CHARN WAS A CITY WITH TOO MANY PALACES AND ALTOGETHER TOO FEW SCHOOLS. However, when royalty has lived and died, schemed and plotted, married and intermarried in one place long enough, palaces become commonplace; in fact, there were more palaces than schools in Charn. It seems at first a dismal fact, but to be fair to the nobles that infest that ancient city, the palaces were magnificent. Grouped together along the seventeen hills of Charn, avenues were littered with memorials to now forgotten families, some were modernized, others were left in ruin, but the entire quarter was drenched in luxury. During grander times the palatial district had been a the seat of parties of festivities across the globe; everyone who was someone had been to the palaces at Charn for this celebration or that marriage, but these were far less exciting times. Aristocrats were replaced with bureaucrats and the world slowly forgot that Charn even existed outside dusty textbooks and great great grandmothers' diaries. In the eyes of most of the nobility, this was a regrettable, but irrevocable error on the part of the world and with a memory of greatness relegated to long-lost tales and exaggerated musing from old folks. The dukes and the counts and the lords and knights and barons all settled into a quiet mode of slumbering monotony, forgetting more and more as time went on.
That was however, except for once a year.
Once a year came Aristotle Day. Very few nobles knew much about Aristotle, even fewer could discuss his philosophies with anything more than nods and musing grunts, but all their ignorance aside, it was a grandiose occasion adorned with all the pomp that could be mustered by the millennia-old families that festered year-round waiting for another chance to live on Aristotle Day. Around the last few weeks in July, the women bustled door to door in outdated dresses and pompous hairdos, plotting the next celebration with all the fierceness of a dozen war-torn generals. A committee would be formed--after all nothing could be done without one--and a chairwomen elected to the most prestigious office in the land. Decorations would be ordered, money would be raised and life would flow swiftly into the palaces and leave in their wake sparkling streets and trimmed hedges and Sir Gerald's mildewy sidewalk would finally be cleared up and the Duchess of Eastbridge would have to clean out her gutters; all in all, things that needed doing would be done.
Once all was set to right in this one corner of the Kingdom, the invitations would be written. Lists were compiled of old friends and distant cousins and chaps met on safari. Emissaries would be notified, nobility invited, and the very very wealthy would be asked to come. Presidents would be queried and prime ministers questioned; the amount of foriegn mail peaked at Aristotle Day, more letters delivered than Christmas Eve and Mother's Day bundled into one. The invitations themselves were ornate things, made of thick ivory paper marked with the Royal Seal and tied together with a red ribbon. These accessories would be read, reread and edited until upon the achievement of perfection, they would be placed reverently in a small tin canister bound by bands of the same material and imprinted with all manner of symbols that probably meant something at sometime, but were now mere ornaments. All of this to ask, won't you attend the Aristotle Day Ball? and finally marked with the approving signature of the chairwoman's name (who on this particular day happened to be the illustrious Countess of Morne, Lucinda Fellmire. Return postage was, of course, included.
Each invitation was unique, but they all ran something along the lines of...
Dear Sir/Madame, As the sixteenth of August grows near, our thoughts return to that patriarch of Western Civilization, Aristotle etc etc... Hope you are feeling well etc etc... you are cordially invited to join us the evening of the sixteenth at the Cathedral Street Square for a celebration of Aristotle. Food will be served, feel free to bring a companion of note etc etc... Yours, Lucinda Fellmire, Chair of the Committee on Aristotle Day
And that, my friends, is that.
