It looks like that's the whole ball of wax for awards this time around.  When I open that image, it's a pretty good resolution even when I enlarge it.

Any volunteers to help His Majesty with the grant?  @Carlüs Éovart Vilaçafat ?  @Cresti d. I. Nouacastra?

-SVA

We're going to add it to the next honours, @Mic'haglh Autófil, O.Be .

-SVA

@Béneditsch Ardpresteir , what do we think at this point?

-SVA

Quote from: Mximo Malt on April 16, 2026, 07:23:40 PMY'know, Mr. Montagnhă, I almost axed my citizenship because everyone was calling me a Nazi, but oh well. You do your own research.

Nobody called you a Nazi

I have the grant mostly written and it looks like the request from @Moinul Moin  is complete but I'm not sure if @Tåltind Furxheir (Ethan Smith) ever actually accepted his final product. Also, the image generated by @Mic'haglh Autófil, O.Be looks to be too small (it may be cropped).

-Txec R/REH

XPB, we Belacostan Cjovani adopted bocce as our "official" subcultural sport...because a lot of prominent Belacostans are Italian, and also because bocce ball sets are easier to come by, and there are several local bocce courts we can play in. (Vitxalmour Conductour and I once visited a local park, with the intention of hiking thru the woods, enjoying nature...we found there was a bocce court on the premises! Luckily, I had my bocce ball set in the trunk of my car, so we played our first ever game on a proper bocce court.) (I won, lol.)
I've looked into pétanque because the balls are smaller and more portable. My bocce set is heavy and a pain in the butt to haul around.
Anyhow, we came up with some Talossan terminology for our bocce games. Here they are:
Baiça Françal - "French Kiss". Buci term. "Kissing the fanny", a bocce tradition believed to have originated in France's Savoy region, requires losing teams (who have failed to score a single point) to kiss an image of a woman's bare buttocks
Balineu  -  the pallino, the small ball in bocce
Bola da Buci  -  bocce ball 
Buci  -  bocce. Bocce was introduced to Cjováni culture by Taiwos, who once bought a set of bocce balls to try to find an outdoor activity to keep his grandkids occupied. The kids didn't care for it, so Taiwos lugged the set up to Conductour's house one day. After a few games, Taiwos and Conductour were hooked. Initially, they called the way they played bocce "bolextrema", or extreme bocce, for, unlike the well manicured outdoor bocce courts they had seen, they played in Conductour's hilly and overgrown backyard. They quickly formed A.B.B.A., which, as far as we know, is Talossas only regularly active sports league. Eventually, Taiwos acquired a book about bocce, which  lead him to scrap the term 'bolextrema'. "According to the book", Taiwos said, "what we'd been playing was not particularly extreme in the bocce world." 
Iral da buci  - bocce court.
L' cäps d'Umberto Granaglia  -  Awarded by ABBA to the winner of their annual Tournament of Waterloo, L'Cäps d'Umberto Granaglia is a collectible sports card bearing the likeness of Umberto Granaglia, who is widely considered to be the greatest buci player in that sport's history.
Rafà - buci term. A fast rolling shot intending to knock an opponent's bola away or to direct the balineu to a new position.
Reverse Hooligan  -  buci term. Falling on ones back when tossing a buci ball.
Triple Miestra  -  buci term. When one has three of their balls closest to the balineu.
These are all the terms related to bocce from our Cjovani lexicon. I doubt they will be helpful to you, but may encourage you.
Ignore the crickets. Go ahead and make pétanque the official leisure sport of Cezembre. In doing so, you will forge an alliance with the Belacostan Cjovani, who enjoy a similar sport.
In Talossa, it seems easier to just make something official by actually doing it regularly, than to make laws around it.

crickets

Congratulations to S:reu Lenxheir. It is truly tragic that he left us and I hope one day to see him return.

-Txec R

It is my pleasure to announce the honoree for the 4th El Pretz Per Tomas Poetry Prize. But first please allow me to thank @owenedwards the originator of this prize.

---

Tric'hard Lenxheir is the winner of the 4th El Pretz Per Tomas Prize for his poem, I Dream.
This was an unusual prize year as all entrants posted publicly, there were just four entrants, and our winner recently left the Kingdom. S:reu Lenxheir was chosen before the latter event and it is the sincere wish of the Prize team that he will eventually return. The Prize Team and Fora Talossa will still plan for a special prize video presentation and transmitting the award money should we be able to make contact with Tric'hard.

---

OFFICIAL CITATION: Tric'hard Lenxheir (I Dream)

Quote"I Dream" is a vivid depiction of the fragility of consciousness, where the boundary between dream and waking life dissolves into a sequence of haunting impressions. Despite the author's description of this piece as "jarbled," the Prize Team identifies a thorough and disciplined minimalism, S:reu Lenxheir has managed to craft a rhythm of compression and release, each quatrain unfolding like a flicker of brief, intense, and unresolved thought.

The poem's language is deliberately spare, yet it carries significant emotional weight. Phrases such as "Shadows melt / Dream burns" and "Mind abused" juxtapose the fleeting with the visceral, creating a tension between abstraction and embodiment. This interplay allows the poem to move fluidly between inner mental states and external natural imagery, from "Broken trees" to "Roar of thunder," suggesting a world in which environment and emotion mirror one another.

Structurally, the poem resists narrative cohesion in favor of fragmentation. Its clipped lines and shifting images evoke the disjointed logic of dreams, while also reflecting states of anxiety, exhaustion, and existential unease. The recurrence of elemental forces such as darkness, storm, and wind serves as a unifying motif, reinforcing the sense of an individual caught within cycles beyond their control.

What distinguishes "I Dream" is its refusal of resolution. The closing lines, "Soon to sleep / Calm the hunger," do not offer comfort so much as surrender, implying that rest itself may be another form of escape rather than restoration. In this way, the poem lingers in ambiguity, inviting the reader to confront the uneasy continuity between dreaming, suffering, and waking life. For its disciplined brevity, evocative imagery, and compelling portrayal of inner turbulence, "I Dream" stands as a striking exploration of the mind's darker currents.

"I Dream"

I dream
The world turns
Shadows melt
Dream burns

Passion sated
Fear from hate
Passion lost
Fickle fate

Tangled limbs
Broken trees
Sun fades
Darkness sees

Quiet, fearful
Music flares
Dreams return
No one cares

Jumbled thoughts
Lost, confused
Body weak
Mind abused

Rain, lightning
Roar of thunder
Blowing wind
Life a blunder

Day is gone
Dream no longer
Soon to sleep
Calm the hunger

A final thanks to all poets who entered the contest for sharing their artistry with the Kingdom.

Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on April 17, 2026, 07:08:39 AMCertainly, Your Majesty.  I'll do a quick look around and make sure we didn't miss anything.  Would you like me to ask a herald to help you put the grant together after I do that?

-SVA

That would be great.

-Txec R/REH