Saturday Changeling LARP Report: Rufus' War Journal Part 2

I have been lax on these! Now I have two game sessions worth to report on. Unlike last time, bold is ST stuff, and Italics is out of game bits, and normal text is in character text. Cuz I felt like doing it this way!

OCTOBER
Teaser: "Join the Loyalist Army! Turn your friends in today! All traitors
will be spared!"
This is what greeted the Lost of Willimantic when they entered the Thread
City Cafe last month. Letters were delivered to the Lost, secret notes were
left, all pointing fingers at others saying they were a loyalist. Who can
you trust? The traditional Summer King, Sid, was killed in August and the
new King, Rufus, is still new and untried. The Spring Queen, April, has
been kidnapped and is being being tortured by a new force in town called the
Scorpion. As Autumn approaches, will the traditional Queen, Maude, be up to
the task of setting things to right in the city or will she meet with a
similar fate as the other two monarchs?

It has been a troubling time for us in the Lost. The Loyalists are trying to confuse us and throw us into disarray.

Its working well.

We had some folks from Virginia here to help us, a rather strange trio who seemed to have a thing for "efficiency". Between them and the regulars getting this group organized is proving to be a difficult task!

We came up with a plan to rescue April from Scorpion's bar hideout. One of us was sent to get April ready by morphing herself into a coin that our mirror visaged friend David dropped into the room after he transformed himself into a ganger type. I believe the coinformer was named Nothing. As I said, the Virginia folks were a little... odd.

As we needed an Autumn king I nominated David to run things at least in the short term, and the other local members of the Lost agreed enough and it was done.

This is sort of coming back to bite me though. We do not exactly see eye to eye even though we have similar objectives and ideas on how to take care of things.

We split up into two teams, one of which went to confront Scorpion who was within the Hedge, and I backed up our blacksmith as we sent Scorpion's den of evil into the dust, albeit with a few dead gang members along the way besides the ones now buried under rubble. No matter. Criminal scum like that shouldn't be left alive anyhow.

The other team confronted Scorpion and killed him, rescuing April. He thought we were the loyalists alongside April! But what kind of sick monster would do the things he did to her regardless of her actual allegiance and actions?

Nobody who deserves to live.

NOVEMBER
Last month the Lost formed a plan to go rescue the Spring Queen April from
the clutches of a sinister figure known as the Scorpion. Dog sized scorpions
and a building falling down on top of them were not enough to stop them and
April was brought to safety.
The long reigning Autumn Queen Maude is nowhere to be found. Her shop is
boarded up and abandoned. Has she left the Lost to deal with the loyalist on
their own or has something else happened to her? In her absence the Lost
elected the Mirrorskin David as the new Autumn King.
What was the connection between the Scorpion and the loyalist? Were they
allies or enemies? Why did the Scorpion kidnap April in the first place?
While Autumn is still the reigning season, Winter is just around the corner.
Why has the Winter King not made an appearance yet? Is he responsible for
what is going on in the city or has he also suffered some dire fate?

Some new people showed up this time while friends from the previous months were nowhere to be seen. An annoying duo named Vicks and Wedge accused myself and David as being Loyalists. They would believe nothing we said, even refusing a handgun I handed them. David tried to be a bit more political than myself in dealing with them as I was ready and willing to throw them out a window.

He eventually took an oath to fight against the loyalists lest he be striked down, and a little spirit frog appeared on his shoulder to make sure he kept that oath.

We are given a map, and find out information about Maude's hut within the Hedge. A few of us go to ask for some spirit frogs resting within some stone frog statues for help, but none of us having any real way to contact them meet with no success. I actually talk and inform these stone frogs of what is going on, which mostly just has people looking at us funny. Oh well, it was worth a shot, right?

And more bad news. After all the work we went to rescue April, a woman named Mia who was tasked with getting her to the hospital reported she was taken. AGAIN. This is not good, not at all, especially with the Winter king missing.

Given our lack of cohesiveness I came up with a list of objectives, based roughly on the seasons we seem to follow.

Summer would be the objective of investigating the Goblin patrols within the Hedge, and battling them off when needed.

Autumn would be finding out where our missing monarchs went off to.

Winter would be the fortifying of our stronghold.

Spring would be a catchall, going where needed.

It took me some time to explain using the seasons was largely symbolic and a little bit of yelling and force to get things going, but as I explained, all the Lost are my brothers and sisters and we have to work together. We have been constantly arguing and doubting each other. I have to nip this in the bud. I do not care what season king is in session. As far as I am concerned I am the main person in charge of this Freehold and the men and women within it. They are always my concern and always my responsibility. And I will fight for them to my last breath! I will lead by example and prepare others for command as well. David and I are butting heads a bit, but we will work it out, and a fellow from "Across the Pond" as they like to say who was there for the Sid incident is my tentative nominee for Winter king.

As repeated by Samuel L Jackson in Pulp Fiction: "The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who in the name of charity and goodwill shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee."

This is how I must live and lead. It will be done. Perhaps I will be loved. Maybe hated. Maybe I will die, but I WILL fight for my brothers and sisters with everything I have to give!

We are given a parchment mentioning a contract made between a loyalist known as Red Johnny, Maude, and Sid. The very contract used to sacrifice one of us to go back. Proof has been found of their evil.

I send out an investigative team with our prospective Winter king. They return with 2 loyalists, one living, one dead. The area they were guarding was none other than Maude's hut within the Hedge! She was known to them as "The Evil Queen".

David organizes a strikeforce to investigate, and yet again leaves me at the Freehold. I have a chat with the living loyalist who lets us know he was told we were loyalists ourselves. He has no name, only called by Red Johnny as "325". I rename him "Doug" until we can find his original name. He tries walking out, but we stop him.

I now wait for my brothers and sisters to return...

At game's end I find out that Maude is within her hut, and that David has apparently defected to the Loyalist side, though it may be to keep himself alive.

Overall I am really enjoying the LARP games and am even getting sorta used to the lack of sleep one Saturday a month. I need to work on my outfit a bit more though. Right now a Navy ballcap and a pair of faux spiked leather fingerless gloves form my total outfit, excepting my normal clothes of course! Some folks really have kickass costumes! Of course I head off to work afterwards so I can't exactly go too out there to begin with, but it is making me want to step up my game. And both times I was invited to stay on for Vampire, but again, work. Yay.