Today's post looks into the real life holiday behind EVE Online's Crimson Harvest, which runs from 6 October to 3 November this year. When I look at Iceland I don't really think holidays except for The Yule Lads and the big New Year's fireworks display that rivals the point defense batteries on citadels. So I started down the rabbit hole.
Asking Gemini about Halloween in Iceland brought up an interesting fact. Unlike the United States, the big dress-up in a costume holiday is Ash Wednesday.
Ash Wednesday, or Öskudagur, is the Icelandic version of Halloween. Police ask drivers to be particularly careful today with all the children out and about.Though Ash Wednesday may be a religious day in many countries, this is not the case for most people in Iceland, especially not for kids.Every Ash Wednesday Icelandic kids dress up as witches, cowboys, princesses, punk rockers, trolls and everything in between and go about their home towns in flocks. The tradition is visiting companies and singing in exchange for candy.
Doing a bit of digging led to an article from the University of Iceland that let me know I asked the wrong question. I should have asked not about Halloween but All Saints' Day.
Around the year 1000, another festival was created under the influence of religious civilisation, named after the Cluny Abbey in France. This was the Mass of All Souls, which was established on November 2. It was intended primarily to help the souls of the poor.This was at the same time that the church in Iceland was becoming established, and this emphasis has therefore been part of the Christian world of Icelanders from the beginning. In the 17th century, the holiday was known in Icelandic under the names "sálnadagur" and "heilagar sáilir", but in the 1707 census the current name was introduced and has remained so ever since.As before, the Mass of All Saints looks to those who in past centuries, and also more recently, have strengthened Christianity, that is, to famous religious heroes and saints, especially among Catholics. But on the Mass of All Souls, the mind is more tied to all those we personally knew and loved but who have now passed away. In the Icelandic National Church, these days merge, are as if one, and prayers are prayed for the souls of all the dead.
This was a bit of a surprise as the Icelandic National Church is Evangelical Lutheran and the feast days are from the Catholic tradition. But Protestant denominations do celebrate feast days, just differently.
I do want to point out another interesting fact. Due to changes in the law in Nordic countries, All Saints' Day in Iceland is celebrated on the first Saturday of November. So while the end of the Crimson Harvest coincides with Halloween, the event ends, at least this year, before Icelanders celebrate All Saints' Day.
I'm going to conclude with an analysis of the similarities between Crimson Harvest and All Saint's Day. As I have started doing I'm going to turn to the Unofficial Official AI Sponsor of Fenris Creations, Google DeepMind. I don't know religious festivals well enough to make the connection, so I turned to Gemini.
Once again, posting the response from an AI might be cheating but I want to put things that interest me on the blog.
While the Crimson Harvest is primarily Fenris Creations' in-game vehicle for the real-world Halloween season, its lore and structure share striking parallels with All Saints' Day (1 November) and the broader Allhallowtide triduum (All Hallows' Eve, All Saints' Day, and All Souls' Day).
The similarities emerge across theology, calendar timing, and factional framing:
1. The Core Duality: Holy Sanctity vs. Profane Darkness
All Saints' Day was historically framed as the church's sacred light reclaiming the dark, liminal turn of the season associated with All Hallows' Eve.
In EVE Online, Fenris codified this exact duality by structuring the Crimson Harvest as an ideological war between two factions:
- The Sanguinary "Evil" (Blood Raiders): Symbolizing profane sacrifice, heretical indulgence, bloodletting, and the macabre—the grotesque side of All Hallows' Eve.
- The Canonized "Saints" (Order of St. Tetrimon): An ultra-orthodox monastic order founded upon the canonization of St. Tetrimon (who slew the Mad Emperor Zaragram II to preserve holy scripture). They enter the fray specifically as an ecclesiastical purge, framing their crusade as righteous martyrdom and holy purification against heretics.
2. Martyrdom, Saints, and Religious Zeal
All Saints' Day originated in the 4th–7th centuries (solidified when Pope Boniface IV consecrated the Roman Pantheon) specifically to honor all Christian martyrs—those who spilled their blood for the true faith.
The Amarr religion and its offshoots are heavily modelled on medieval Catholic and Byzantine martyrdom traditions:
- The Order of St. Tetrimon views their fight against the Sanguinary Covenant as holy warfare. Pilots who align with Tetrimon are essentially participating in an armed veneration of orthodoxy, purging apostates in the name of canonized martyrs.
- Conversely, the Sankar blood-cultists hold their own twisted concept of bodily sanctity: they believe human and clone blood is a literal sacred vessel containing divine essence, viewing the draining of bodies as a holy communion rather than murder.
3. Veneration of the Dead and Relics
A defining practice of All Saints' Day (and the following All Souls' Day) is visiting the graves of the departed, lighting candles, and venerating sacred physical remains or relics.
In the Crimson Harvest:
- Event progression revolves around recovering physical bodily tokens—such as Mutated Blood Samples, Tetrimonic Warclone Blanks, and neural lattices from destroyed clone transports—which are taken to faction shrines and item traders for blessing and reward.
- The 50% pod implant drop mechanic turns destroyed capsuleers into literal containers of harvestable relics left behind in the wrecks of dead clones.
4. Direct Calendar Alignment
In the Western liturgical calendar, All Saints' Day falls on 1 November, closing out October's threshold period.
The Crimson Harvest mirrors this exact timing: running across October and closing during the first week of November (3 November this year). The in-game event reaches its highest escalation and final reward tier during the exact days that real-world Allhallowtide and All Saints' Day are observed.
