Overview
The Celestial Games are a grand Thalassai tournament with duels, races, creature-taming, dangerous retrieval quests, and travel challenges. They are an established tradition with records of past tournaments; for Thalassai, they are both entertainment and a way to find exceptional mages, including potential imperators. Past champions include Hadrian, Aelius, and Ignaros, and Aelius won several Games before serving as Chronasis's imperator.
Format
Event rosters stay sealed until the games begin. Reviewing the event roster bars a participant from competition, which keeps Cassian and Nethira out as they prepare Thalena's suggested version. The games include duels, races, creature-taming, retrieval quests, and travel challenges. The hardest trials are grueling enough that even champions usually finish only a few.
Thalena's suggestions push the format toward dangerous quests. Her proposed events include taming a creature and bringing it to Chronasis, retrieving an object from an active volcano, catching a fish from Lake Eternity, drinking from the River of Eternity, stealing the source, recovering rubble from Atraxis Prime, charting northeastern Valrindor, finding proof of Vireen, and interfering with Ulzathir Invasion of Solvarria. Some events allow temporary teamwork, and some restrict essence draining except at the edge of death, with disqualification as the penalty for misuse.
Recent History
After the Xalmyrran cycles end and the wall falls, Cassian plans a smaller test of the Games and the full tournament once the train project is operational. His first goal is to find worthy imperator candidates, with legati expected to enter; after travel routes improve, he plans to invite competitors from outside Thalassai.
Thalassai uses the promised Games in its diplomacy across Valrindor. Thalena rides Glin to spread word in Haverloch, Stormhaven, Kyranthos, and nearby regions, offering the chance to bond with an astragon as a prize. Kazehiro travels from Haverloch to Chronasis to compete for the astragon prize. Khoradyn and Virel also plan to attend. The Games are postponed during Thalena's disappearance, Ulzathir Invasion of Solvarria, the threat from the Plains of Eternity, and the Varnhallow disappearances that leave Eira, Kaelion, Jin, and Xarion stranded in the past.