi Scientists. So the main cultures are German and Russian. And that means a lot of alcohol. Festivals and celebrations typically end with a firework show by loading the battleship cannons with tracer shells.

• The Thousand Suns Empire: Ever since the civil war started, there has been literally no time for fun. Any shenanigans could get you drafted immediately.

• Ivitaly Militia: They always compete with racing their MicroFTL drives, being the original producer of them gives them the advantage over other factions. Think of it like Nascar, except in space. They often go along the border of their largest system, and is spectated by more outsiders than citizens within the territory. It is still a very dangerous sport, 10% of the racers die from engine troubles, or crashing into one of the asteroid rally points. People make bets on them, and giant corporations do stick their logos all over the ships. There is a lot more hype and emotion put into this sport because imagine your favorite sports team and then imagine they suddenly explode going everywhere at 15% the speed of light because they skimmed the side of an asteroid.

• Hahn Commonwealth, As opposed to the Ancap Commonwealth, the Hahn Commonwealth is in the galactic rim of human space. People here are less insane, and also more "professional" in a sense. The Main Religion of this area, The Church Of The Great Conductors, has heavy focus on finding the purpose and joy of life through talent, specifically musical talent. So every day there is at least one concert or contest being broadcasted to the entirety of human space from this area. The Hahn Family, which declared the commonwealth open to all, is all musicians, despite whatever occupation they have.

In the New Empire the nobility takes great pleasure in constant feasts and balls and meeting of art connoisseurs of art. But besides that, popular activities include:

-Hoffer racing. Hoffers are cutesy little pet creatures, that look like a friendly little fluffy doggo-bear ball of cuteness, slightly bigger than a York dog. The point is letting a few Hoffers loose on a short race track with a treat at the end. Aristocrats bet on them, the one that gets the treat first wins, and the ones that betted on him get money. Even if you loose though, it is fun to watch those cutesy little guys try to play with themselves instead of going for the treat.

-Hunting. Who doesnt enjoy hunting. Preety self explanatory.

-Playing all sorts of gambling games with cards, dice or whatever else can be used to gamble money.

-The latest craze are adventure books, especially the "Dangerous adventures of the brave Kadrin mercenaries in a far away land". Not a particularly ambitious book series, but a popular nonetheless, as it is a pioneer in the adventure book genre. A few years erlier adventure books were only read by women, and those were shitey romance books.

-And theatres and operas, preety self explanatory as well. Not as popular in the New Empire however.

Popular forms of entertainent among the less wealthy citizens of the New Empire include:

-drinking games, like the Blind Hans, which includes pouring booze into your eyes.

-bar fights.

-stealing from the wealthier citizens

In the elven lands, where the elven culture is very much fond of their art, elves spend their time differently :

-a popular one is watching artists making their works in public spaces, like city squares. The finest artists often set up a stand where they gather tips from the watchers that are in ave of their skill

-A very popular activity is going to theaters, operas. The poorer citizens have a place in the audience guaranteed even if they dont have money to pay. As long as they claim the spot before everyone else. The more sophisticated, wealthy elves pay for spots closer to the scene itself. Recently a great tragedy was released, named "Jorgen and Alia", and it became an instant classic. Its kinda the "Romeo and Juliet" of my world

-Reading books, but not adventire books, like those barbaric humans. Philosophical and science books. A sign of our culture being better than theirs!

Let's move on to the Union. The szlachta (nobility) there takes great pleasure in:

-Hunting. One that can manage to track down and kill a Blackbear can enjoy great prestige, and quite a bit of many for it's furs. Or just a nice trophy. But beware, fighting Blackbears without a small army can end horribly badly.

-Feasts! Hectolitres of alcohol, the finest vodkas, drunk dances with preety ladies on the tables, all that good stuff. And drunk fighting. Lots of it. The szlachta is famous for their ability to drink, and how much they utilise it.

-Weddings can be a week long (a week has 10 days in my world) gigantic feast, with a festival organised for the poor, countless bards and musicians, thousands of attendants, priests blessing the booze, sometines even the king himself visits the biggest and most important weddings. They also involove tons of traditions and rituals, which are mostly inspired by the actual slavic rituals and tradutions.

And thats it for now. I may edit in some more fluff later.

The Rua generally host seasonal (or bi-seasonal in the capital) games centered around riding skill in any town big enough to manage it.

They typically ride large reindeer-like animals they call Abrachs, and undergo all kinds of events, usually at least one unique to each town. Obstacle course races, marksmanship, training and grooming, jousting, hunting, long jump, weight pulls, swimming races,

One town is known for a bizarre event in which contestants have to carry six eggs as they navigate a racetrack atop their Abrachs. Each broken one adds a time penalty, and breaking them all is a disqualification. If someone finds you unintentionally entertaining in a certain region east of the capital, they'll call you an omelette, and now you know why.

Nothing is off the table, there are no real standards for what games are involved in each town or each season.

Meta comment!

Congrats to u/DemonDuJour and u/Dontwakethemuse on the Drugs/Addiction thread last week: https://redd.it/670ob7

Still looking for ideas/suggestions for topics!

Well, in the capital of The First Alliance, there is a Grand Colosseum, where combat tournaments are held. These tournaments are NOT to the death (unless by special agreement by all participating parties), and can be entered by anyone. They occur once a week, and have great rewards for the victors. Casual fights are held at all times. Orcs will commonly hold riding-based games, such as races and a sport similar to lacrosse.

Tianxia: for the commoners its reading books, watching street performances, playing games, hunting, fishing, going to tea houses, gambling and painting. Among the wealthy merchants, scholars and nobles they enjoy the same thing as the commoners plus hawking, private concerts, poetry readings and other noble pastimes.

So the MalloMen (rare timber loggers), during their annual visit to the high altitude desert "forests", enjoy sitting in the trees and mimicking various bird songs with the goal of attracting the largest variety of bird species to gather around them. MalloMen love birds.