Festival of the All-Seeing Eye

**The Festival of the All-Seeing Eye** is a cultural and religious festival observed in the northern Galaxy. It is a festival dedicated to Odin, the Aesir Star God of knowledge and science.

## Customs

A thin book has the discoveries of the year printed on its pages. As an offering to Odin, and to reflect his values, the contents MUST be recorded in other books and read aloud to a crowd. Over the years, the ritual was modernised to simply reprinting the contents and broadcasting to the people and other planets. The book is yellow, symbolising either the knowledge being sweet to the Allfather, or humility before him.

If a yearly "harvest" has dangerous information, it is printed in a purple book, and transmitted to a secret data archive. To the disappointment of the annual crowds outside the temples or watching this in their holojectors, a screen will display as an apology for their failure, leading to widespread groaning and even outrage in some obsessive worlds.

Only after the contents are recorded and shown can the book be burned as a sacrifice. If the contents are not recorded and read aloud, the sacrifice will be useless.

According to folk belief, after the book is sacrificed, it reappears in a shelf, deep within an endless library somewhere in Heaven. So this ritual sacrifice of a file of discoveries is called, "sending a book to Heaven".

### Sacrificing records to the Gods

It is not just books that are sacrifices to the Gods, and not only on that festival, but also machines and databanks in the Novantirna religion. Novantirnas do not burn books like tyrannies do to censor works, but they only offer ritual files and their own valuables, either to thank the Gods or mourn the destruction of lost knowledge. Therefore, they consider tyrants' book burnings to be desecration because it was not done to honour knowledge, but out of hate and ignorance. That was why Konjors and Terrans destroy Malendor books and computers to curse their enemies, just as they blaspheme Odin by destroying and eating Malendor prisoners' eyes.

In Novantirna belief, if you offer an object you love to the Gods, especially a treasure, you show that you love the Gods and the good they do and represent. For example, devotees of Odin burn their own diaries to thank their God, after copying their contents elsewhere. They must copy as many contents elsewhere in order for the sacrifice to work.

Destroyed or ruined machines, books, databanks are also offered to Heaven as an act of mourning. It is even more sad to a Novantirna if a precious old book was ruined before any of its contents would be copied and saved. So Novantirnas burn said book, but they treat it like a funeral. In fact, in some conquered libraries, damaged books that were unable to be copied were cremated as a mass funeral, and the devout Malendors would wail and cry for the lost information.

## Comedy

In the Malendor Supercorporation, there is a comedy series known as "The Beer".

Its story consists of several historians and scientists being horrified by this year's discovery - the second most popular beer brand in the Supercorporation was not made from animal sweat, but from thousands of paid, drunk volunteers who used their own sweat as an ingredient.

It all started from an Igarin emperor who was so drunk that he accidentally made the first sweat beer brand, when drops of his sweat landed on his goblet.

Because the discovery was considered to be very embarrassing, the priests tried to hide it to avoid making a scene. Instead someone overheard the priests and started a rumour.

When hundreds of people showed up for the yearly reading, they stayed, waiting for the rumoured "sweat beer" to be confirmed. The CEO of the sweat beer brand denied the allegations, while elsewhere, the sweatsmen proudly posted selfies of themselves getting drunk, making glasses of sweat, and getting lots of money and laughing away.

On the day of the discovery, a blackout conveniently cancelled an accidental broadcast - someone mistakenly made the broadcast public instead of private. The horrified scientists and priests watched as the whole town rang with laughter, and cheers for the beer brand's sweatsmen.

## Local variations

### Nandegakko

In Nandegakko, the ritual is a symbol ceremony, where at the start of winter, a book is burned at the Temple of Odin. Although Nandegakkovians are atheists, many of them do attend the ceremony as a proud symbol of knowledge being added to sapientkind.

Even Presidents also attended the festival to celebrate new discoveries and innovations. Knowledge itself is a proud national value in Nandegakko's culture.

An alternative ceremony in the southern parts of Nandegakko is "the pool of wisdom". Instead of burning books, they sacrifice the books to Odin by throwing the book into a round pool.

Another temple to Odin has a large pool with a pile of books at its depths. Although people can go fishing on certain days of the week, swimming in that pool is be a crime, punishable by a fine of three hundred skorojes or a jail term of two local weeks.

### Northern Galaxy

In the northern parts of the Galaxy, the books were replaced by three simple pages in a yellow file, sometimes lavishly decorated with calligraphy. This was due to a tyranny that was notorious for burning books. When the Novantirna authorities tried to force them to burn full records instead of three-page files, three wars broke out between several star systems.

### Resparins

Resparins were notorious for accidentally burning entire villages over sacrificing lots of wooden scrolls. Due to this, only a few pages are offered to the Gods.

## Names

Novantirna: Ôzrin Hänsjâmbôřes (Great Science Day of Odin)

## Trivia

* The practice of sacrificing books to Odin may have been inspired by the Feast of the Emperor's Ascension from Warhammer 40000, where similar practices were done in some worlds to offer their knowledge to the God-Emperor.
	+ The author later extended it to damaged or old valuables, where people burn them as a sort of funeral. It was also inspired by Hindu and Sikh rites where people hold a "cremation" for damaged holy books.

## See also

* Yule, another holy day to the Lord of Knowledge.