Harvest Festival

Harvest Festival (収穫祭) is a traditional festival held in Carne Village.

Background
Traditionally this celebration is held once every year to lift supposedly an evil curse on the land. At the festival an altar is placed in the middle of the village. Meanwhile. the villagers dress in festive and splendid costumes.

Purpose of Event
According to an local folklore from the village chieftain, the Harvest Festival at Carne Village was originally hosted to placate and entertain the evil spirits sleeping in the land. It was said that if these spirits ever got angry they would cause a poor harvest. In the past there have been years of when the Harvest Festival was stopped, due to bad weather or lack of motivation. In each of those instances, since the Harvest Festival stopped being hosted, there was a rush of unsuccessful harvests which caused the festival to be reinstated. Strangely after the Harvest Festival resumed each year crop yields increased.

Aftermath
In the main timeline, it is presumed that the Harvest Festival is celebrated as usual and was briefly mentioned by Enri Emmot. However in the Mass for the Dead continuity, after the villagers from Carne Village were attacked by Chaos Beasts coming from the Crack in the Great Forest of Tob, they all evacuated from the area to E-Rantel. The village now abandoned the Harvest Festival could not commence. Since its abandonment, a number of strange occurrences began to plague the denizens of the forest. After Hamsuke encountered a strange shadow in the dark, it was reported to the de-facto ruler of the forest, Momonga. The shadow was believed to be a ghost and an investigation was conducted to learn exactly what was going on. Aura Bella Fiora leading the investigation, eventually found that the ghost was not really an astral being but some sort of demon beast.

The protagonist leading a team in E-Rantel, eventually learned about the festival from the Swords of Darkness, who heard it from the evacuated villagers. The festival and its connection in appeasing in "evil spirits", which Momonga believed to be the demon beast, he ordered his subjects to host recommence the Harvest Festival in the abandoned human village to hopefully lure the mysterious entity there so it could be captured.