The Day the Hats Fell

The Day the Hats Fell

Every merchant in Varrock has a version of this day. This is the one the spirits tell, and it matches the merchants' ledgers better than the merchants do. Reldo.

The first hats

The party hats came first as gifts. On one winter's day of the old world, Paul of the Council let crackers fall across the land. Two outlanders pulled each cracker. One got a party hat, and the other a lesser prize: chocolate, cake, a gold ring, iron, a black dagger or a law rune.

Most outlanders pulled their crackers at once, for the rune items. They thought the hats worthless. A shopkeeper once bought a party hat for 2 gold, and the merchants' guild drank to him all night.

The crack

Years later, on the seventh day of November, a spirit named Sixfeetunder found a crack in the trade window. Through it, an outlander could give an item they did not own, and the other received it all the same.

The secret passed among six hands. Then Kaitnieks, Dylock and their companions stood in Varrock and handed out crackers and party hats by the hundred.

A crowd gathered in the square. The spirit Evil Cowgod dropped more hats only when the crowd sang. So the crowd sang "Old MacDonald", over and over, until the square rang with it.

The Council answers

The Council said the crack had hidden through ten thousand years of play. Some citizens believed the Council had made the hats itself, to mend the markets. Others wrote asking for free hats.

Within a day the crack closed. The watchers came for the rich, one at a time. Some emptied their banks onto the ground before they fell.

Pink had been the rarest colour of hat. After the day, it became the cheapest, and the world renamed it purple.

The world remembers the song longer than the hats. Outlanders still gather in the square and sing it when a host has hats to drop. Reldo.