Heroes and Heroines Live Action Roleplay (Larp/LRP)

29 Cygria, 8973 Ta

Source: Jack Dawkins

Having just spent every silver piece I could scrape together on having my swords made extra-shiny by The University’s finest weapon ensorcelling types, I was in an excited mood when I visited Angels and Demons for my customary night of drinking myself into a stupor. I have no idea who I met there, or what must have been said, but the next day I awoke in a refuse bin outside of The Mistwalkers with a curious sense of foreboding and an indistinct feeling of impending doom… It turned out that my ever-reliable awareness of drunken-Jack’s stupidity was correct as always when I noticed my own name scrawled onto the voluntary roster for a mission to Drackenbone, next to a poorly rendered drawing which after a few moments’ examination I determined to most likely be Samuel Softfoot pushing a seal through some kind of rotisserie device… The day had begun badly as always, and wasn’t to get much better as I was dragged into the briefing and forced to listen to something about what we would be expected to do…

It turned out that some Dwarves had disappeared in the area while building a Waystation, and we were to go sort it out, find out what had happened to the Dwarves, and then secure the Waystation. Fortunately not the worst thing I have ever been asked to do, but with a pounding head and the curious sensation that some species of scent marking weasel had fallen asleep in my mouth after a mammoth session of making the place its own, I tried to slink off to Angels and Demons again, but was caught on my way down a side alley and bundled unceremoniously into a sack to be dragged off to Drackenbone in the South West of The Protectorate.

Also on roster with me were Idrissa and Yaari (a Dromite and a Cursed Druid, who I have known for many years and respect greatly) as well as Nagarim Narm (a Water Mage who I secretly quite like, but hope never learns of this), Ragnar (a Dark Priest who really really likes killing stuff) and Dorian Richwood (a Bard who I know well and quite probably the most bell-festooned member of The Mistwalkers)

We arrived in Drackenbone to the sound of wolves howling in the distance, and the sight of derelict Drackenbone manor rising in the distance like a clawed hand scraping the night sky. The wolves followed us for an hour or so, howling from the bushes but not attacking, before we came across a local, who was wearing a curious symbol of a stag, and who claimed that the wolves didn’t bother the locals as a result of their special relationship with Herne (some kind of nature spirit or other which Yaari and Idrissa seemed to recognise. He invited us to follow him up to the Waystation, but on the way we found some kind of ridiculous undead thingy in the bushes which proceeded to assault us all with mind-altering effects.

When this had been dispatched, we continued on to the waystation, which was protected by some kind of horrific plant thing which took great delight in ripping enormous chunks out of us all while summoning its little children to knock smaller but no-less unpleasant lumps off us… It took us a long time to deal with the plant thing.

When we finally finished being torn apart by the local foliage, we found the Waystation to be in a state of partial completion. The locals informed us that it was mostly watertight, but the roof leaked a bit and some of it wasn’t entirely finished, but that we were welcome to stay there while we were in the area. We agreed to this and spoke to the locals about the area. We probably learned some stuff, but to be honest I’d broken into the travelling beer by that time and the next thing I knew we were off to find the Dwarves, who had apparently run away from something or other and were holed up in a nearby cave.

Surprisingly unmolested, we arrived at the cave in short order, and the terrified looking Dwarves let us in. They told us that they had been attacked by some kind of nature creature like the one that attacked us (I was unimpressed to discover that there was more than one of them!) and a bunch of really nails undead. They dropped into the conversation that they had been ‘recycling’ stones from the local barrows to make the Waystation… Stones that had inscription on them… No easy mission ever starts with the words “We pilfered some stones from the ancient graves of long-fallen heroes…” so I sighed sadly, and we all headed back to the waystation…

The next morning we awoke to the screams of Nagarim who had found some hepathic imp nuisances which were busy trying to pull bits off him… I ran out to help since the rest of the party were busy putting on unnecessary things like armour and underwear (Dorian was very keen to show us his underwear when he had put it on, by running around among the imps wearing only his brightly coloured bardic pants) and Nagarim and myself, with the assistance of Dorian’s wild mostly naked flailing dealt with these nuisances in fairly short order and with minimal loss of body parts… Or small clothing...

The Druids decided that a good starting point would be going and having a chat with Herne, so as my breakfast beer settled in my stomach, we headed out with a local woodman who helped us to summon Herne. We had been warned that Herne embodied both The Hunter and The Hunted, The Hunter being Female and The Hunted being Male, with The Hunter being particularly aggressive and… Hunter-ish… So I was delighted to find a male aspect of Herne appear before us.

Herne explained that The Dwarves had been attacked by The Baron’s undead minions to stop them defiling the local Barrows, and that they best way to deal with this would be to enter the barrows of the long-dead heroes in the area and find our way to The Baron to see if we could pacify him in some way. We learned that in order to access the barrows, we would need to sing a song which told of the great deeds of the occupant of the tomb, which would gain us access to the tomb beneath. I immediately broke into the ‘good beer’ supplies to buffer myself from the horror that was to come, but Dorian seemed to be in his element, and immediately started to write with the kind of glee that can only come from suddenly finding a way that the only Bard in The Mistwalkers can be useful can bring…

The first tomb was of Yuatha Songrider, and involved a whole load of puzzles which Ragnar seemed unnaturally talented at… In completing these we learned the tale of Grumm Skullflame (AKA The Heretic) who we visited next and who gave us an almighty kicking, as knightly types seem so keen on doing…

After Grumm Skullfalme chopped all sorts of enormous lumps off each other (between them Yaari and Ragnar could just about scrape together a full set of limbs) we gained the story of Mystkuller Thieftaker and hopped our way back to The Waystation to see if we could find a solution to our limb deficit and compose a song to give us access to Thieftaker’s tomb.

I was particularly touched by the tale of Thieftaker, after whom my own guild is named; He was a man who lived in the shadows, hunting down deserters, thieves and other miscreants and delivering justice to them. He sought neither reward nor glory and I found myself ashamed to be in a guild which bears his name, yet not aware of his story.

After having our limbs fixed by a local woodsman who was experienced in such matters as they are a regular risk in his profession, we made our way to Thieftaker’s tomb. He seemed to know a lot about me (I’m not sure whether to be pleased or alarmed by this!) and to impress him, I told him some very personal tales of what brought me to my current profession in the Thieftakers and then (predictably!) had to fight him. He was particularly tough, and able to appear and disappear inconveniently, so I took a damned sound kicking off him before ending the fight in the traditional Mistwalker style by feigning death…

Fight over, Thieftaker gave us the tale of Myska who was a Druid type who specialised in the raising of elementals. We visited Myska’s tomb, and received the customary kicking from him and his big magical mates, before gaining the tale of The Gnarled one.

I have to confess that I don’t really remember very much about The Gnarled one… I blame the bottle of particularly fine wine I consumed with Idrissa over lunch… But I know that we wrote a song about him, and I’m sure this information can be extracted from Dorian with very little effort…

With the heroes having been suitably visited, we finally had The Baron to visit, which alarmed me greatly.

It was dark by this point and the route was lit by a series of glowing fungi… Also there was a huge Hepath with a glowing chest which was trapped in some kind of ward blocking the path… Yaari poked the ward with her finger and released it which was nice of her… It proceeded to knock huge lumps off us before we eventually killed it… Yaari then prodded it with her finger for some reason and her finger disappeared, which I guess served her right for releasing the damned thing in the first place and amused me no end…

Further down the path we met some kind of weird and enormously excitable necromantic spirit… thing… Its name was Nedward Shomanzer… Although Idrissa contends that it was “Schmoozy”… He explained that he had turned himself inside out… Or embodied himself in his own body… Or something… He was quite weird and at the time I was keeping my eye out for a Shade which we had ‘misplaced’ on the way there and which I was convinced was hunting us from the shadows, so I didn’t really pay much attention to him…

Then we got hunted by a wraith with glowing eyes which damned near killed us all and kept us occupied for quite some time. I hid bravely in a bush and shouted words of encouragement to the rest of the party before making a brave attempt to save Idrissa which lasted for a matter of seconds before it power drained me to the floor…

Finally we arrived at The Baron’s Crypt. His minions gave us a damned sound knightly kicking before he called them off, presumably suitably impressed by the amount of bleeding we were able to do in such a short time frame. He then explained to us that somebody called Mandolin had reversed his wards and trapped him in his crypt and raised the other heroes. He wanted a rod of his which would give him back control of the other heroes in the area and he sent off his minions to kill the Dwarves, telling us that if we got him the rod back before midnight he would call them off and spare the Dwarves.

Suitably motivated, we legged it off to try to retrieve the rod for him.

When we arrived at the indicated location where we believed the rod to be, we found a field filled with undead. And not small cuddly undead either… There was a Mummy and some other unpleasant things wandering around… I wasn’t really feeling up for being diseased into a puking heap on the floor, so I left this to the rest of the party, and legged it off into the darkness to try to find a way to put my ‘acquisition’ skills to good use by sneaking round to get the rod while the undead were distracted…

After a long slog through some particularly thick undergrowth with the screams of the rest of the party to speed my feet I got to the glowing crypt upon which the rod rested only to find a zombie of inconvenience had stayed behind to guard it. After a short standoff with the zombie I legged it back to the party, skirting round the mummy who was still enthusiastically breathing his foul diseases upon all in his vicinity, before, doubling back to find the crypt now unguarded.

Unable to quite believe my luck I struck, and grabbed the rod, which pulled easily out of the crypt, before a dark had grabbed my arm and tried to pull me down into some dark horror-filled abyssal pit. I fought back, and dragged the rod from it, which had the unfortunate consequence of releasing whatever fiend this was… It was all dark nebulous roiling darkness and sharp pointy teeth, and it seemed to look directly into my soul before it slithered off across the field leaving me feeling confused and disorientated…

It was some hour or so later before I fully regained my faculties. I discovered that Yaari had died in the melee, and that Dorian was closely following her, but had had his flight into permanent death halted by Idrissa’s hibernate invocation. This allowed me to tend him back to the land of the living, and with Yaari revivified, we returned to The Baron, and gave him the rod.

He seemed pleased and announced that the Dwarves would be allowed to live, and that furthermore the Waystation would be allowed to be finished, and that he would even protect it from undead and creatures from outside of our plane from entering, which was nice… Finally he allowed us to pick some rewards from his collection of shiny things… Dorian picked a wand which seemed pretty shiny with magic… Ragnar picked a cup… Which was shiny and nicely decorated… But ultimately just a cup…

He then proceeded to tell us about “The Forgotten”; The final hero who dwelled within the area, and the unpleasant roiling thing I’d released when retrieving the rod.

The Forgotten had been imprisoned in the crypt by Mandolin, who had been something to do with The Forsaken. The Forgotten had been particularly unpleasant to start with, but had been melded with hepathic energy to make something truly nasty… The Baron also announced that he couldn’t fight The Forgotten so we’d get to do it… Tomorrow morning… Which was nice…

The next day dawned bright with the excitement of fighting some hepathic abomination, and a friendly bear arrived and told Idrissa that The Forgotten was soon to arrive…

In an unusual moment of clever planning, we came up with a tactic of standing in a clear field area nearby, invoked all of our party and waited for our horrible deaths…

They arrived fairly promptly and proceeded to kick all sorts of different fluids out of us across the horizon. It was touch and go for quite some time, with lots of regrouping, being beaten, running away, regrouping and running away again. We had a fairly good tour of the Drackenbone region as we were kicked across it, but we finally finished off The Forgotten and returned to The Protectorate to lick our numerous wounds and report our success to our guilds…