Inflatofest (World Guide, Event) (Patreon)

Without a doubt one of Gelitech’s most popular public events, the Gelitech Inflatofest is fully focused on the promotion and enjoyment of all things both biogel and inflatable. The festival takes place throughout the final week of Fadingsun and concludes on the holiday of Woodstore. Th festival is sited at the Ley’an Beach Park, on the Mashiva Reservoir, on the northeast side of Runai.

Everything about the Gelitech Inflatofest is made of inflatable biogel, with the occasional firmer support to keep all the squeaky, flexible biogel structures from getting too far out of shape. The scent of natural latex rubber is pervasive, though not so intense as to intrude upon the odors and flavors of the event’s truly interstellar festival cuisine. Dozens of vendors of biogel beach toys and other curiosities join the many food booths. Most of the merchandise is completely inert and mundane as the average beach ball. Mundane as the indestructible, self-regenerating beach ball, that is.

Were it not for the decidedly adult nature of elements of, and activities taking place during, the Inflatofest, a casual observer might be inclined to mistake it for a perfectly normal beach festival. Anyone actually entering the festival grounds and passing through the outer layer of fairly tame vendors, however, will be almost immediately confronted with countless displays of highly mature merchandise and activity. Living inflatable biogel dolls called inflatogummies abound. Many are on on display. Most are for sale. Those that have been sold are sometimes found having their anatomical qualities examined and even used, in public, without any real restrictions.

Shocking as this may be for some observers, such public displays of extreme affection are fairly normal in certain major cultures of the Fey’li Empire, and generally allowed in specific adults-only locations, and during specific adults-only events such as the Inflatofest. Of course, as with many Gelitech events, the Inflatofest takes all this to a whole new level. A large area of the festival grounds are designated as a free-for-all zone, where individuals going bare are considered fair game for other guests who’ve acquired cans of instant inflato-gummy spray. Inflatogummies created in this fashion belong to their creator.

The main highlight of the Inflatofest is the weeks-long waterball tournament. During the tournament, locals form two-person teams to see who’s going to compete against the visiting mitanni teams during the final tournament on Woodstore. Each day’s final victors get to play the mitanni. The rest get to be turned into inflatogummies by the team who beat them.

The final day’s waterball tournament is an unusual event. Each mitanni team first plays their matched local team. For the second round, each surviving mitanni team plays a surviving local team, or a team of volunteers from the audience. Subsequent rounds follow this pattern until all of the mitanni teams are defeated, or there are no audience members left who want to volunteer. If there are more than one of the original local teams left, they play each other until there is only one victor remaining.

All of the inflatogummies created during the week are sold by the festival inflatogummy vendor. Those created during the final tournament belong to the team that beat them, if that team survives in the case of the mitanni teams, or the victor in the case a local team comes out on top. All of the rest are sold in an end-of-festival auction.

The Inflatofest is not without other biogel perils, of course. Various inflatable biogel items on sale are far from mundane. Some are outright insidious in their functioning. Popular such items are sleeping bags that turn sleepers into liquid crystal biogel if they linger too long inside, inflatable adult toys containing instant-inflatogummy which will be released when certain conditions occur, and the enticing Gelitech Inflatowear. The latter transforms only the body areas covered into inflatogummy form, with black biogel internal transitions where the inflato meets the flesh. Mobility is often restricted by these items, though never to the point of rendering the ‘wearers’ too immobile to walk or otherwise function.