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The winter market is happening again, and this year the world has turned tropical, a winter market in summer! Once again the usual kin selling wares, or running games, offering pebbles or taking them from the visitors who move through the clearing each day are infected by the energy of this warm setting, often turning booths cheery and light-hearted, in a summer theme. This year's smorgasbord of activity, friends greeting friends, raucous laughter, sometimes take on four-legged shapes, or two, or wings, identities blurred or confused or completely changed....

Come on in and explore!

THREAD LISTING:
Festival Booths: Info about booths, the core of this event, and how to set up your own
Calendar: See a list of short contests and when they'll be happening
Pebbles: A refresher on our on-forum currency and how it's used in this event
Grams: Grams are the core prizes to be won in this event, and turn into semi-customs
Free Raffles: How to get free grams to give away during free raffles
Paid Raffles: How to buy tickets for grams you can keep or give away in our paid raffles
Accessories: Add-ons for your existing kin, to make them festive for the season
Gram Tally: Check out ALL OUR PRIZES IN ONE POST

The Winter Market is a traditional Matope event that we have run in the past, with many opportunities for users to run their own mini events and contribute their creativity to the shop on the whole! The concept of this event is simple; there are many small booths with mini RP prompts, where kin can interact with other kin or complete a task or game, and through their participation, users can earn pebbles.

FESTIVAL BOOTHS

The core of this event is user-run booths, located in this subforum, in which participants are rewarded with pebbles for their efforts. All users are not only allowed but welcomed and invited to create their own booth! We also welcome you to create non-game threads if you'd like -- make a booth in which you sell your art for pebbles, or simply in which you RP! It's up to you.

This year you're also welcome to give your booth a funky, AU theme, and are encouraged but not required to make it themed after this tropical vibe, the beach, etc!

Of course, you're also welcome to simply participate, instead of running your own thread. Visit as many booths as you'd like to win prizes and gather pebbles, but keep in mind that you can only visit each booth once per day. Explore the many creative games our users have come up with! Collect your dues and spread the love!

All booths, whether they're run by users or by staff, will have some in-character component.  If you have no kin at all, you may participate with a made up kin of your own.  Who knows - maybe your fortunes will change over the course of the event!

SHORT CONTESTS

No matter what you're up to, make sure to keep an eye out - Matope staff will run short contests where you can directly win boxes, bags,  boxpiles, accessories, or large quantities of pebbles.  These contests will always be announced in the #announcements channel on our discord server, and will act a little more like our traditional events where you obtain kin and/or pets directly. 

BOOTH LISTING

We're going to try to keep an up to date listing of booths with short descriptions in this thread!

PEBBLES

Someone has taken the time to gather up and mark hundreds of multi-colored pebbles, sorting them into groups that denote their value, so that each booth at the Winter Market can easily hand them out to those who participate in this event. It's unclear who did the work, but the result is staggering.
These pebbles serve as the core of the event: the only currency that's worth anything within this clearing, and the only way to get them is through participation. Each post made in the Booths subforum will grant pebbles to daring kin, and once they've been earned, they can be spent on special events, on accessories, or traded from one kin to the other....

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OOC:

On this forum, we have our own special currency in the form of Pebbles.

Pebbles are earned through posting and can be used for a multitude of reasons: to buy custom and semi-custom kin and pets; to buy breedings; to bribe colorists for special requests; to buy tickets for on-site raffles or to participate in on-site games; to trade with other users for any goods or services they might need, including art, writing, journal coding, or whatever else might swing your fancy.

Participation in this subforum will grant you with a high number of pebbles, to allow you the opportunity to buy grams, accessories, Chibi Plush tokens, and more! Users who choose to start their own booths will get a bonus batch of pebbles as part of thread creation, and any post you make in this forum will offer even more!

GRAMS
Once you've got your hooves on some pebbles, what then? You can trade them with other users for services like art, accessories, or more, or for nothing if you want to simply give a friend a gift -- or you can use them to buy gram raffle tickets once they've been stocked in our forum shop! These raffles will be offering gift boxes, bags, and box piles that you must give away to a friend.

Each gift box corresponds to a free, unedited semi-custom kin from a specific colorist. Each fancy gift box corresponds to a free, edited semi-custom from a specific colorist. Each gift bag is a free, unedited semi-custom pet or familiar either from the core shop familiars or any special familiar that is open permission or that you have been granted permission for.

And the piles, of course, are for breedings! Each breeding that comes out of these piles of boxes will produce exactly three offspring, and edits will be CC -- which means that the colorist gets to decide if they're doing edited or unedited babies. This year has the usual box pile, offering kin breedings, but also introduces the brand new bag pile, from which you'll get familiars!

These grams will be in the weekly paid and free raffles, and also offered through free events and contests during the course of the Winter Market!

FREE GRAM RAFFLES

Every other week during this event, we will flaffle off fancy gift boxes, regular gift boxes, gift bags, and box piles in a dedicated raffle thread.

These will be free but must be given away to another user. You will be able to specify who you wish to send them to [not yourself!] and the recipient will be able to redeem them for a prize from the corresponding colorist in this thread!

More information can be found in the Free Weekly Raffle thread

PAID GRAM RAFFLES

Every other week during the event, we'll be rolling raffle winners for a supply of fancy gift boxes, regular gift boxes, gift bags, and box piles. This paid raffle will be between people owning the raffle ticket item in the shop; all you have to participate is to buy a ticket! Each person can only win once per raffle, and when you win, you will forfeit all raffle tickets purchased so far, but you're welcome to purchase more. If you're not rolled in a week, your tickets will carry over to the next raffle!

Winners of these prizes can either keep or give their grams away to another user. You will be able to specify who you wish to send them to [including yourself!] and the recipient will be able to redeem them for a prize from the corresponding colorist in this thread!

More information can be found in the Paid Weekly Raffle thread

ACCESSORIES
Pebbles can also be used to purchase accessories for existing kin! Each accessory can be purchased for pebbles, limit one per kin. More info can be found in the Accessories For Sale Thread!