Category Archives: Isles of Darkness

[Requiem] Comfortable lies

Isles of Darkness, LRP, Writing,

I was given the phrase “comfortable lies” to base a bit of fiction off of. What follows appears to be an excerpt from my Requiem character‘s mind, specifically regarding the creation of useful tools and servants. It doesn’t really go anywhere, but does bring up some of his notions about how the kine and ghouls should be treated.

Normally I would share this sort of thing across my social networks, but it’s almost a little too strange for me to want to do that, so I’ll just leave it here and point people at it later.

The human mind is a wonderful thing. Given enough of a push, it can come to believe anything – it can even lie to itself and twist truth and fallacy so completely they become indiscernible.

Push someone to their breaking point enough and they come to accept it as part of their life, they may even come to welcome it. They forget that things weren’t always like this and convince themselves that this is better; they come to welcome a brief respite as if it were a month-long vacation. They tell themselves that the lie is true, that they’re better off, that the respite is better than a holiday.

Push someone to their breaking point enough and they convince themselves that they’re unbroken while they remould themselves in the forge you present to them. There’s no challenge in breaking someone and reforging them; it’s a long process and you often have to start from nothing. Convincing someone that they remain unbroken, that they have chosen this path instead of being forced into it – that is a much more entertaining prospect.

Those who survive the process are fit to serve – convinced by themselves that this is where they should be without the weaknesses of a broken mind. Perhaps they long for the day that they can strike back, but can’t imagine what they would do without you – it doesn’t matter as long as they serve; and the ones who think they deserve to end your existence will fight harder to stop someone else doing so.

Of course, the process also eradicates their candidacy for elevation, at least in the superior clan. The lesser clans may find their twisted nature compatible, but they lack the elegance required for our family.

[Lost] Character drabble

Isles of Darkness, LRP, Musings,

“Alright then, alright then. What can I get for ya? Everything you could want, I got – or I can get it. Well… everything available with a modicum amount of effort – I don’t got no one-of-a-kind Holy Grails or nuttin’ and I don’t do quest work in the main – that’s not my bag.

Ain’t no Imitation Brand items here: either it’s the real deal, a Gen-U-Ine product, or it’s not on my stall. I only make honest trades, and I don’t sell shoddy goods. Sure, it might have fallen off a truck or four, but that don’t make it shoddy. I take barter and favours mostly – cash if you’re hard up but there’s a premium on that.”

A bit of a drabble about my Lost concept for the new Isles of Darkness chronicle. I’m currently thinking of calling him Honest Denzo (or Uncle Denzo) but I don’t really know where that name is coming from.

Spent the trip to collect my phone last night building up the character and exploring the concept and what he does, who he is, and what sort of person he is. All in all, he’s not a nice person, but he’s not a bad person – he’s in it for his own gain and he doesn’t really mind if that hurts other people, or if their desires backfire.

Thinking Spring Court with some Autumn Contracts. All about the desire, with the ability to tell what magic items do/are.

Seeming/Kith is where I’m a little more stuck. I’m thinking of using inspiration from the Pale Man from Pan’s Labyrinth – pale skin and blind in face with eyes in his hands which I intend to phys-rep with a mask and make-up[1]. To go with the mask, I’m thinking a creepy pale blond wig á la Richard O’Brien as Riff Raff in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Taking this all into account, I’m either thinking Darkling or Ogre. Darkling has the pale creepy vibe down pat (especially Tunnelgrub and Palewraith), but Ogre has Cyclopean and I quite like that as a means of subverting the blindness. Wizened would also work, but I’m less convinced about wanting to play one.

The character is a bit of a mish-mash of Riff Raff from Rocky Horror, Del Boy from Only Fools and Horses, Badger from Firefly, CMOT Dibbler from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, and other similar characters. Bit of an attitude, thinks he’s better than he is, proclaims himself an honest gentleman while trying to swindle every customer for all they’re worth.

Footnotes   [ + ]

1. ↑ I’m actually not sold on the eyes on hands thing, but some kind of pseudo-blindness appeals to me

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Summarising World of Darkness

Isles of Darkness, LRP, Roleplaying, , ,

A friend of mine was looking for summaries of the core new World of Darkness games that he could share with someone he was persuading to play in the Isles of Darkness. There was a dearth of responses, so I wrote something for him to use. They’re not brilliant – they’re written from one person’s perspective and my memory for exactly how everything works isn’t best when I have the books in front of me, but they do the job I think. Continue reading Summarising World of Darkness →

[Awakening] Siriche

Isles of Darkness, LRP,

Siriche (Seeker in Gaelic) is a man driven by the urge to restore his dead fiancée to life. In his Awakening, he bound her soul to his and now he seeks a way to make her whole once more.

After he Awoke, he was found by local Brilu who taught him the ways of magic and of their traditions. A foreigner to their traditions, he never quite felt at home there, though he couldn’t doubt the presence of Badb Catha over his Awakening – the crows that watched him have never left his memory.

He has adopted their traditions as his own, even becoming passably proficient in Gaelic (though his pronunciation leaves a lot to be desired). Even they couldn’t help him forever, and he returned to the city he left long ago. The mages of the cities are quite different and their traditions are alien to the ones Siriche learned in the highlands. Their lore is no less useful for that though. He has learned their ways as well – becoming a scion of two very different Awakened worlds.

Now a Silver Ladder, he pursues the paths of power wherever they may lead him in order to accomplish his impossible goal. As a Crow (Moros), he has skill in the arcana of Death and Matter which allows him to produce sufficient means that a mundane career is not an issue, leaving him free to seek arcane matters.

Regarding costume (as I didn’t have a clear enough idea of the character when I did my costuming post), Siriche is a Silver Ladder and a Moros, but importantly he’s also Brilu which means he adopts other arcane symbology than the norm. What I’m thinking is a sharp shirt, possibly a suit jacket, with quality trousers (but not necessarily suit trousers). Accessories include a silver crow’s skull pendant[1].

Inspirations include:

Footnotes   [ + ]

1. ↑ Thanks to Bobbie for helping me pick out the right pendant

[Requiem] Charles Morganti

Isles of Darkness, LRP,

My Requiem character for the post-reset Isles of Darkness chronicle is Charles Morganti. He’s a Daeva Invictus/Crone; he’s around 200 years old; and he is not a very nice person. The following is something of a work in progress tracking the development of the character.

Character inspirations for Charles include:

Alternately flamboyant and reserved, Charles could almost be seen to have issues with maintaining a single personality. The truth is that he is bored, and in an effort to make things more entertaining brings out these flamboyances to drive interesting circumstances.

He is a patron of the Dark Goddess, though his primary allegiance is to the Invictus – there is politics, and there is religion, and the two need not collide.

As a means of income and diversion, Charles maintains a stable of willing sycophants and dolls available for the right price to any customer. Prices vary by the customer, and his bordello is quite the den of sins of all varieties.

He was sired in London in the early half of the nineteenth century by the Daeva Invictus known as Aurelia Morganti. He quickly came to appreciate the new appetites of the kindred, and became quite skilled in the manipulation of kine. Having a financial background, he took well to the moneyed politics of the Invictus, and secured a modest status there, while he became drawn to the Circle of the Crone over the next hundred years – somewhat to the disgust of some of his peers.

He took neither side during the war, content to watch as others scurried about in the fighting. Now that the fighting is done, he sees Edinburgh as somewhere to find some excitement and has made efforts towards moving his places of business in that direction.

 

Straight Razor Cabaret

Isles of Darkness, LRP, Roleplaying, Writing,

My new Vampire: the Requiem character for the Isles of Darkness is more than a little based on a character I created for a PBeM Vampire: the Masquerade game.

One of the main differences is that my Requiem character is male, while the Masquerade character was female. One of the things I did to solidify that character in my mind was write the following fiction piece. Some people may prefer not to read it due to triggers or just plain unpleasantness, so I’ve placed it under a cut.

I’m not sure how well it would stand up to being gender-switched, which may be a flaw in my writing – not that I’m going to claim excellent ability at writing in the first place.

For those who might recognise it, some of the character inspirations come from Aurelio Voltaire’s songs, specifically Straight Razor Caberet and Cathouse Tragedy. Continue reading Straight Razor Cabaret →

Characters and Costume

Costume, Isles of Darkness, LRP, No Rest for the Wicked, Stargate, , , , ,

Recently I’ve been thinking about characters and costume. Namely about new characters for the Isles of Darkness, my newly concepted character for No Rest for the Wicked, and my slightly older concept for Stargate.

The thing about LARPs is that they need costume to make the characters feel real, and the thing about costume is that it can get expensive. My current main NPC for No Rest for the Wicked has £200-300 worth of costume I bought just for him – and that’s not even my own character.

So what am I thinking to pick up? Well, let’s start with the No Rest for the Wicked character, Trysten Martinus Ariakin. Trysten is an Imperial Knight, a warrior who glories on the field of battle encased in a machine of war perfectly synced to his reflexes. His costume has to reflect who he is, and the practicalities of his profession. I’ve made him more augmented that strictly necessary with extra nerve grafts for speed and agility. The forearm plugs from these need phys-repped (as do his neck plugs) and they need factored into his costume as well. What this means is that I’m looking at a sleeveless top under a more military jacket – practicality under uniform.

Sleeveless top: Punk Rave Steampunk Zipped Tshirt
Jacket: Punk Rave Embroidered Velvet Jacket (for dress occasions), Necessary Evil Loki Jacket for everyday
Trousers: Necessary Evil Mephisto Trousers
Plugs: something like these may be the basis of my hard-plug sockets Plumbsure Diaphragm Washers

Next up, my Requiem character for the Isles of Darkness – Charles Morganti. He’s a Daeva Invictus/Crone, which means he should be making a statement with what he wears, but may be open to bending tradition. He’s around 200 years old, so his tastes run a little more to the Victorian than modern day, but he’s been around long enough to adapt to more modern dress. I picked up a nice black (could be charcoal) shirt from a charity shop, and I may match it up with my black brocade trousers. While charity shopping, I found a (ladies) coat that would have been perfect if it wasn’t too small and that has sent me on a quest for the perfect coat for the character. I may have found it, but it won’t be cheap.

Coat: The Dark Angel Allerton Jacket
Trousers: also from The Dark Angel, but not available at the moment

My Forsaken character for the Isles of Darkness – as yet unnamed – is a Storm Lord living in the country. Various aspects of the character were unclear to me until I found a tweed-lined green bodywarmer in a charity shop. This has solidified the idea of who he is in my head, as obviously he’s landed to some degree, has lots of money and a shotgun collection, and is known for hunting at odd hours on the moors. Thinking about it, I may need to go back an buy a flatcap from the charity shops as well.

My current Lost character concept for the Isles of Darkness is a tribute to Delboy Trotter, CMOT Dibbler, and other such characters. A hawker of wares who can buy or sell anything for the right price, and has a range of Gen-U-Ine products guaranteed to do something, even if it’s not what you needed.

A character I haven’t really spoken about at all before now is my potential Stargate character. I’ve crewed a couple of events, but it’s only relatively recently that I picked up the concept. He’s an “analyst”, specialising in languages, branched out into some covert ops. Still playing around with the idea.

So I think that without even trying that puts me at £300 of new kit to buy this year, and I find myself wanting to buy it all now when I should really be spacing this out over the year. It’s a little annoying when that happens. And that’s not including the new weapons I’ll inevitably want to go with them (like the £115 custom rapier I just received from Skian Mhor).

IoD National

Depression, Friends, Isles of Darkness, LRP, ,

So it turns out I’m really bad at updating this regularly. Who’d have thought that? Oh wait, I did.

So let’s try this again. This last weekend, I went down to Buckden for the IoD National. Having found out a few days beforehand that I wasn’t playing any of the games like I thought I had been, I was in a surprisingly good mood.

On the Friday, I co-ST’d/NPC’d Geist, then NPC’d/ST’d Awakening before spending the evening playing board games and drinking cocktails (thank you Matt Sanderson). The games were fun and I met some new people through the process of NPC’ing with them and ST’ing for them. Then there was the Mage soft RP session late at night which had both some surprising IC and OOC results…

Saturday morning, I was back to NPC’ing/ST’ing Awakening which was interesting, followed by the AGM. After that, I had a bit of a breakdown. I’m not entirely sure what caused it. A perceived exclusion, a lot of noise… I just ran out of cope. I held myself together enough to get to the NPC brief for Forsaken and I took longer than I should have to get in character – it was just a lot of effort to get into costume. I’m glad I did though, as I had quite a lot of fun ranting about the unnatural abomination that was my alpha (all in fun, no real-world views given). After that, I didn’t feel like doing much but I got caught by Reb as I went to go get some of my stuff and he convinced me to NPC for him. So glad I did – I haven’t had that much fun with a character in years… Apologies to any Lost players I may have creeped out.

Sunday brought about packing and some vague NPC’ing, but I was mostly just providing some continuity as I didn’t have much I could connect to and I couldn’t bring myself to stay in character for an extended period.

Then the long journey home.

Still, I had more fun that I expected, and I met some lovely people I hadn’t met before and reconnected with some lovely people I hadn’t seen properly in a while. All-in-all, an excellent weekend.

54 draw 3

Isles of Darkness, LRP

This is a system that’s been getting discussed for a while. It’s a resolution system designed to be used for systems such as New World of Darkness in a LARP environment. You start with a full deck of playing cards (standard 52-card deck + the jokers [hence 54]). You then follow the below pseudo-code.

$dicepool = calculate_dice_pool($your_sheet);
$successes = 0;
$cards = draw_cards(3);
foreach ($cards as $card) {
	if (is_number_card($card)) {
		$temp_dp = $dicepool;
		while ($temp_dp > 10) {
			$temp_dp = $temp_dp - 10;
			$successes = $successes + 1;
		}
		if ($temp_dp >= $card->$value) {
			$successes = $successes + 1;
		}
	} else if (is_joker($card)) {
		$new_cards = draw_cards(2);
		$cards = $cards + $new_cards;
	} else {
		// failure
	}
}

It’s not so difficult to understand.