The Cities are the acknowledged world capital of fairs and carnivals. The blend of general prosperity, convergence of the trade routes, government lenience and the spectacle-obsessed, hedonistic nature of the residents all ensure the fact. All the major and some of the minor festivals see fairs blossoming, as do major market days or key anniversaries. In addition, government-organised pageantries and celebrations have fairs at their margins; the celebration of Chela Tatel's election being the major recent example, the Festival of Christoté in 1267, which generated the biggest carnival the world has ever seen, the most striking one in history. The big annual event is held on Garreday in Rand Park, reaching its peak just before the Games start in midday. The park, for reasons of both size and centrality, hosts all major fairs, though some of the larger city squares or public buildings (e.g. Routledge Hall) are also used. No two fairs are alike. Theoretically they are controlled by Council officials but stalls are generally leased out on a first-come-first-served basis with vetting only for safety purposes. While there is no attempt to shape fairs, however, some trends have emerged.
Magic One perennially popular feature is the display of the fantastic or unusual, generally in large canvas enclosures with fees charged for entrance. The Academy occasionally puts on shows, generally of high-spectacle, low-effort magic tricks (coloured lights, columns of fire and the like) garnished with plenty of showmanship and a heavy dose of propaganda warning about magic in untrained hands. More frequent are displays given by freelance wizards, who also show off magical artefacts, a practice frowned on by the Academy. The Orb of the Gods was a good one a few years ago, which performed low-grade matter-reorganisation spells (cabbages into flowers and so on). Perhaps justifying the Academy's warnings, a few years before that came an animated sword which got out of hand and severely wounded several people before being stopped. However, the fact that a fair few freelance wizards are probably too inept or insane to fully understand what they're doing adds to the thrill for some people. A safer alternative comes from the so-called 'Swizzards,' with absolutely no magical abilities or artefacts, specialising in sleight-of-hand illusions, Mr Memory acts, fortune telling and a lot of heavy-handed showmanship. They are far more common fare and by no means confined to fairgrounds, hawking their trades from every other street corner and market stall.
Freak Shows Gawping of a different variety comes from the Fantastic Animals and Freak Shows displays. The former are the most prevalent and a staple of any fair worth its names. They are mobile zoos displaying cages of rare or savage animals from across Teraf to the rest of Teraf. Two main rival zoos have been coming to the Cities for years. Fearless Friango's has in recent years acquired a pair of lions from the Lascar Mountains, coyotes from the Zabrial desert, a whole pack of xonthus from the Campbells, a good line in huge squeezing snakes from the Jungle of Jeronze and a rather infirm manticore bought from Ellniss. The Savage Beasts, with more northern connections, is rather bulked out by bears and wolves but currently boasts a wyvern (a form of lesser dragon which, conveniently, doesn't breath fire) and once had a legendary pair of yetis, nick-named Tomas and Teresa, who displayed near-human qualities. Though the animals are mainly for looking at, some of the more intelligent like wolves and xonthus are taught tricks. Some fights are also staged although nervous authorities, who already protect the animals with a host of regulations, slap Preservation Edicts on any species suspected of being rare and most fights are between dogs, wolves and bears.
Freak shows have also put liberal authorities and intellectuals in a quandary. Not those displaying captive Orcs, goblins or Ellniss snakemen, of which there are an intermittent number; those creatures are said to be fair game. Nor either those displaying captive elves, dwarves or gnomes, which are unconditionally banned (though the odd band of dwarf entrepreneurs have marketed themselves as a freak show, but then subject the unwary stepping into a tent to very dull lectures on dwarvish religions, customs and ironcraft). But the genuine freak shows of deformed or insane humans have caused much debate over the years. They have been variously banned or sanctioned, in and out of fashion but never entirely vanishing. Currently they are rather popular and the Tatel administration has contented itself with surrounding them with a host of regulations while it makes up its mind. Its general position is that the unsound of mind shouldn't be displayed but the deformed can be, providing they expressly give their consent. The present flavour of the month is the Jurick Beast-Women, who have appeared at every major fair for the past few years. They feature a collection of hugely muscular women with rather savage intelligence who prowl and snarl at visitors, and are quirkily run by a few hugely muscular women with average intelligence. The mundane truth is that the troop is simply a group of renegades from Charlae, who before their exile overdid consumption of body-building herbs.
Sports Games and sports are another large feature of fairs. More roped off enclosures and admittance fees give access to various demonstrations. Wrestlers showing off their prowess, swordsmen putting on elaborate and rather contrived combats (with wooden swords), archery contests, javelin throwing and weight-lifting are all common sights. Fairgrounds are particularly fertile ground for noted Five Crowns or Dorlaf Games competitors; while few of the contests are considered serious events, they are an invaluable source of income for the athletes and their stables. Demonstrations of 'trick-riding' are also popular, horsemen riding standing up, turning cartwheels and other such nonsense. Some sports are also audience-participatory. Members of the public pay to go up against the professionals, winning a purse not usually if they triumph but if they can hold out for a reasonable time. Wrestling events are especially popular, the usual time limit to be endured five minutes. The highly trained Erish wrestlers who flock to the Cities at carnival time all seem able to tie the unwary into knots which, while highly painful and embarrassing, never do any lasting damage.
Performers Actors, buskers and musical troops (see separate files) are familiar sights. Jugglers are seen in large numbers, generally performing with the most dangerous objects they feel they can manage. Acrobats and tumblers can also be seen, invariably pretending to Warien although they are usually locals. The association of Warien with dextrous arts is one no-one can quite explain but it is too long established to challenge. (One theory is that Christotans aren't entirely comfortable seeing their sophisticated fellow citizens wearing sparkly, revealing costumes and contorting their bodies into all sorts of unlikely shapes). Professional comedians are equally common, and less ashamed of their roots. There are two basic varieties. One are the traditional sorts, a group of 1-3 who wear ridiculous costumes, often with false and enormous ears, noses etc. They rely on very crude and often visual humour and generally enact old, unvarying routines which the audience can shout the punchlines to. A more modern, though still long-established, variety are solo performers who loudly deadpan their way through satirical routines lampooning the foibles of modern society or government. They too wear costumes but generally striking all white or black bodysuits with masks over their faces, a throwback to the days when such comedy was routinely punished.