The Ritual of Champions

The Ritual of Champions is an annual event in The High Kingdom, held at the Midwinter Solstice, in honour of Kaeletha. Originally, the tradition was that The High King would be sacrificed each year to provide for the fertility of the land for the coming year, and a new High King would be appointed and would marry the queen. Gradually however the tradition evolved, so that someone would challenge the High King for the right to be High King, and they would fight to the death, with the winner becoming the High King, and the loser's blood being used to fertilise the land, and fulfil the ritual requirement. The right to be the champion became a position of honour, and a competition evolved for who was going to be given this honour.  Originally a fight to the death, this evolved into a tournament, and only the final challenge was to the death.   With the Elven invasion, the ritual evolved again - Elven rulers were not willing to be sacrificed for the good of the land.  Instead, a human was chosen to be the champion, and then killed by the High King. It became apparent that this sacrifice was not as well received by Kaeletha, but the greater magical power and connection to the land of the Elves helped compensate for this.  High King T'aren was able to modify the ritual and persuade the goddess to accept a different sacrifice of blood instead, and reformulated the Ritual into a great tournament instead, ending in a ritual killing of all those condemned to death in the previous year, who became the sacrifice to the goddess instead.