It's Mesa, back again for the Full Moon Festival in the RP between me and Pheonixfire77! Specifically, Mesa and Varin are going to it together and Mesa needed some fitting garb. His outfit is comprised of some (very long, but they were crafted specifically for this, they're supposed to be that way) dyed cotton scarves wrapped around the rim and bottom half of his outer wings. (Both for mobility purposes and i was tired of drawing with a mouse :/ ),, tied with braided leather and flattened golden brass rings around the elbow areas and wingtips to secure the scarf. The ties are adorned with bells and, in the case of his wrists, rattlesnake rattles, so that he makes noise as he moves. He's also wearing a necklace and shoulderband of beaten silver discs to look like full moons, and he's polished his horns, claws, and scales for the occasion. As for the body paint, Kite (another one of my OCs, whom I'm planning on RPing as whenever he comes up, maybe he'll be at the festival, IDK) painted him. He's a Handsome Boi :)
As for some cultural HCs about the Sandwing's Full Moon Festival (which was only given some passing mention and details in the books) and for general worldbuilding, here you go! -Full Moon Festivals are celebrated twice a year by the Sandwings, on the night in which Phyrria's largest moon is full. Due to the fact that moon cycles are weird and vary as the cycle changes (how else would blue moons exist?), the specific date of the festival varies, but it's important to note that the largest moon is full (always! Without fail!) only on the two solstices of summer and winter. Due to this, most scholars figure that the festival came about due to ancient Sandwings using the solstices as a mark for the passage of the year. Nowadays, it's mainly just a tradition used as an excuse for Sandwings to put the year's old trouble's behind them and embrace one's culture. -One prominant (and canon! Skywings and Sandwings are mentioned in Escaping Peril painting huge canvases of midnight blue and white during the festival) thing about full moon festivals is painting. There are competitions on who can paint the best picture/weave the best tapestry/ make the best sculpture depicting the night of the festival. Whoever wins gets their project put in the royal castle to commemorate that festival, which, paired with the previous one, marks a year. There's also less competitive painting, in which huge, midnight blue banners are strung for dragons to fling white and yellow paint at them to make stars. These banners are then hung up the next year. Usually, the family of the banner-makers take them home. -Another staple of the Full-Moon festival, weirdly enough (for dragon's whose entire first arc was made up of Oh No Big Scary Wartime Plot) is peace among the kingdoms. The roundness of the moon is a symbol of prosperity, and since Sandwings are perhaps the tribe that trades with the others the most (aren't many resources in the desert, after all), peace between other tribes is necessary. This is so ingrained into the ideology of the festival that during wars, it's prohibited to celebrate it (which is why they, quoting the books "weren't celebrated much during the war.") There are, however, tales of dragons celebrating it with other tribes during wars to foster peace, covering themselves in paint so that it was harder to distinguish the tribe. This is a hypothetical story and not at all actually encouraged in Sandwing society, but it has led to the rise of body and face painting during the festival. One particularly fun painting-centric activity is that which an area is cleared out and large bowls of paint are set up, and dragons throw it at each other and cover each other in colors to symbolize the disguises from the story. Some dragons also paint decorative patterns on their bodies for the occasion. -There's also tons of dancing, bonfires, and singing, mainly that for the purpose of honoring the moons. A popular dance includes groups of twelve adult Sandwings (to indicate the twelve months) gathering in a circle to represent the moon, wings flaring out to make the moon's rays. Younger ones, who haven't yet come of age, dance in groups of six, representing the first summer equinox in a halved number to symbolize half the year. This is but one of the many dances they have. Mesa's personal favorite is the Rattlesnake dance (an idea I stole from here https://fanwings.tumblr.com/post/158725490763/headcanon-that-sandwing-dancers-often-tie-rattles ), because he can actually experience a lot of it without seeing. It's also why he's already wearing the rattles. -Since the festival is an All-Nighter by nature, there's also plenty of tables and food vendors all around, laden with fried scorpions and fresh fruit and prey, with desserts such as moon-cakes similar to those at a human's Chinese New Year or cardamom buns. -All in all, the festival is celebration for the sake of celebration, and how much better it can be when celebrating peace. It's a celebration of Sandwing culture, history, and peace between tribes all symbolized by the moon, as another full moon means another peaceful half-year passed. The moon, thus, symbolizes prosperity and peace in Sandwing culture, and is a very important symbol. While the festival is very lighthearted, it carries a lot of cultural weight for what Sandwings used to do when there WEREN'T wars going on. It's just...really awesome. (God, I love worldbuilding. I put WAAAY too much research into a holiday for fictional, sapient dragons, but I can't bring myself to mind. This took way too long, but it was incredibly fun and I'm proud.)
