Emancipation Day, the fifth day of the month of Nebulary, commemorates the anniversary of Sovereignty in 5274 s.y.v.p. and was celebrated annually by the many lands whose populace was swayed by Bariarch’s rhetoric. Children would celebrate Emancipation Day by playing the game of “Parliament”, which involves making up elaborate rules (“step only on white tiles” or “don’t use the letter E”) and then disobeying all of them. Children who inadvertently followed a rule were teased mercilessly. The game remains popular today.

In the Ctjn Empire, Nebulary Fifth was known as Empire Day and was formally marked by the passage of the Sovereignty and Secession Acts of 5274, the culmination of Bariarch’s career; soon thereafter he retired from public life to devote himself to poetry. He expired of natural causes three days before Sovereignty’s tenth anniversary, and the annual observance became a celebration of his life and works as well as of the Empire’s resurgent might.

To the Miakovan scholars and other dissenters, Nebulary Fifth was Exile Day, and was marked each year by the ritual of the Immolation of Sorrows.

—Thucydides Plutonium