Yes, I know this is slightly late. It took a while, mmkay?

[chess]

When we got to the place we were meant to be meeting, we discovered that the person whose room it was had run off to ASDA, so we hung around in the stairwell for a bit until they arrived. On reflection once we all piled into their room (about 20 people in a cupboard) the stairwell had been rather more spacious, but people who had now got sitting places (including me) dissuaded a move back out to the stairwell. More people gradually arrived to make the room even more crowded, especially with all the kit, chainmail was passed around to people who'd requested it (yay for not playing a fighter and hence not wearing heavy armour!) and some information about the faction group we were meant to be in was passed around also, while some rule explanation was done.

On being offered a shield, I sorted out my character so I could use it (as I *can* fight with a sword and shield, but can't with just a sword very effectively). Eventually we began to work out who had cars and to decamp. We ended up walking over to behind the Grafton Centre to our driver's house, but we did get fudge so that was okay. (And we still weren't the last to arrive, despite lots of kit-shuffling by the residents of the house.)

There was a big black doggie at the house we went to, but it was an old, slow big black doggie and seemed quite harmless. By virtue of claiming things as soon as they showed up, I managed to acquire a leather waistcoat, a big grey cloak, a pair of studded leather arm-things (I've forgotten the name for those things that go over your lower arms...) and a sword-loop that was entirely useless, as I suspected (it being easier to draw the sword from being tucked in the belt rather than the loop). Stood around outside for quite a while (monster briefing going on) watching such spectacles as the hemming of a cloak with fake duct tape...

Eventually the monster briefing finished, the people who'd gone to get themselves food from Tescos returned (for some reason I still wasn't hungry, despite having brought a backpack full of food and having only eaten two pitta breads and some fake ham in the way of actual foodstuff all day), character cards and lore sheets were distributed and we set off to the actual LARPing site, with much eating of chocolate rasberries (in our car at least).

The car I was in had a tripwire across the side I was trying to get out, otherwise known as a strangely attached seatbelt which stretched itself out at just the wrong height when the seat was pulled forwards to let people out of the back. Somehow I managed not to actually fall over due to this, although it was pretty close. (In fact, I managed not to fall over once, which I was quite proud of.) Having acquired a shield and a sword, some sparring ensued, with tienelle being reduced to no limbs whatsoever because someone with two swords started swiping at him from the side. (It's actually quite hard to defend yourself from a swordsman at a lower level when you only have a small shield and the same length sword...)

Out of character briefing on the Witnesses of Rufus happened, during which I managed to construct something of a backstory for Therea, which helped. Then we all marched up to the top of the hill and were given an in-character briefing, informing us that we were being sent to go hunt out bandits, and our motivation was that we got to take their loot. After waiting around for a while due to monsters trying to get into position and work out what they were doing (and sparring in the meantime; I wasn't bad against small-person-with-two-swords, which amused me, but not as much as the Greatsword Of Being Far Too Large.

Eventually a ref showed up (there was some debate over whether his torch was a signal or a car, but then we heard him yelling and waved him down) and we got on with the 'traditional Witnesses transport circle - facing out and weapons drawn in case we're surrounded by gribbleys on the other side'. Some muttering from the ritualist later, we wandered into the forest in the ref-ordained direction (having been informed which areas were out of bounds and would contain nothing of interest) and met the Friendly Neighbourhood Herbalist. Therea was Nice In Order To Get Information at her, and the party spent quite a while gathering herbs for her whilst Therea and (?Marmoru) asked questions.

Eventually we managed to walk away with some of the herbs, although not the 'heal fatal wound' one that we really wanted, and were warned about a dead area (which she wouldn't pass, hence we had to leave her behind), which we helpfully blundered into and lost healing points from. We then blundered into some bandits, who we did manage to kill, and our illustrious leader took an endurance potion we found on them. We didn't find out what it actually did. We also found a scroll of sleep - I suspect we didn't use it.

Continuing to blunder around the forest after having failed to interrogate any of the bandits, we blundered across another bandit, who we did heal up and interrogate. Eventually, the party blundered onwards into the camp (which was really quite obvious from where we were standing interrogating the bandit), and finding it empty, proceeded to ransack it in a disorganised and pathetic style.

After the party began to set traps off the hard way and collapse tents, three of the bandits returned and asked us what we were doing in their camp. The person left out to talk to them claimed they were biding their time by talking to them ('You're the bandits! No, you're the bandits!') but when the rest of the party did cautiously emerge he showed no signs of stopping just-talking, so as he was second-in-command Therea thought she ought to just go and guard the paralysed person, rather than attacking anything. The party stood around and talked to the bandits, and then decided to take them to the herbalist to use her as a character witness.

The bandits, not being stupid, instructed the party to leave the camp in front of them, and to Therea's disgust the party meekly followed their orders. Therea herself circled around the back of the bandits, in order to have them at least vaguely surrounded, but the bandits threatened her (and no-one came to her aid) until she had to go in front of them, at which point they promptly hit her in the back.

She announced indignantly that the bandits were attacking her and made her way to the other side of the party in order to let the people with more armour kill the bandits, but no, they simply turned around and talked to them. The bandits justified themselves by saying that we were obviously leading them into an ambush. Ignoring her mutterings to the effect that we should cut their legs off, the party then *turned around and set off again*.

We found the herbalist, and one of the party thought it would be a really great idea to show her the severed head of the old bandit leader in order to ask whether she'd seen this person hiding something (apparently he'd hidden an amulet in the forest). Naturally, this scared the living daylights out of her, which gave the bandits plenty of ammunition to call us bandits. We then proceeded to *finally* get around to killing them, in front of our pet herbalist, who ran away in the confusion.

Then we stood around and argued the merits of taking prisoners, pressing on to find the amulet, pressing on to find the boss, and Therea's favourite, actually going back to do a proper search of the camp for loot. Whilst they were busy debating whether to revive a bandit as a prisoner, Therea got rather annoyed that she had to 'waste' some of her healing on a dying party member, and instructed him to never make her do that again. We did revive the prisoner. Only after that did we take his sword. Only after quite a while did we discover he also had a dagger and take that too. Then, as nobody had been assigned to look after him, he ran away whilst we started busily setting off traps again.

Instead of going after him, we decided to have a great debate about whose fault it was that he'd run away. By the time we decided we ought to chase him, the ref said it was obviously pointless because he knew the area better and had a head start. After identifying a few trinkets, we decided to wander off and try and get ourselves killed again.

Going in the other direction that was left to us, we started meeting hoardes of undead. Naturally, when two of the party got paralysed and a wraith had just run away, our friendly neighbourhood barbarian fighter decided to call a wraith hunt, leaving Therea guarding the paralysed people because nobody else seemed to want to. No prizes from guessing which direction the wraith came from. The cry of "Help me, the wraith's back!" was heard echoing across the forest, and Therea only lost one leg before the rest of the party came back up the hill to her aid. Although she was quite capable of healing the injury, she was also not particularly happy about this state of affairs.

Then, of course, they went off again. Therea sighed and repaired the armour of the paralysed people, after informing the people rearranging the paralysed just how unfunny they were. When the wraith returned the next time Therea had acquired a blunt object from one of the paralysed people and helped beat it into the ground, but it obviously wasn't dying (the party being so dense, including Therea this time, that the wraith had to call time out and explain out of character that it wasn't dying and could people stop hitting him now) so we let it crawl away.

Having established that we had an enemy we couldn't kill that was just going to regain its strength, and which had an enchanted sword we couldn't remove from it, the party proceeded to, you've got it, stand around and talk. (The paralysed people had finished being paralysed at this point.) Eventually the voices of reason prevailed and we pressed on into the forest to try and find out where these undead were coming from, assuming it had something to do with the bandits.

Eventually (after whacking a few more undead; we got quite good at it by the end, although Therea stayed out of it, as she didn't have much healing left) we came across something like a burial mound or a shrine, and it had interesting things in which we couldn't quite investigate before a necromancer and some of his minions (two - the wraith and a zombie) approached and asked us what we were doing in his cave, and would we kindly like to stop desecrating it, and what we were doing in his land anyway.

There was a mildly interesting and plotful conversation going on - he claimed that he was ruler of this province and the rightful Graecian authorities were weak and pathetic, and beneath his notice - when our Friendly Neighbourhood Barbarian decided to attempt to throat-slit him. With a perfectly ordinary dagger. D'oh.

Surprisingly enough, the dagger ("I thought it was silver because it was shiny" istr was his excuse in the debriefing) had no effect whatsoever on the necromancer, except to make him really angry. He started lashing out with the Touch Of Death (fatal on touch, mm) and calling 'no effect' to people hitting him with swords, so Therea yelled "Run away!" and pulled Marmoru out of the way with her because he was closest. Backing off to a safe distance (i.e. well beyond everybody else so there were plenty of better targets), Marmoru asked Therea if she'd been hit by a fear effect, and she replied that no, she was just naturally terrified.

As the battle went predictably downhill, Therea (and Marmoru) backed off further and further into the forest, until eventually they simply decided to go back to the ritual circle and hope a ritualist turned up, and perhaps from there to the herbalist's village if it looked like everyone else was dead.

On approach to the ritual circle, they found two of the party already there (including a ritualist!), who promptly accused them of being undead because of the paleness of their faces. Therea treated this idea with the contempt it deserved ("Oh, for goodness sake, if we were undead we'd be shambling around and grunting, not talking to you in a perfectly reasonable way. Now, calm down, will you?") and just kept walking confidently towards them, and eventually they did indeed calm down and put their swords away.

We waited for a while, debating as to what to do; Therea asked how fast we could transport out, and the ritualist seemed to think it was reasonably fast, so Therea agreed to hanging around and waiting for the others; the ritualist wanted to go back and search for the amulet or some other boss or something, but Therea insisted that he remain, with the implication that a ritualist did not need his legs to produce a transport circle. Eventually we got bored of waiting and decided to go back to Delphi 'for reinforcements'. Therea was quite happy to accede to any plan that got her out of the forest, and so the circle of four went back.

On their return they were greeted by a reasonably high-ranking Witness, who asked if there were any incantors, and then any healers. Therea raised her hand, but informed him that she was not going back there, it being pointless for any purpose other than suicide. He agreed it was perfectly reasonable for her to leave, so she went to get some sleep before the inevitable debriefing.

There was a bit more, obviously, but I think that'll do for writing up now. I then went and monstered for a bit, but didn't actually get to do anything because the party eventually agreed with Therea's assessment and went home, although not until half of them were used by the necromancer to get the amulet. We also failed to find the book fragment that the necromancer was guarding, and were generally in quite a bit of trouble in the debriefing (which we did in the Churchill JCR bit with comfy seats). This lasted until about 3am, at which point I wandered vaguely back to my room and Got Some Sleep.

Comments

braces

[(Anonymous)]

Isn't it that braces protect your joints and vambraces are just padding along the long straight bits of the arm (against swords if on the outside and against your own bow string on the inside)

Re: braces

[tienelle.livejournal.com]

The bits we use in archery to protect ourselves from the bow string are called bracers. It's quite possible to buy a lace-up leather bracer not totally unlike those Michelle was using; these are also described as bracers.