Year 3 of Cecil, Month of Revival 15th, Festival of Revival.
The crucial international conference was ultimately scheduled for the sixth day after the Festival of Revival holiday ended. The approaching date gave this year's festival an unusual significance—since the beginning of the month, Administrative Halls at every level had launched comprehensive publicity campaigns, explaining the coming international event and the Empire's role in it to citizens in the most accessible terms possible. As a result, even the least informed people knew about this major event, while those with a touch of poetry linked the conference with the Month of Revival and developed some pleasant expectations for the future.
Just as the great scholar Godwin Orlando had written in a newspaper article—this world was about to end its history of separation and estrangement. People who should have stood hand in hand from the beginning would truly unite this spring. It was the first ray of sunlight after winter's end, as warm as spring itself.
At the same time, as the conference drew nearer, this year's Festival of Revival in Cecil City also took on other differences from previous years—more foreign faces appeared throughout the city, bringing more news of distant lands.
In truth, Cecil City had never lacked foreign faces—as the world's first magic-conducting city and its first open, international metropolis, Cecil City's unmatched treasury of technology and incredible commercial order had always drawn guests with keen eyes and noses. Travelers from afar seeking knowledge and wealth came in an endless stream. Especially after several of the Empire's major railways were completed, the cost of travel for foreign visitors entering Cecil fell dramatically. Even Grey Elf merchants, once exceedingly rare in the southern region, became regular visitors to the Imperial Capital. It could therefore be said that all manner of