Holiday Special #2: Atrocities Awareness Day
After several years of special holiday quests, James had his favorites: Christmas, the Fourth of July, and of course Halloween. To say the least, it was always interesting to see what costumes Gaia wanted him and his friends to wear based on the rewards they earned by handing out candy or carving pumpkins or something similar. He also had his least favorites, holidays he was sure Gaia only chose to celebrate out of a sense of schadenfreude. And there were a few he felt it was his sacred duty as Gaia's chosen to celebrate in whatever manner she chose. Earth Days, for instance, usually involved planting trees or picking up trash.
But this day, this one day every year, he tried his hardest, and always failed. It was a little depressing, but it was a worthy goal to strive for, even if he might never succeed.
[New Quest Alert: End Columbus Day]
[End the celebration of the life of a truly horrible person credited for discoveries and accomplishments not his own.]
[Reward: 100,000,000,000 XP and greatly increased reputation with Gaia.]
[Failure: Nausea watching the travesty celebrated.]
He nodded grimly to himself. There were pamphlets to hand out, speeches to make. People needed to know what kind of a monster they were borderline worshiping on this day. And maybe someyear it would finally end.
Author's Note: Not really funny or anything, but when I sat down to write something funny about how Gaia prefers Leif Erikson to Columbus, I wasn't expecting to find out just how much of a scumbag Columbus was. Dude supported pedophillic sex slavery and regularly maimed natives then left them to die for failing to get him gold. He also claimed his actions were "for the glory of the Holy Trinity" and felt so unashamed of his actions that he wrote about them in his official Captain's Log for his journeys. I already knew his legacy was blown out of proportion: almost nobody thought the world was flat, several earlier explorers had already found the Americas centuries ago, and the dumbass thought the world was smaller than it was (and educated men had calculated the size of the Earth fairly accurately over a thousand years before Columbus was born) when he set out. This led him thinking he was in India when they landed (even then, China would have made more sense), to say nothing of nearly causing his entire crew to starve to death because they didn't have enough provisions for the trip. I could go on all day. I just ask that people take the time to research it for themselves before they continue accepting this as a legitimate holiday. Pardon my soapbox.
Repost Note: This was originally posted October 12, "Columbus Day". Expect an update to the main story tomorrow.