The Sports Festival

An annual Solmere event of individual trials and showcases rather than combat. Registration opens three weeks into the second term, and the festival runs two weeks later.

The rules that are stated

• Four events maximum per student. Finn tries for seven.
• Some events are ability-specific showcases; at least one permits no abilities at all.
• Relay teams fill quickly. "Last year the relay teams were full by lunch."

UPP: You can only register for four events maximum. It's in the rules. FNN: SINCE WHEN? UPP: Since the rules were written. Which was before either of us were born, presumably. (ch. 284)

Who enters what

Finn drafts everybody's assignments without asking, "and then I answered on everyone's behalf. It's more efficient this way."

Arthur's problem, stated out loud

Finn's planning stalls on him, and the table goes quiet.

FNN: I genuinely don't know what to put you in. You don't have an ability to showcase in the ability-specific events, and the physical events feel almost unfair given whatever it is you're capable of doing that none of us fully understand yet.

ART: What events don't require an ability at all? FNN: There's the endurance course. Straight physical trial, no abilities permitted, purely conditioning and technique. [...] It's genuinely brutal. Most people who attempt it without an ability boosting their stamina drop out halfway. ART: I've had six years of sword forms and considerably more stubbornness than sense. I think I'll manage.

That is the first time the group has addressed his lack directly, and nobody is cruel about it. Compare ch. 245.

The day's schedule

Read out by Instructor Sutton in ch. 286.

SUT: Get to your events. Don't be late. I have neither patience nor sympathy for tardiness on festival days specifically.

The opening address

Headmistress Wysteria states the saga's thesis from the platform:

WYS: strength takes many shapes. Some of you will compete today using the gifts your souls granted you at birth. Others will compete using skills built through years of deliberate, patient effort. Both are worth celebrating equally. Neither is worth more than the other.

Arthur is certain her attention settled on him while she said it.

The betting

Ch. 285. Finn runs a betting sheet on the festival and is discovered mid-conditioning.

He has bet against Briar in the event he personally assigned him to, and against Elsie in hers.

FNN: You don't make money betting on the favorites.

FNN: The data doesn't care about friendship, Briar. That's rather the entire point of data.

Arthur is not on the board at all.

No data available. Nobody's taking bets on him either way.

FNN: nobody knows what to make of the endurance course odds because nobody's ever seen anyone do what you apparently did to that lightning bolt, so the whole betting community's simply too uncertain to commit either direction.

He is unbothered, and the chapter says why:

There had been a time [...] when being overlooked this completely might have cut considerably deeper. He thought, briefly and without much weight, of a scorched schoolyard, of a word that had once followed him like weather. It did not touch him the same way now.

The academic relay is a murder mystery

Ch. 287 and ch. 288. Not a trivia contest. A staged study, a body, five witnesses played by students and faculty, and two investigators working the same scene at the same time.

PROC: First to correctly name the culprit, with adequate supporting reasoning, wins the heat.

Briar wins it against Rosalind, on the spread pattern of a wine stain. See his entry.

Finn's bet against him loses.

The strategy tournament is chess

Ch. 291. Mira wins it outright, with a rook sacrifice on move twenty-four that drives her opponent's king across the whole board.

The game is a real one. The chapter reproduces, move for move, the game commonly called Kasparov's Immortal: an e4 d6 Pirc, castling on opposite wings, and the rook sacrifice on d4 on move twenty-four that begins a king hunt from a8 to d1. The chapter's title, "The Immortal Game", is the tell.

Recorded as an observation rather than a claim about intent. The archive does not otherwise track real-world references, and this is the only one found so far.

The dueling showcase

Ch. 292. Corin beats Dane Whitlock, who had not lost a formal duel at Solmere in two years, in a weapons-only format.

Sutton then tells another instructor that with abilities permitted Corin "wouldn't have lasted eleven seconds", and that Dane's ability is "one of the three most dangerous in this entire academy, and I include the faculty in that assessment".

The endurance course

Ch. 293. Twenty-three starters, no abilities permitted, as many circuits of the western grounds as a competitor can manage.

Arthur runs twenty-seven. The previous record was fourteen, set with an endurance-enhancing ability in a format that allowed it.

He is alone on the course from the nineteenth circuit, is told he has won, and keeps running. What carries him is not his own strength, and the crowd watching stops being tired. See ../systems/the-built-ability.md.

The final tally

Ch. 294.

Finn's own conclusion:

FNN: I'm apologizing because I lost money AND because I've realized, somewhat belatedly, that I may have been systematically undervaluing everyone I actually care about, which is a genuinely uncomfortable thing to discover about oneself in a single afternoon.

And Headmistress Wysteria stays at the notice board after everybody leaves. See her entry.

Open questions

• The full event list. Six are named and there are clearly more.
• Whether the festival is scored by house, year, or individual.