Bwneirs Ritual (buːneirs)
Communion Berries
When an adept of the Moon Church is ready to take vows and become a priestess, she has to undergo a ritual officiated by Damparo, the champion of the Goddess, and a high-rank member of the Church, usually from the Council.
The ritual, which Damparo calls bwneirs ritual, is officially named "communion initiation ritual". It consists in harvesting and eating a bowl of berries from the Garden of Memories. It is one of the few rituals Damparo officiates willingly.
I would never refuse to participate in this ritual. I invented it, and it is worth every moment I have to tolerate the priestess's presence in my garden. Centuries of boredom have been cancelled. I can securely say this game is now one of my preferred activities.
History
At first, to gain communion with the Goddess, adepts would drink wine blessed by the current Head Priestess in a lengthy ceremony taking place twice per year in the High Temple of the Moon, where Damparo, the head priestess, all the members of the Council and several ordinary priestesses were present.
The Hidden Truth
A couple years after the Abyssal Crisis, Damparo told the priestesses their ritual was no longer working. The chaotic energies were still lingering, and he claimed he could feel them during the ceremony. He offered help to design a new ritual, to take place inside the Garden of Memories, a more protected area. After a couple of months of discussions, the initiation ritual reached the form it still has nowadays.
The ritual lasted about three hours, which was two and a half hours more than Damparo liked to be in strict uninterrupted contact with the priestesses. His presence was not necessary to the ritual, and he tried several times to ask for a reformation of the ceremony to stay out of it, but to no avail. After the Abyssal Crisis in the nineteenth century, he decided he had enough. He tasked a friendly wayfarer to bring him a hallucinogen or otherwise mildly toxic fruit from the Dark Lands and got the purple berries, which he immediately renamed "bwneirs".
Execution
It took quite a while to define every single detail of the process with the Council, but, mind you, nothing in this ritual makes sense. It is just a well-succeeded joke. Remember, I have complete control over the Garden's topology. I can make the candidate look around forever for either me or the berries, to my heart's content.
The ritual starts in the High Temple, where the candidate has to undress and cross naked the gate in the building's central nave to the Garden valley behind, symbolising the leaving of her old life behind. Once out of the temple, she has to wear a ritual dress so long it makes walking without tripping a real challenge.
Then, the first search begins. The adept must look for Damparo inside the Garden while chanting prayers and hymns. The Champion of the Moon observes their movement and waits until he judges the future priestess to be ready to successfully proceed in the ritual.
When she founds him, he hands over a glass bowl blessed by the Head Priestess and officially asks the candidate to fill it with bwneirs. The uncomfortable dress makes harvesting the berries from their thorny bushes a painful trial. Once the bowl is finally full, the candidate, likely cut and bruised, has to make her way back to the entrance, where Damparo and a member of the Council are waiting.
Here, the final part of the ritual takes place. The soon-to-be priestess has to eat the berries and drink the blessed wine the Council member brought with her. Usually, the candidate starts feeling sick in a matter of minutes. She feels nauseated, trembles and hallucinates, often hearing the Goddess talking to her, revealing truths about Nys and the universe. The symptoms escalate rapidly into confused chaos until the reborn priestess collapse from exhaustion.
Other priestesses hurry to take care of their associate, bringing her into her room, back in the temple. When the Garden's gate shuts close behind them, the ritual is officially concluded.
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