The Cormyrian-Barovian Feast of the Seven Fishes (Dungeons & Dragons)

Evenfeast Sju Lengwon is a Cormyrian celebration of the Marsembian holiday known as the Breaking honoring Lathander with dishes of fish and other seafood.  Though the Breaking (source) isn't a religious holiday, the Evenfeast Sju Lengwon was innovated in the Year of the Winding Road (917 in the Dale-reckoning) as a local celebration of the Morninglord's slaying of Sammaster, the head of the Cult of the Dragon, the previous year. (source)  However, it never became much more than an excuse to have a large meal, most popular in Marsember and Suzail.  

 

Sadly, by the late 15th century, this celebration gained a racist and nativist taint as the Cult of the Dragon built itself a following in the Xiousing district of Marsember. (source)  The Cult leveraged the traditional Shou practice of dragon veneration to do so, and some Cormytes took this to mean that all Shou were Cultists.  Racist and nativist rhetoric proliferated during the meal, some of it becoming ceremonial and ritual, and Shou were often barred from the feast by those hosting it.  Xiousing was drowned in the Second Sundering, so this sharp element to the feast has begun to fade ~ not disappear, but fade into a background radiation, much like "Eeny Meeny Miney Moe" or "Call a s***e a s***e" (or "Ring Around the Rosy"'s plague connections) in the United States.

 

Perhaps thankfully, Ravenloft's Evenfeast Sju Lengwon avoided much of this saddening development.  Hell, it reversed many of them, becoming a marker of Faerûnian outlanders and the culture they practiced and spread.  Despite Kartakass's Cormyte origins and Gondegal's presence in Falkovnia and Darkon, the Evenfeast Sju Lengwon is most popular in Barovia itself.  It came into that legendary realm with Brother Martyn Pelkar the Mad, who in 475 in the Barovian calendar founded the cult of the Morninglord in Ravenloft after being saved from Count Strahd's fangs by a gold elf vampire.  In need of the hope offered by Brother Martyn's preachings and the image of the ice breaking in spring, the feast serves a much more important role for this interplanar immigrant population, and has spread to native Ravenlofters, as well.

The day before the Breaking is a vigil day, imitating the ever-watchful eyes of the ship crews hoping to be the first into the port of Marsember, and a day of fasting to remember all of the previous winter's austerities.  The identification of the feast with baccala (a cold platter of dried salt burslake, aggressively flavored cheese, and radishes) comes from that same memorial desire.  The fast is then broken at evenfeast with the Evenfeast Sju Lengwon, with the symbolism of seafood in the feast honoring the return of sea-trade. No sage can tell how the number seven entered into the feast's celebrations (one popular, if tenuous, guess is that it represents the four drops of blood Lathander shed and the three green dragons Sammaster was visiting), nor is there a definitive list of seven fishes that make up the meal.

 

The meal's components may include some combination of shaeling (minnow), bluefin (tuna), sheelie (bass), navalar (catfish), baccala, burslake (trout), eels, silverfin (whitefish), octopus, shrimp, sorn (salmon), and oysters. The menu may also include blynndur (a crusty bread with fireseared herbs and greens baked in, used as a bowl), vegetables, baked goods and wine or tsuika (Barovian plum brandy).  Common dishes include:

1. Baccala (source, though it goes unnamed there; I stole a real Italian food's name)
   
2. Blentra's oysters and wild rice in mushroom soup, which uses a cup of crushed salted burslake as one of its many ingredients (source)
3. Blynndur in prostitutes' sauce (garlic, shaeling, olive oil, chopped chili peppers, olives, capers, diced tomatoes, oregano, salt, and Malatra pepper, topped with parsley)
   
4. Blynndur with minnow, oyster, or bluefin sauce
5. Calishite emerald eyes (small green fish, squid, snails, and mussels, all chopped together, hotly spiced, and pickled) (source)
   
6. Carp stuffed with buckwheat and mushrooms
   
7. Cod fish balls in tomato sauce
8. Coryphaena (dolphinfish)
9. Deep fried burslake
10. Deep fried fish/shrimp
11. Deep fried scallops
12. Fried navalar
    
13. Octopus salad
    
14. Oyster talyth (source)
    
15. Sea snail salad
    
16. Shrimp cocktail
17. Smoked sorn
    
18. Snail-and-eel soup, Sharptooth lizardfolk-style (source)
    
19. Silverfin
20. Sole baked in sour cream sauce
    
21. Stuffed-baked oysters
    
22. Vallakian baked burslake (seared and baked in sour cream sauce atop boiled potatoes, onions, and mushrooms)

The meal is often finished off with a dessert of snowbread with a wide hole cut out down its length, which is then filled with a wide variety of sweet fillings based on soft whey cheese. 

 

When consumed on Toril, the Evenfeast Sju Lengwon is little more than a nice, big meal.  However, in the Mists of Ravenloft, it opens the tiniest portal for the salvatory power of Lathander to fill one's soul with the warm rosy glow of dawn.  Anyone with a soul who's consumed all seven dishes gains advantage on the first initiative check they make during the next day (the Breaking) when opposing a vampire who isn't Jander Sunstar or of his vampiric lineage.  It's a very minor benefit, but everything helps in the Mists.  Eating all seven dishes additionally has a 1% chance of giving someone a soul who lacks one.