The first day of the festival finely arrives under cloudy skies, though the word on the street is that rain is not likely. The adventurers rise early, and head out of the gates to the public green along with a throng of townspeople. Although it is early, the fairground is teeming with activity. The entrance to the ground is lined with a number of tents, each erected and run by a local tavern or alehouse. Meat is sizzling on spits, cooks labor behind gigantic metal stoves that have been dragged out for just this occasion, the monstrosities fed by sweating kitchen help no more than a dozen or so years old. Each tavern is using the day as an occasion to premier the ales or whiskeys that have been aging in cellars all winter.
Past the main entrance are more exotic food stalls. A wizened Ylari man and his four daughters advertise their spicy goat on a stick in accented Thyatian. One low tent is run exclusively by dwarves, it seems, and is selling ale purported to be straight from Rockhome itself, a taste of the legendary dwarven homeland. It is doing brisk trade already, filled to near bursting with local dwarves. Several stalls advertise traditional Traladaran fare; roasted potatoes and turnips, a bright red beet soup ladled into a crust of hollowed out bread, flat pancakes made from potato flour.
At the far southern end of the fairground is a large open area surrounded on three sides by bales of hay piled taller than a man. A brace of gnomes stand on the open end, holding strange looking sticks out to show a bemused crowd. One raises the stick to his shoulder, sights down it a moment and there is a horrendous roar followed by a plume of acrid smoke. The gnome is knocked back several feet, and a bottle that had been placed on a bale of hay some fifty feet away from him explodes in a shower of green glass. The gnome raises the stick above his head triumphantly while the bulk of the onlookers back away slowly, a few surreptiously making the finger sign that wards away the evil eye.
Just a few paces away from the gnomes is a brightly colored covered wagon. A pert young Traladaran girl stands before the wagon, exhorting passersby to come and "have your fortune told by Madame Esmerelda, seer and oracle to the Duke! Just one gold coin a person! Let Madame gaze into your heart and unlock the secrets of your future! No refunds!" The young girl gestures in the direction of an ancient crone seated upon the bottom step leading up into the wagon, dressed in bright rags and scarves.
Next to Madame Esmerelda's is a tent enclosed on three sides. Inside the tent one can see the walls are hung with a profusion of maps. A bespectacled Thyatian man waves interested bystanders inside. "I have maps! Cartographic wonders of both near and abroad! Discover Threshold's place in the Duchy, or explore with your finger the rough outlines of the Savage Coast! My maps are without number and without measure! I have a map detailing a secret route into the treasury of the far-off city of Gim! Uncover the secrets of the Isle of Dread, or the land of the vulture people!"
