Marrandale Birthdays

It's been a long walk over the dry and chalky plains of Marran, but just as the turf starts to soften a touch underfoot you see it ahead- Marrandale, with its quaint thatched rooves and picturesque poofs of smoke curling from the chimneys. Looking forward to a night spent anywhere but on ground as hard as stone you press on.
As you reach the town gate, however, you see trouble. A small boy of no more than five, armed with a flint knife and facing down three great dogs that snarl and slobber. You draw your sword and race to intervene before the babe is shredded by the great beasts, only to feel a sharp sting on your forehead as you get near.
"Piss off!"
The cry comes from a set of men and women in the traditional and puritanical dress of the Marran plain settlements, who you now spy crouched behind a bush by the walls.
"What the damned devils are you doing watching this happen?" You cry to the villagers who just cast a stone at you.
"It"s the boy's bloody birthday!"

Long ago, Marrandale was dreadfully poor. The dry plains had spread over farmland, causing a long and hard famine to settle over the land. The coyote from the hills hassled their flocks, and any travellers in small number. It was a hard place, as hard as the ground outside. It did not reward sentiment.
Elsewhere in the world, elsewhere in thr multiverse, birthdays developed as a celebration. "Congratulations!", as though a reward for surviving another year. But in Marrandale where the children were too many and the food too few, they became a trial.
What began as an act of desperation became a proud and noble tradition, weeding out the weak and unlucky. Even to this day Marrandale residents of all ages arm themselves and hole up on their birthday, ready for all manner of challenges both physical and abstract- ready to prove they are worth feeding for another year.