#being status effected and i haven't been here as long as my other sessions.

[jacky-rubou]

finished one chapter of evil stan au, let's just take a break for the night before writing the next one wow.

[kwaggysshardmindemporium]

Feel like rambling, and I haven't talked about LARPing on my Tumblr at all yet. I'd LOVE to gush about my character, but honestly, a lot of what I like about him plays off the setting, both the larger world the game takes place in and the actual in-game space that represents the one specific town we live in.

The LARP I go to is Witchwood in western Massachusetts. The game just celebrated its tenth year of operation at the first spring session of this year. I've been around in this game for 6, so most of its run. If you happen to live in New England, I promise you'll find precious few communities that are more fun and welcoming to be in and if you have ANY interest whatsoever in pretending to be a fantasy person out in the woods 4 times a year you should check it out. Obligatory link: witchwoodroleplaying.com

More below a page break because I have no idea how long this is gonna be but it sure ain't gonna be short.

So, this game has a lot of lore. I'm not going to detail all of it, just a decent surface dive.

The biggest concept is the six Realms. These are reasonably analogous to various planes of being in DnD, but there's exactly six instead of umpteen-million. Imagine a circle or sphere divided into six equal wedge segments, and that's roughly how the cosmos is arranged. The Realms are also heavily color coded.

Evren is basically the Material Plane from DnD and is the most straightforward comparison. It's where the player characters live. It's the realm of growth and REgrowth. Of new things. And the realm of things coming together. Of communities. This isn't unilaterally a good thing. Cliques and hostile factions are still communities, after all. It also contains the Witchwood Tree, for which the game is named. Go back to that circle cut into segments. The Witchwood Tree is a huge fuckoff tree that grows at the center point where the all touch. The tree has one root in each other realm. Yes it's similar to Yggdrasil. Magic of this realm generally takes the form of Druid abilities. Healing, poison, and the like. Evren's associated color is very bright, blinding white. It borders the realms of Reverie and Firmament. Its opposing realm is Void.

Reverie is the realm of thought. The mind. Dreams. Feelings. The things that form what you'd recognize as sapient. Reverie as a place shifts to meet the world's collective expectations of it. It's also the realm of fates and destinies. Of reputations. Everything the people of other realms firmly believe is heightened to the point of absurdity within Reverie, so among us players it has a somewhat deserved reputation as being "the funny realm." On the flipside, it also heightens our fears and darkest thoughts, to the point where the principal enemy that comes from here is Nightmares made manifest. Reverie magic is channeled through casters called Weavers, and in game terms is all about inflicting malicious status effects. Sleep, Silence, etc. Its color is green. It borders Evren and Umbra, and its opposing realm is Vigor.

Umbra is the realm of the spirit. Of the dead. What's left of something after it dies. The undead, both naturally occurring and created, come from Umbral power. It's also one of two places the people of Evren can go to when they die, being stripped of everything except their spirit, which is generally an imitation of what they were in life, with the details fading as people that remember them can no longer do so. Given that travel between realms is both doable and not even particularly hard, this means you can talk to your deceased loved ones if they go to Umbra pretty easily. This act also bolsters the strength of the spirits you talk to, preventing them from fading away for longer. But eventually everything falls away to nothing, lost to history. It's also where the stories of the realms resonate. Umbral magic is channeled through Mystics, and has a general damage focus centered around attacking the spirit, which particularly harms undead. The blunt Death spell is their signature. Umbra stuff is red, it borders Reverie and Void, and its opposing realm is Firmament.

Void is nothing. It's emptiness. It's teeming with strange life. It's everything. Void is, fundamentally, about two things: paradox and never having enough. Creatures of Void are defined by their hunger, ceaseless and unsatisfiable. The power of Void renders anything and everything possible, but using Voidic power is generally hazardous to the health of anything not of Void. This might all make Void sound evil. It's not. It's alien, and it's primal. It is so divorced from the understanding of you and I that trying to apply our morality to what goes on there is foolish. Voidic magic can be harnessed at great sacrifice by Voidmancers, but doing so usually carries insane social stigma and also curses you for life. (Player characters cannot be Voidmancers at character creation. They have to learn it in-game.) Void's color is purple, its neighboring realms are Umbra and Vigor, and its opposing realm is Evren.

Vigor is the realm of action, order, strength, and power. Vigor is almost mechanical in how it operates as a whole. Its beings are made in factories in bulk. Golems are other similar single-minded constructs that simply obey. It's also, curiously, the OTHER place you have the option of going when you die. Instead of your spirit playacting a simulation of who you used to be, all of that is obliterated in favor of repurposing your raw power to fuel Vigor's many forever wars. This option is considered favorable among people who wish for the end of their life to be the actual END. Smash cut to the credits. Vigorish magic can either manifest as martial ability and prowess, or be manipulated directly by runic magic, which simply efficiently recreates existing powers without iterating. Its color is blue, it borders Void and Firmament, and its opposing realm is Reverie.

Lastly going around the wheel, we have Firmament. Firmament is the realm of the elements: fire, water, air, and earth. It's also the source of mana, the raw essence required to do magic. It's denizens are either creatures typifying the element(s) they are associated with (phoenixes, drakes/dragons/imps of various elements etc.), as well as the fae courts constantly infighting over squabbles Evrish folk can never fully understand even as they get roped in on one side or the other. Firmament power is channeled through Wizards. Their color is yellow, they border Evren and Vigor, and their opposing realm is Umbra.

So that's what the cosmology of this place is like. I'll save the ramble about the actual place on the map the players live some other time.