39 Neverwinter's Celebration

After the victorious battle against the demons, all of Neverwinter was in celebration. King Roland declared a day off from work and a huge event was organized for that day. Roland knew that the morale of the people at home was just as important as the morale of the soldiers. Happy and hopeful people would work with much more efficiency. The recent victory provided an excellent opportunity for propaganda and Roland wanted to make full use of it.

Once the day of the celebration came, the entire city was prepared. All of the soldiers had returned to Neverwinter and were now participating in a military parade. Amidst great cheering, the soldiers marched through the streets of Neverwinter before finally arriving at the palace. There, Roland addressed the citizens of Neverwinter and thanked the soldiers for their great contribution. Then, he began emphasizing the great power of the nation and encouraged everyone to continue to work hard so that they could reach even greater heights. He ended with a message of hope and assured everyone that they would achieve total victory over the demon threat and save humanity.

After Roland finished speaking, the people of Neverwinter went on to enjoy the festivities that were prepared for them. There was a multitude of wonderful food available for everyone to eat. There was a variety of meats available, all cooked in different ways. The mushrooms that are a specialty of the region were used to enhance the taste of many dishes. Various types of vegetables were available for people to eat as well.

There was also bread, but it was not the ordinary dull bread that people eat every day. The bread was baked with additional flavoring added into the dough, giving the bread different tastes. In the past, Roland had been dissatisfied with the lack of spices and seasoning available to them. His response to this deficiency was to commission Leaf to develop new strains of plants which could be used to flavor foods. It had been a difficult process, creating such different tastes while also ensuring edibility was no small task. It had taken much experimentation and testing before Leaf came up with some. They weren't the best and there was definitely a lot of room for improvement, but it was already a great improvement over what the people of Neverwinter were used to.

The festival was to be a testing ground for these new flavorings. The bread was baked with these flavors so people were able to choose between all these new types of bread flavors. The people found this quite novel and eagerly tried these new flavors of bread. Some of them were well like, others were not, some were like by some but not others. By looking at the amount of bread of each type that was eaten, Roland had a rough idea of which types of flavors were actually liked by the people and this information was used to further the development of the plants.

The celebration went all throughout the afternoon and people partied and had fun. At night there were hotpots and people gathered around the large pots placed throughout the entire city. Everyone got together and took their time putting their food in the pot to cook while they talked with one another.

During this celebration, card games were fully introduced to the population. Initially, Roland had given the first sets of cards to the witches who enjoyed it very much. However, not many card sets made their way into the hands of the common folk. Now, many more had been produced and the card games that Roland "invented" were introduced to the people. The card games gained a lot of popularity after people found out about them and watched others play.

The common people all had a very good time during the celebration. After all, having all that free food was enough to get most people excited. They didn't have to work that day and partied with their friends. The citizens all had very basic desires and it wasn't difficult at all to satisfy them.

The witches were all celebrating as well. Roland made sure to specially address them and emphasized to them the importance of their job. The witches were all very happy to be praised by the king. The witches all got access to excellent food as well as Chaos drinks. They each got quite a lot of Chaos drinks, though not an unlimited amount. Even though Roland had a lot Chaos drinks produced, there weren't quite enough to have all the witches drink as much as they want. It would also be wasteful to have them overindulge on one day.

Most surprisingly, the Taquila witches were all very happy as well. They were unable to taste anything, which was a shame because they couldn't experience all of the wonderful food. Roland felt quite sad for them because they couldn't fully enjoy the celebration. Despite this, they were all very happy.

The reason that they were all very happy is that they had finally won. They had survived for hundreds of years with only one task in mind - saving humanity from the demons. To this end they sacrificed so much and toiled for so long without any sense of progress. Now, they finally saw their hopes coming true. In the past, there was no defeating the demons. The war was just them slowly losing ground and getting whittled down. They had no way to defeat the demons, but now they finally saw their goal within reach. The battle showed them that advanced technology would allow humans to stand up to the demons. It was very difficult for humans to enhance their own strength. However, with the aid of tools they are able to achieve great things by borrowing the power of the natural world. The Taquila witches celebrated more than they have ever done before. They might even be the most happy out of everyone.

Eventually, the celebration had to end. Roland returned to bed with his wives. In the morning, the work had to begin. New advancements were necessary, more development had to occur. They had their time of celebration, now it was time for everyone to get back to work.