The Festival was an annual eight-day-long celebration that incorporated aspects from a number of Earth holidays.

It originated from the prospectors during the rough colonization of Titan.

They were inadvertently trapped during mankind’s first encounter with a Long Seven: the extreme winter season of this moon of Saturn, a period of 7.5 Earth-years, during which unrelenting gales swept cold air in from the arctic causing unending superstorms and incredibly low temperatures.

The sabeah represents the drive plumes of the spacecraft supporting them from orbit.

The sabeah, an eight-pronged bunsen burner device similar in design to a Jewish menorah, was used to mark the passage of the years on each day. The blue, constant flame and the three tallest burners represented the drive plumes of the three thumper spacecraft supporting the prospectors from orbit: the Prometheus, the Grace, and the Cosmos.

Over the course of the festival, communities engaged in activities thought to have risen from the prospectors’ boredom. These included the bot-trot races of household robots, classic video-game tournaments, and children smashing snot pie against their parents’ faces. Less-than-pleasant foods created using the prospectors’ original recipes, such as slugmeat burgers, xenofungal casserole, and treated sap “ketchup” served as a reminder of what space colonization once meant.

With time, the Festival lost its meaning.

Half a century later, much of the population of Titan lived in an opulent suburbia on a subdued world. In this new era, the Festival had shifted from a unique celebration of survival to a highly commercialized family-friendly holiday that spread to other worlds and space stations.

On Sadie’s plate:

• Slugmeat burger, lightly preserved with a controlled growth of yellowspore mold to match the flavor profile of a true burger.
• Hayfries, a crunchy side, cooked by a deep frying a mixture of crushed potatoes and silentwood powder.
• Helping of bubbleblue pudding acts as a dessert, although its salty-sugary flavor is an acquired taste.