Two weekends and a week...
After a comparively restful week pre-Symbols, strangely enough post Symbols was a lot more hectic. With a little more time now of course, that resulted in LOTS to tell. So here goes. First up was Symbols, of course, and despite the fact I had to work my friends had my back and pretty much prepped everything for me. Getting there was easier said then done. While my friends had picked up the packed cart and gotten it to the grounds, I was working till 16:30 and driving from Zoetermeer to Deventer past some of the busiest traffic-intersections of the country. Luckily I would not be driving alone as I also know that some of the Children of Nature (Gert, Simone and Bas) would be travelling from Leiden and my work was right next to Station Zoetermeer-Oost. Just as I walked out of the building they arrived on the parking, and we loaded the car and went underway.
Till Utrecht it went quite smoothly, but 6 accidents between Zoetermeer and Deventer generated over 20 km of trafficjam, and we decided, wisely, to stop in Soesterberg for food and bathroom. Just past 7 we got back in the car and arrived on the grounds just past 8, quickly unloading and preparing to go in-character. I was pretty moody then, tired and overwhelmed by negative emotions due to the traffic situations (the trip was _really_ too long, depriving me of my lovely chill time to get into character), but the fact that everything was prepared cheered me up fast. After unpacking the car, a quick talk to Jules, reporting to Glok and getting into my costume I was finally ready to go.
Friday Part I - Enter the Oehoe
After a few small things to start with I spent most of the time talking IC to people going into the tavern, watching the distillationprocess of a fresh batch of Mirra Potion. Then smoke started billowing from the back of the lab, a low rumble sounded from behind the table and fire lit up the back of the room... seconds later the table was overturned by a small blast and broken glass was heard througout the village, swiftly followed by a massive explosion. Unsurprisingly the lab was destroyed and aflame, and Aegolius was down. The village reacted swiftly and managed to get the unconscious alchemist out while starting a bucket brigade. Eventually after many healings Oehoe managed to regain consciousness shorty to give the last of the Mirra potion to R'rea and he got carried to his house, where most of the healers of the village tried to save his life, in desperation bringing him in a magically induced regenerative sleep by the effort of both Shining One and Nature Worship magics. After a while Alice came to pick me up, and I was done with the owl-man for the night. Exit Oehoe.
Friday Part II - Welcome back Jesse
Jesse Twoblade, twice-Scourge of the Blackhammers, entered the village with much panic from the Blackhammers, offc. I entered only with Madman, the rest of the team staying on the forest edge; my mission was to locate a nightkin, which actually was Dennis' character. Didn't find him, offc, but scored another assignment and nagged Blackies all night, spliced inbetween with a few more serious talks. To my great mirth Hiran threated Jesse, shortly after which Vaj hired Jesse's entire team to retrieve Thalara from the forest as she had shifted to her bear self... mwhahaha. No rest for the wicked just yet... and I quietly went OC close to two after updating Glok & Alice.
Saturday - Bits of Oehoe everywhere...
Saturday I woke up fairly late and rushed through breakfast, after which Govert and I went wild on Oehoe's explosion damage. Tumor on the abdomen, heavy damage on the arms, left neck and left half of face badly burned... After being woken up he was in a lot of pain, and emergency surgery by a load of villagers, including a lifeline by Taima herself pulled him through. Just. Ate a load of meat and nearly bit off Petra's finger; also hallicunated, which the villagers took for prophetic visions. Finally, just past the afternoon, I was bandaged and half-heartedly hobbling around, trying to salvage the Guild. I did have a very violent encounter, though...
After the "vision" we had on the previous Symbols we thought our Thama the "coolest of the bunch" by both giving the other Thama's the finger ("You have option A or B." - "Fine, C it is then.") and creating the Malkuth, a Changeling-only realm world-in-a-world similar to the Umbra; his behaviour would explain the highly independant and individualistic way that Changelings spend their existance, and fitted rather well with our own roleplaying performance of the race as a whole. However our Thama choose to take over Butterfly, played by ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
selmaika and pulled a knife on Ae'ria to get our attention, standing next to me in the Alchemist's Guild. While fighting in the Guild was stupid, as soon as she stepped outside of the Guild my control snapped (Triple Berserk Whammy: and threaten broodmate and threated lower ranking unarmed member of the Pride and theaten personal friend) and I lunged at the knife, uttering throaty profanities as I ripped the knife away from Aeria. Of course, Owl did not quite count on Oehoe being wounded, so the wound went open again and as soon as Owl retreated with its anger satisfied Oehoe came back with this "why am I bleeding?" question in his head as he fell unconscious in the poring rain.
After waking up they tried to feed me meat again to keep the predator in, but Oehoe nearly blanked again and spat out the meat. Luckily R'rea used Calm Animal, keeping Oehoe in control while Butterfly was escorted to the house. The other Changelings heard what it had to say but Oehoe made another dose of the Mirra Potion to force it down Butterfly's throat. After making it he stalked to his house and gave it to the rest of the Changelings growling "put this in her throat before I rip it out". Also voted for killing Butterfly now to save us trouble in the long run, but Vaj was against... only after that most of Owl retreated back into his shell.
The end score? Well, I was about to rip out the throat of the Avatar of our Thama and gave it the finger, metaphorically. Yep, owl-man's in trouble... Also, the Thama has been demoted from "kewl" to "just another tyranical thama-thingie" because it seems it is about as bad as Team Blue's PMS-chickie's (where P stands for Permanent). I did spend some time with Judith afterwards, as we were both fairly shaken up over the events, and good in-character play is never worth out-character troubs. I had gone "0 to 60" on the Oehoe - Owl transformation during our little tussle, and that caught us both a bit off guard. Luckily we had both pulled back a bit during dinner and we were able to look back on a good scene with some measure of mental peace of mind.
Still, there was dinner, and that was good. Had good food and managed to get food as one of the first, after which I fully in-character fled to the Alchemist's shack as I KNEW how bad Boterbloem would be, and his assistant, capably portrayed by saakie, was even worse. Luckily the heavy metal band "Krijsend Zwaard" (Screaming Sword) came to the rescue and kicked Boterbloem and his howling assistant out of the village; yay for the heavy metal warriors. It was all in all a hilarious show by Hans, Jan & Judith, so that is cool. I find myself thinking of their next hit, though, so stay tuned...
The evening I spent mostly with Warme Alchemisch Brouwsel, Oehoe's version of warm chocolate milk, which thanks to Martijn was the best ever, with fresh honey and pure chocolate mixed in. Circled the village twice, starting with the tavern and the Nightkin, and every last drop (all 11 litres of it) of it was out after the second lap, barely an hour after I started preparing it. Note to self: more next time. Also shopped for herbs and salvaged as much I could from the Guild, also sending a letter to ask for support from the University of Venada, not realizing that the Venadan army was bearing down on Runewall at the same time... that night the Council decided that they should accept the Venaden occupation, as the neutrality of Runewall could not be protected from 40.000 enemy soldiers. Thus ends that. Guarded the Nightkin in trance for the remainder of the evening with Vaj, Ae'ria and Silverleaf and retired to bed after a short talk with Julian OC. Slept for nearly 8 hours.
Sunday - That Oehoe-feeling...
Sunday I was mostly okay again, and spent most of it cleaning up the Guild and getting it into some kind of a good state while also packing to avoid Venada's incoming army. We also heard that Mirra, the Mouse Changeling (Sanne) I had concocted the potion with that would prove our salvation (for the moment) came to our village as a refugee, with Sokal's group scattered. We wanted to go and help him at once, but we had no option, and we might just dump the whole Centrum plan for a rescue to him. He is, to date, our only racial ally, and far to valuable.
There was a fight with a group of Changelings with control over their abilities. Had fun wacking mole-Changelings and bird-Changelings, and love to know how they did it. Research, though, proved my theory that those unwilling could not be brought out of Changed Form... point of more research, then. Did have a funny moment during autopsy where my hungry predator was handed a mole's liver on a white cloth, which he almost took for lunch. And with that, time-out was called an hour later. Was a bit miffed about a few cargo-related things, but a good dinner with Lies, Jo, Saskia, Jules, Ren, Cora and Ivo cheered me right up, and we were home around 19:30, spending a good night watching the first episode of the fourth season of Atlantis.
The week after was tough in that I had to make a few hard decisions and had a few talks, and it was quite busy. Thursday especially was heavy with the Department meeting concerning us, and it was pretty clear that I cannot start working less which I so direly need; unfortunately that decision is made then. Now, how to break it gently to my collegues... Still, I have two new offers waiting for me, one of which I will probably take. My overworking days are over burning me up. Still, with that decision made creativity flooded back to me and I could finally rebuild a file that has been in bits all over my harddrive for over six months of research and collection notes: building a detailed, living (pun intended) city of over 800.000 people for my dear Kindred & Co to populate. Dorestad is nearly done, my Children of the Night, and it is Thine.
Friday I want lasergaming with my collegues after dinner in Den Draeck, playing two games. Both I ended up first of the entire group, and I managed to even make the Day Top 5 Players, which is a definate first for me; played alongside my boss twice, and we tag-teamed our way through the mazelike warren beneath the Ozebi, scoring good points. Also, Lies joined me for the second game, not doing bad herself and ending just behind me. Never underestimate secondary skills for the Larper Prestige Class...
Saturday I got up frightningly early, packed a smoke machine and several guns, plus a laptop and Dell backpack. After picking up Cora and Rennie we drove to Utrecht to attend Dood Spoor, the experiment by Richard and Onno. After having a difficult time finding it and a more difficult time parking the car we arrived at the RBT headquarters where the players had gathered: René played our Team Leader and Investigator Willem van Laren, JW added necessary muscle and weapons expertise as Weapon Expert Carl van Houten, Karijn was Naomi van Miltenburg - Biometrist, Brian our valued Medic and Forensic Specialist Malcolm Kelly, Cora was Francien Stamhuis, Chemist and Olga our overworked linguist Alexandra "Alex" Justine Amélie van Asperen. I was, somewhat typecasted *evil grin*, Tom "Uffie" van Uffelen, Computer Expert and "Network Security Analyst". Together we formed the "Recherche Bijstandsteam Utrecht" - very roughly translated to CSI Utrecht. We were joined by our overall leader, John's neatly suited charachter Van Dongen, a notorious hardliner boss, but we kinda liked him.
Now, as a note beforehand, Richard and Onno had kept us almost fully in the dark. We only had the initial address in Utrecht, had no clue about the locations and no clue about who would be NPC-ing, or where our day would go; it made it all very, very special, and to experience for once as a player a modern day roleplaying thing... thanks guys!
The day started with a dead body in Utrecht Centrum in a beautiful historic building. Armed with mobiles and porto's we went in and found a dead and cut-up young man in the celler with earthen floor (Hi, Joost!), a forensic specialist (Hi, Govert!), two normal police officers (Hi, Niels & Judith!) and two housemates (Hi, Jan & MJ!). We gathered information, took crime scene photos and got a few leads. Got my hand cracking on the computer and the police database, which I promptly 'hacked' (just a matter of diving into the source code, finding the right header and decrypt from there...) and after nearly two hours went back to HQ after Willem had insisted a psychologist come. With little backup due to the FC Utrecht vs. Ajax soccermatch we just had to muddle on.
At HQ we had two reporters stalking us, and interrogated family (Marlies, Jasmijn & Micha). After that we had a shootout at the morgue where they where processing our body, and went in to the rescue, nearly getting shot ourselves as only two our of our entire team actually had weapons. Which prompted the remark: "Wat voor politieagenten zijn jullie?" from disbelieving NPC's and SL's, to which Karijn sweetly answered with her usual sense of decorum "Niet! we zijn Recherche". We also had a bomb scare, but that was quickly solved... still, our body had been acid-tainted, so we had no usuable evidence, our Chemist nearly died in the gas-development from rapid decomposing and there was another shootout nearby, at the family of the dead person!
So, we could rule out coincidence and traced back the family history of the victim to the murder of a cult leader, Jasper van den Hoogenboom. Unfortunately, Judith's character, the police officer WE had sent to protect the family, was shot in the head, instantly killed. With the victim's sister kidnapped and his brother also murdered the circle was closing and we quickly suspected that someone wanted revenge, as we found out that the father of the victim had shot the Cult Leader after a fire in 1992. To add insult to injury (or the other way around) the cult was using military grade weapons (Franchi Spas 15 Assault Shotgun) and special ammo (Hollow Point).
That luckily led us to the next clue, however. Only 5 people potentially had acces to that kind of hardware... two of them were in prison, one of them couldn't have done it and the two others we brought in... and they came together and with the same lawyer. Some dirty dealings later we had a location where the weapons were delivered, and we had good reason to assume that they were still there: Fort Vechten.
It was a deathtrap. The Cultists would most likely be holed up in the main bunker, and we had to approach, single file, over the Marsdijk which ran over two-thirds the ring of the fort. Then, if we managed to do that we'd have to get through the main gate with one little bridge, flanked by raised gunpositions and basically forcing us into a sniper alley (or "Conga-line of Death"). Added to that, we were prolly outnumbered at least 2 to 1 with 'enthousiastic' Cultists, who had high-end firearms, while we out of a nine people had two unarmed civvies (even after arming our linguist and biometrist). Still, us being the kidnapped girls only chance, we went in. We had two full-automatic tommies next to the normal six-shoota's and my own shotgun-with-underslung-flashlight...
Surreal doesn't begin to describe it... I had Google-Earth-ed Fort Vechten as potential Lex-location (DUH) and earlier on that day IC as Tom cause we had to bust into the place. Still, driving there we were kinda driving ourselves crazy, and in the end I had three giggling schoolgirls in the back of the car who were talking themselves in a paranoid frenzy and a Rene who was about ready to blow anything's head off. It was one of those really funny moments and in my underbelly, for the first time in a while, the tingle of anticipation of a fully unknown situation and all its limitless potential was felt. Rare, that. I savored it. I had never been there, and it was around 12 and really, really dark, giving the fortress a gloomy, oppressive feel.
We were able to park inside the Fortress, through an unguarded gate, waited till everyone had arrived, recieved the last IC briefing and went in. I took Niel's character in tow and we made a full circuit of the main fortifications, but it was soon clear that they were all inside the main bunker. By the time we got there our teammates had forced entry through the main door and killed several cultists... and we dashed into the long echo-ing corridors, with a lot of nook and crannies. From every corner cultists jumped, and especially our more martial team members shot them up real good. Alex, Naomi and myself though, armed but very unprepared, were very shocked, and barely fired a shot. Then something shuffled at us in the dark, and a rain of bullets took it down... and it got back up. And again. Zombies (WTF???!!!). At that point our little RBT team thought they had well and truly lost it. But then more cultists came with hostages, and we freed her while killing more and more of them. Another corridor, more deaths. And another, with a loud scream echoing through. Then, a dark room. Carl kicked in the door, I went in with my flashlight, and stared straight into the barrel of a gun. It clicked. And it misfired. My shotgunblast echoed, and he fell back as Carl rushed past me. At that point my character was almost catatonic, and still unprepared what happened next. In large room a man (?) stood, in a circle, holding a gun to the head of the girl we were here to rescue. There was a horn sticking out of his head... a HORN. And it was Jasper van den Hoogenboom, the cult leader who had been murdered by the father's girl... The room spun, and we were in a large computer room... with living components. All those that had been killed where there, bits of an infernal machine. Only Van Dongen and Van Laren stayed standing and talked to the man-thing Jasper (Therry, offc). I sagged in the corner, with only one shot fired from my gun and no clue what was going on. After a minute or so of talking inside the computer Jasper said something about "whether destroying a diskette would harm the computer?" to which Tom got up and said: "its a start". I got up and started taking potshots at what I thought was the CPU. Managed to knock one out, but Tom was a lousy shot and fired two full clips without hitting the mark. Luckily, though, van Dongen moved right next to it, and I said to him "Chief, the red heads. Shoot them. Point blank range." Jasper turned around to stop him, but then he knew that I was on the mark and blew the head off the remaining living CPU. The room exploded into white. Time out.
So that was it.
While there is a lot of spit-and-polish still required for this type of concept and a serious re-evaluation of in-character and out-character logistics, both the NPC's and the SL's really made it happen. Multi-locational high-tech high-end larps which _almost_ could be real, and this I think gave me a bit of the feel of Lex that I miss when I SL. I will echo Richard and Onno saying that I hope that other people will go out of their way to make these kind of larps. And when they do, sign me up.
I happily greeted the NPC's that were present that I had not seen yet, a veritable all-star cast from the many events where I play and though the suspense of disbelief had been very difficult for me, I was happy to have done it. Was also glad to hug my girl again, who I had not seen since the morning when we parked and she went off to the NPC location. After finding all my ammo back and showing the Crime Scene pics it was time to go home, close to two already. Dropped Jolanda of home, dropped Rennie and Cora off and lost consciousness till 11 the next morning.
Watched Stargate Atlantis, picked Rene and Cora up again, picked up Janou and went to Bunik again, a mere three kilometers from the Fort and less then 12 hours later. The NPC day was great, though I can't tell much about it. It was cool to see the characters come to life and the group mixing well. Exodus grew up. However, the less said about that, the better, so I'll stop right there *evil grin* The weekend ended for me after dinner on the couch, watching 4400 and typing a little behind my comp.
My week is going to be nice. Next weekend I am not going to the Moots as it just costs me too much, so I will have a weekend off. Monday I will have Crossfire Open Door Question in WoW, Tuesday Lex Meet, Wednesday EE Meet mainly about Exodus, Thursday dancing with Lies and Friday prolly a quiet night with the Stardust Movie. In the mainwhile I am working on a last few thing for Exodus and Lex and making sure the right peeps have the right info...
amused
