Saturday Changeling LARP Report: Rufus' War Journal

(Bold is Storyteller stuff, Italic is Rufus' journal entries, normal text is me out of game stuff.)

Last month the news of the Summer King's death hit the Lost of the area pretty hard. The Summer Court went out seeking vengeance for their monarch's murder. A trail of blood was left in their wake. In the void left by Sid's passing, another stepped forward to take the reins of leadership. Meanwhile, a newcomer to the city claims he was lured back into the Hedge by none other than the Spring Queen. He found his way back out again but says that something was chasing him in there. While the Lost sit stunned at the accusation, a self-proclaimed loyalist arrives asking where this year's tithe is. He claimed that a Lost was suppose to be left in the Hedge for him to take back and this deal is what kept the city safe. If someone didn't come with him, then there would be war. Refusing to sacrifice one of their own, the local Lost banded together in defiance of their former masters' henchman. War would be preferable to cowardly submission.



For so long I was a traveller, running on my own, or amongst people who were not escapees like myself. This summer I met others of my kind and together we fought against our former captors. I was honored with becoming the Summer King for my efforts, I was given the burden of command.

Luckily the regular LARP takes place during the day and not during worktime on the second Saturday of the month so I can attend, provided I don't mind missing some sleep! MagicDrew was gonna be able to make this one as well, and since it was only about a 20 minute trip and a 10 mile drive I figured I might as well give an actual game a go!

Upon reaching the meeting place in Willimantic for us, the Lost, I met one of the locals who wasn't at the August incident. She asked me if I was a local or a visitor, being a wanderer, I replied justly, having been searching the region for evidence of our foes. I was given a letter. This letter basically threatened those of us who fought so hard against our captors and the sacrifices they demanded. They said we were going to be attacked by the armies of the Fae and anyone supporting us would be harmed as in the crossfire. Others soon showed up, including two more women, and two men, one of which I had met before. A mirror visaged man who was eloquent in speech. While I don't exactly trust him, his council has been sound and wise so far. Damn politicians!

The Mirror visaged fellow was another guy at the Connecticon LARP. One of the female players was an NPC there, and the other two were both brand new folks to me. Apparently it was a pretty decent turn out. Hmm, maybe if I and MagicDrew help promote it a bit, we can get more folks to play? MagicDrew is utterly FEARLESS when it comes to actively promoting things. I tend to take the passive route. Because I am a wuss. And a pessimist.

We continued investigating the events and aftermath of the incident, trying to find out more about the previous Summer King, Sid, and the missing Spring Queen, April, who sent a good man into the hedge. Very little help from the Autumn Queen Maude was given, which made us suspect she is a part of this sacrifice for safety deal, or at the best, she could care less about us. Not that I exactly made myself friendly to her.

I sort of sent an EXTREMELY powerful NPC a cellphone message telling her to "DIE BITCH". That might not have been such a good idea...

With some investigating we found out that April was married and her husband has been worried for her. When heading back to our Freehold, I decided to walk back, just in case we were being followed. We did attract Enemy attention, but it was at the Freehold itself. The gateway to Hell, the Hedge opened up, surrounding the building. I ran towards the siege, hoping to break it off, or sacrifice myself dearly to the monstrous dogs that had been trying to get in. One came towards me and I fought it off, with great injury to myself, while quick thinking on the rest of the team's part kept them from any harm, and Maude surprisingly arrived for a moment and used some incredible magic power to eliminate or drive off the rest. As I said, she might not actually be our enemy. But no matter what I do not like her, and I doubt she would be fond of me. Helping your friends and defending the innocent on the front lines is more important than any power she seems obsessed with preparing for, leaving us to fight and die on our own! She says she isn't concerned till its her season to rule.

Rule? We of the court should not rule, we are officers, commanders, figureheads. The first to battle, and the last to leave.

While I am sort of posting a few things out of order above (we actually investigated someone else as well, but it was a dead end and this sounds more interesting!) its basically how things went. I dumbly split off from the group to check on a lead, but after a point gave up on it. I also was hoping that being on my own would draw our adversaries out in the open. Rufus is a lone wolf sort. He will command and do his best at it, but he prefers to lead by example as opposed to by command. Plus our Mirrorvisage is way better at the political and organization bits. Rufus is better on the front line. Which meant I don't think I was particularly good as a Summer King, unless being a massive meatshield counts as Kingly.

Plus my first time gaming with a new group, and with a game system and style I am not very familiar with. I didn't want to be a glory hog. I've always hated those players who try to make the whole damned game about them. Thus I felt more comfortable in being quiet more often (because I naturally have trouble being quiet anyhow.. I DO NOT SHUT UP EVER) and hopefully not making an ass of myself. If MagicDrew wasn't there I probably would have barely talked at all.

It also helped everyone was roleplaying really well (better than me really) and everyone had some great ideas. Sometimes I just sat and listened, and took some notes.

We went back to the scene of Sid's death looking for more answers which due to the Mirror's ghost speaking we found, and another teammate put her life at risk to set up a meeting with the criminal scum in the area. Sadly, when the Mirror morphed into a cop, the locals were.. not too pleased. Our car was damaged, but I fought off as many enemies as I could while they started up the car and pulled my heavily injured self along with them.

I would rather take the injury than the people under me. That's what the good guys do.

I'm seriously truncating what happened and not detailing what everyone did, but as in the game I am trying to avoid metagaming here. There were some cool things that happened that I wasn't a part of at all and quite a bit of time was spent just making decisions and figuring out what to do next. LARPs tend to involve more actual roleplay than your average sit down game which has combat and lots of game mechanics in there.

I was dumped off at the ER for some R&R while everyone else continued to find out what they could about the new criminal kingpin, The Scorpion. According to what they told me afterwards, he may be one of us, and he may have April locked up, doing horrible things to her on a regular basis! Even if she is a part of the plot to sacrifice us to the Enemy, nobody deserves that sort of torture and abuse! As soon as I am able we will mount an assault on this Scorpion.

Justice will be done, and we will be a united front against those who took us from our loved ones and our homes. I do not fear our enemies or my fate. Optimus Prime wouldn't back down from Megatron when he attacked Autobot City, and neither will I! Mine are the claws that slash through the darkness.

Even if the light shines for but a moment before I am silenced, I will do what is right.

Overall it was a pretty damn good game, even if we sort of went the kick ass route most of the time. Half the party being combat types, or at least having combat oriented personalities tends to cause havoc, even if much of our rage might be misplaced at the wrong people. As mentioned, I feel I didn't roleplay my best or do as well in my command position as I should have. Next session should be in the Autumn Court so I won't be in command anyhow and Rufus can kick ass for justice as he is wont to do.

Hopefully I didn't suck too bad, and hopefully I will get to know everyone and start remembering their names too. I'm thinking of the usual nicknames for the blog updates, but right now all I have is Snarkrabbit, Vodkasmash, Platformiz, Storymiz, and MirrorCauldron for them. I dunno. Its not grabbing me as of yet.

I guess I wasn't too awful as I was invited to stick around for the Vampire game happening later with MirrorCauldron running it, but being rather hungry, a bit tired, and the basic fact I wouldn't be able to do Vampire much at all in the long run, I declined. Plus not being all that familiar with that area of Norwich I wanted to follow MagicDrew out. If any of the LARP crew are reading I hope y'all had fun with the fangs and the vampirey nighty stuff!

Everyone seemed like a nice group of people and made my second LARP experience a pleasant one as well. Now I just need to join up in the Camarilla to be "Official" and whatnot before next game. And probably type up Rufus' backstory besides just leaving it in my head.

Thanks again for the great game Midnight Rose!