A Visit to Another World - Larping in the UK

Behind me is unarguably one of the best experiences so far: an intensive weekend full of interesting encounters, fighting with latex weapons, living as someone else, adrenaline, fun and epicness. In short, I was larping, or live action role-playing, in a HeroQuest event. (I could use time and effort to explain about HeroQuest and larping in general, but it would make this post so much longer, and I'd rather focus on my individual experience. Thus, I'm going to direct you at their website instead.)

Monsters ready to take the fight to the enemy

So. I attended the event as a “monster”, a non-player-character whose purpose was to play numerous different characters during the event, and thus allow the party of player characters to experience numerous different encounters. Most of these encounters involved combat, but there were also peaceful ones with talking, role-playing, and living the story. It was great to experience a larp that, with is combat-heavy, dungeon-like system, is noticeably different to what most of the larps in Finland are. Also, I have never had the chance to participate in combat while larping. HeroQuest allowed me to do just that, fight the players with latex weapons of by shouting spells. Although I enjoyed fighting with any weapon or spell, I noticed very quickly that a sword and a shield were what I liked most. Especially when fighting against Roesis, the Aspirant Knight of the party. Very few things feel better than crossing blades with someone who has been doing this longer than I’ve been alive, and realising I can surprisingly skilfully block many of his blows with my shield while landing my own. One especially satisfying moment occurred when I was fighting Roesis and noticed Talen, the party’s Wizard running towards me from behind, ready to hit me with a spell. As I thought that any hit from me would damage him more, I turned to swing my sword and hit him, and continuing the same move, spun around, lifting my shield just in time to block a blow from Roesis. Such a small, fleeting moment, but so successful and satisfying!

Odo, unaware of her approaching fate

In addition to characters that only fought the party, I also played a few characters that allowed me to do more role-playing. The first one was Odo, an evil priest and an apprentice to the mighty Fistan de Lantilus. She acted tough when surrounded by her undead bodyguards, but ran away when confronted directly, and begged for mercy after everyone on her side had died. The character was fun to role-play, and the intensity (try having someone charge at you with a raised sword and a stern look, it really sets the mood) of the situation made acting out the character easy. It also helped to be slightly out of breath from running, and later I was told my pleading and crying was quite convincing. Almost survived as that character, but the members of an organisation called the Cold Dawn arrived on the scene and as they didn’t want to let Odo live, Flint Baleforge, one of the members of the party beat her to death with a war hammer.

Another fun character to play was Nog, one of the lieutenants of the Realm Lord in the Abyss. She was strong, over-confident, noisy and arrogant - completely different from myself, or any character I’ve ever played. I chose to play that character because it gave me a chance to fight one-on-one with a couple of the party members, but at first the character didn’t feel like my own at all. It didn’t help that I felt quite weak and light-headed before the party appeared in front of me, but as they did, I assumed the role of the arrogant lieutenant and acted accordingly. The encounter was fun, but even more fun was to fight with the party, against the Realm Lord and another one of his lieutenants in the boss fight. By then I had accepted the character as my own, I felt strong as that character, and my war cries and taunts came naturally as I fought the Realm Lord and the other lieutenant.

During the weekend I also had time to stare at people with creepy red eyes, trick players into trying Finnish salty liquorice, confuse people by speaking Finnish, and so much more! The event took a lot of my strength, but I also gained so much: new friends, loads of memories (and quite a lot of bruises), all of them full of meaning and value. Leaving the site was sad, but I am grateful of all the wonderful people, and all the wonderful moments I shared with them. I may not be able to attend another event or meet these people any time soon, but I will return. This is not a goodbye, this is an “until next time”.

Enjoying the final night together

P.S. Damned be the squirrels there - those fuckers tore a hole in my bag and stole my Welsh cakes and Jammie Dodgers!