Crying Foul- Some initial afterthoughts...
The Unfolding Events From The View Of Christian Biesty (Subtitled: And I will jam rusty forks in my eyes before I am ever this complimentary about anything again)
Although I have not had much time to go over the event in my mind I don’t think I have ever felt so much slowly building anxiety and fear, which came to its zenith as truly existential terror on Saturday night (to the point of which I had to seriously concentrate to get out of the headspace and get some sleep), in any game I have ever played.
Early on everything threatened to turn out rather badly for Christian, who did manage to nut up or shut up in the end despite being someone I thought of as most effective behind pen and paper. I channelled my own rough trip up to the house (really bad bouts of travel sickness that was threatening to make me Captain Chunder the 2nd before I had even reached Deeside) to fuel his sense of exhaustion and anxieties about travelling. At first he was hopeful he would achieve his goal of acquiring the notes but this all came crashing down at the auction which I nearly excused myself from. The two hour wait meant I had a lot of time to work myself up in character and I felt genuine sadness that his efforts were just swept away by Dr Baker, who was very reasonable but seemed determine to shut the notes away forever, and Hetty whose motivations were summed up to him by Templeton as being ‘she is curious and has lots of money.’ For about a quarter of an hour I did not know what on earth to do, the anxiousness of events that had already occurred (my strange dream on Friday night, the robbery and a few other things) mixed with the failure at the auction gave me a genuine sense of sadness.
Then Christian was handed the letter addressed to him from the correspondence box. I was given a purpose back and Christian felt finally justified in his travels to that remote house of a mentor he would never see in person, until the appearance of his corpse as an avatar of the Bloated Man.
The notes and the film recording left for Christian was what really shifted the character. Up until that point Christians world view was very much tied to his work as an anthropologist and his understanding that the effects of primitive healing rituals and magic and the testimony of those who made use of them could be explained as being a mixture of the placebo effect, plants and other consumables, the health benefits could be scientifically verified and other natural phenomenon that was just not explainable at the time. After seeing some of Bradbury’s notes Christian’s initial thoughts were along the same lines as Dr Bakers. Perhaps Bradbury indeed had been losing his mind towards the end of his life and so Christian was keen to protect his mentor’s reputation from criticism.
But by the time I had had chance to read more of Bradbury’s writings and had seen the film addressed to Christian however the line between those neat categories of phenomenon had started to blur in Christians mind. We had already seen the decayed cook and then the Butler choke up insects and then expire. As an aside I think one of the strongest themes of the event was the blurring of science and religion and (to sound massively pretentious here) I feel like it made the weekend not only an excellent Horror Event but an excellent deconstruction of a Horror Events. This blurring soon turned into a full on falling down of Christian’s understanding of the world he lived in while I was watching the second film. The chronology of events he was given, the strange phenomenon of the film and the photograph of who he deduced was Whittaker (who was also Shawe) and the heartfelt plea from his mentor to finish his work and resolve what had been going on made a believer out of Christian. This had a dark flipside however as he gained a glimpse into the twisted mind of Whittaker and although he was resolved to stop Whittaker’s plans he could almost understand his evil, grim logic.
I think my favourite moment of Christians was just after the second film, which towards the end had made mention of the Detectives who had been hired to find Whittaker. I got up and said ‘I have some work to do, and I believe you have a man to find Mr Templeton... you may recognise him,’ throwing an envelope across the table with a photograph of Whittaker inside. The reaction from Templeton (Weasel) was excellent.
The rush of finally having the story of events straight in his mind soon developed into anxiety however. I spent a lot of time trying to go over notes in the living room, not realising that they had been scattered around the house and in some cases been incorrectly paper clipped together after being separated. I finally sat upstairs in the shared bedroom for half an hour to go over things.
After having some success magically blessing tea I then failed to conduct one of the rituals properly and then it became increasingly difficult to attempt again given people’s conditions were worsening and we were expecting a cultist attack any moment. I pinned a lot of my hopes on conducting the Navajo healing ritual correctly a second time and finally managed to gather enough people upstairs in the now barricaded bedroom to do so.
The twenty minute ritual which only claimed to cure the ‘one sung over’ was I will admit tremendously draining. I sung and I danced and I chanted and as I looked around I could see how draining it was for the others. This was a deeply grim moment for me and Christian. I was physically exhausting myself and others to do something that only had a chance of saving one person from the virulent disease and in the back of his mind he was wrestling with the knowledge that there was no way he could perform this ritual upon all the people who were with him, that he or others might have to chose who lived and who died and that was only if they all had the physical and mental will to press on. It was also raised at one point that as the ‘Medicine Man’ there was a good chance that he would not be able to undergo the ritual himself.
This was made all the more difficult by the talk with Whittaker, whose words once again made a pretty deep, nihilistic impression on Christian even as he was rebuking him. Christian was talking big and even took a shot at Whittaker when he had the chance, but behind his words he was a mass of anxiety and uncertainty. As another aside I believe the night time shoot out has to be my favourite LARP combat situation I have ever been in. All I could see were figures moving in that darkness. I managed to spy Whittaker (Jonno) for long enough to take my shot but all I saw after making the call was Whittaker completely vanish from view into the blackness. Perhaps he had been hit, perhaps not. Looking into the pitch-black from the brightly lit bedroom it just looked like he had simply evaporated in front of my eyes. The scene, despite being short was compelling, dramatic and displayed the true lethality of the situation we were in with poor Mr Pope (Wrong Mike) taking two bullets in rapid succession and dying almost instantly in the cramped bedroom.
The vision I received after the ritual was both a relief and another heap of worries. He now no longer believed more of the Navajo rituals were necessary and that they had made significant progress to curing themselves and thus stopping Whittaker’s plans but we were now under attack by cultists and needed to continue with the healing rites and rituals outlined by Bradbury before finding some way of actually ‘using the key to close the door,’ whatever that meant.
After having reassembled in the living room Christian could only work himself into more of a state as his attempts to go over more of Bradbury’s research were foiled by the ever worsening state of himself (which included a brief period of illiteracy) and the other Attendees and his (and my) fatigue. I eventually barricaded myself in the bedroom and attempted to sleep after I had read some of Bradbury’s travel journal, which I was especially keen to do because of my Coping Mechanism.
Perhaps it was the sparse notes of the journal that allowed my mind to fill in so many blanks, perhaps it was the evocative photographs in the journal or perhaps it was just all of the anxiety I had built up (and the fact I was out of character feeling nauseas and had a tremendous headache) but reading that journal was both enthralling and terrifying. I found myself imagining all the places and scenes that were mentioned, young Ruma being found, every instance of a hacking cough or painful vomiting Bradbury went through and the effects of every disease he suffered. I thought about Whittaker’s own descent into madness, or at least what Christian saw as madness. Christian imagined an educated man so crushed under the weight of his despair, brought about by witnessing the devastation wrought by such virulent diseases, that it warped his mind. He thought about his own mortality and did wonder if Whittaker was at least correct in his statement that so few people truly understand that they will die some day. What kept him from delving further into Whittaker’s nihilistic reverence for such devastating and cruel phenomenon was the sense of inheritance he felt. He was determined to do right by Bradbury and see through things to the end. Yet even this pillar of his sanity had a twinge of corruption to it, now that he knew Bradbury himself had been for so long something of a ‘pupil’ of Whittaker. The fatalistic sense of things coming full circle strengthened Christians determination while also adding weight to Whittaker’s words. Try as he might Christian could not shake the feeling that even if he and the others were somehow able to prevail in their dire situation so many of us had already experienced too much to walk away from The Auction unscathed. We may have been able to cure our bodies, but Christian was not so confident about us being able to remedy the sickness that was clearly infecting our minds.
As you can imagine pondering all this was pretty time consuming and grim as fuck. Eventually to get some sleep I had to get up, have a wander around the room and talk a little bit OC in Connor’s voice just to help me shake the head space. I could really feel how physically and emotionally knackered I was so was able to drop off quite quickly.
I will admit that some of the questions Christian was wrestling with have not been far from Connor’s mind since the event ended. On the drive home with Ed, Amy, Josh and Katie I found myself thinking about mortality, the impact of disease on human history and how we think about illness and especially how these things related to our scientific treatment of disease and the place of disease and other similarly devastating natural phenomenon in religion. I can think of a few films and a handful of books that have challenged me to seriously question my own personal beliefs and world-view, but I don’t think a role-playing game has ever done that for me the same way until this game. For that I can only say a tremendously sincere Thank You to everyone involved.
Shortly after waking on Sunday morning I was preoccupied with the preparation for and execution of the ritual of the Black Cock (the capture of which, by myself and Mr Knowles, I am given to understand has become the central feature of a new motion picture film soon to be premièred at the Sundance Film Festival). Although it was scary to be running around outside with cultists all about there was some much appreciated comic relief in the form of spraying Mr Walker (Paul D) with the blood of Dr Bradbury’s Black Cock and then giving him a fragrant herb scrub down. Told you this event was grim as fuck...
After that ritual a large number of us collaborated on ‘creating the Panacea’ which would be the key to our salvation. This was another long ritual but I really enjoyed the discussions around its construction and how we incorporated many of what I saw as the themes of Dr Bradbury’s work (and by extension the themes of the game) into it. Our amateur Magic paid off in the form of an ‘arrow of Apollo’ sent from God-only-knows-where by I-have-no-fuckin-idea. Then there was about half an hour of waiting for the Bloated Man...
Cometh the hour cometh the man....
The last half hour was very quiet. I know some people don’t ever like waiting around for something to happen but I thought it was a good amount of time to leave empty. It allowed for the tension to build again after the successful rituals but I think did not last so long that people got bored.
I was inside when the Bloated Man appeared, lumbering out of the greenish fog. It was an excellent ending and I think will remain scary in my mind due to the fact that the final SAN effect pushed Christian over the edge and into outright flight. He did not wait around to see if Ruma, wielding the arrow LIKE A HINDU BADASS OUT OF HELL, was able to stop the Bloated Man because in those moments it no longer mattered. Finally seeing in person what remained of the mentor he had work so hard to learn from, to emulate, perhaps one day to surpass (he did have quite the ambitious streak in him) as an avatar of some unfathomably powerful god of pestilence, whose undeniable cruelty was exemplified not only in the figure Christian saw before him but in all those images, notes and his own experiences of the living hell that those suffering the afflictions IT sent went through proved to be too much for Christian. I thought the only way he could eventually recover a semblance of sanity was if he threw himself into his Coping Mechanisms. The one that fitted best in this moment was ‘Academic Rigor’, his desire to gather as much information as possible and go over it and over it until he could get his mind around the situation. Thus in the last few minutes of the game he frantically stuffed as many of the notes, drawings, artefacts and whatever else he could fit into his bag.
Time Out was moments away so I of course cannot say what would have happened after that but in my mind Christian Biesty’s immediate future was clear. He had gained a real glimpse of the truly horrific nature of his universe and he needed to know more. He needed to go over every scrap of paper, he needed to get out there and cross reference everything he had found out. He has so much to read, so many things to consult and so many terrible things to try and understand. His world had all of a sudden become a place of genuine uncertainty and only uncompromising academic rigor and knowledge will ever make him feel safe again. While he avoided death and will probably not need to be institutionalised I think that by filling Christian with an almost obsessive need to pursue knowledge (which though it will lessen overtime I don’t think it will ever truly go away) of these newly discovered terrible, eldritch aspects of the world in which he lives his encounter with the Bloated Man has set him on a path that will certainly spiral downwards further into insanity and death....
...But not before I get to reprise the character (should the chance for me to do so arise)...
tl:dr - That was grim. I went bonkers. Thanks guys.
Also just so people know Christian maybe writing to your characters at some point after the events of the Auction. Partly because I really enjoyed the letter writing I did prior to the event and partly because I bought a load of stationary for the job most of which I did not end up using. So if I end up writing you a letter I hope you like it. If you want to get on with your life and have no time for my bullshit then just let me know and I will knock your character off the correspondence list and just keep hold of any I have written.
Lastly I will at some point, after having had more time to reflect, be putting up my thoughts on the excellent PCs/NPCs, setting, props and so on as well as criticisms I have but I first wanted to talk about what an excellent time I had and give a few genuine heartfelt thank to everyone involved. Extra special thanks of course go to the refs for running such an excellent event and specifically Tom for giving me an awesome Lovecraftian character as I requested but using my input to make someone more interesting than I would have come up with on my own.
Again Many Thanks.
Connor.
Although I have not had much time to go over the event in my mind I don’t think I have ever felt so much slowly building anxiety and fear, which came to its zenith as truly existential terror on Saturday night (to the point of which I had to seriously concentrate to get out of the headspace and get some sleep), in any game I have ever played.
Early on everything threatened to turn out rather badly for Christian, who did manage to nut up or shut up in the end despite being someone I thought of as most effective behind pen and paper. I channelled my own rough trip up to the house (really bad bouts of travel sickness that was threatening to make me Captain Chunder the 2nd before I had even reached Deeside) to fuel his sense of exhaustion and anxieties about travelling. At first he was hopeful he would achieve his goal of acquiring the notes but this all came crashing down at the auction which I nearly excused myself from. The two hour wait meant I had a lot of time to work myself up in character and I felt genuine sadness that his efforts were just swept away by Dr Baker, who was very reasonable but seemed determine to shut the notes away forever, and Hetty whose motivations were summed up to him by Templeton as being ‘she is curious and has lots of money.’ For about a quarter of an hour I did not know what on earth to do, the anxiousness of events that had already occurred (my strange dream on Friday night, the robbery and a few other things) mixed with the failure at the auction gave me a genuine sense of sadness.
Then Christian was handed the letter addressed to him from the correspondence box. I was given a purpose back and Christian felt finally justified in his travels to that remote house of a mentor he would never see in person, until the appearance of his corpse as an avatar of the Bloated Man.
The notes and the film recording left for Christian was what really shifted the character. Up until that point Christians world view was very much tied to his work as an anthropologist and his understanding that the effects of primitive healing rituals and magic and the testimony of those who made use of them could be explained as being a mixture of the placebo effect, plants and other consumables, the health benefits could be scientifically verified and other natural phenomenon that was just not explainable at the time. After seeing some of Bradbury’s notes Christian’s initial thoughts were along the same lines as Dr Bakers. Perhaps Bradbury indeed had been losing his mind towards the end of his life and so Christian was keen to protect his mentor’s reputation from criticism.
But by the time I had had chance to read more of Bradbury’s writings and had seen the film addressed to Christian however the line between those neat categories of phenomenon had started to blur in Christians mind. We had already seen the decayed cook and then the Butler choke up insects and then expire. As an aside I think one of the strongest themes of the event was the blurring of science and religion and (to sound massively pretentious here) I feel like it made the weekend not only an excellent Horror Event but an excellent deconstruction of a Horror Events. This blurring soon turned into a full on falling down of Christian’s understanding of the world he lived in while I was watching the second film. The chronology of events he was given, the strange phenomenon of the film and the photograph of who he deduced was Whittaker (who was also Shawe) and the heartfelt plea from his mentor to finish his work and resolve what had been going on made a believer out of Christian. This had a dark flipside however as he gained a glimpse into the twisted mind of Whittaker and although he was resolved to stop Whittaker’s plans he could almost understand his evil, grim logic.
I think my favourite moment of Christians was just after the second film, which towards the end had made mention of the Detectives who had been hired to find Whittaker. I got up and said ‘I have some work to do, and I believe you have a man to find Mr Templeton... you may recognise him,’ throwing an envelope across the table with a photograph of Whittaker inside. The reaction from Templeton (Weasel) was excellent.
The rush of finally having the story of events straight in his mind soon developed into anxiety however. I spent a lot of time trying to go over notes in the living room, not realising that they had been scattered around the house and in some cases been incorrectly paper clipped together after being separated. I finally sat upstairs in the shared bedroom for half an hour to go over things.
After having some success magically blessing tea I then failed to conduct one of the rituals properly and then it became increasingly difficult to attempt again given people’s conditions were worsening and we were expecting a cultist attack any moment. I pinned a lot of my hopes on conducting the Navajo healing ritual correctly a second time and finally managed to gather enough people upstairs in the now barricaded bedroom to do so.
The twenty minute ritual which only claimed to cure the ‘one sung over’ was I will admit tremendously draining. I sung and I danced and I chanted and as I looked around I could see how draining it was for the others. This was a deeply grim moment for me and Christian. I was physically exhausting myself and others to do something that only had a chance of saving one person from the virulent disease and in the back of his mind he was wrestling with the knowledge that there was no way he could perform this ritual upon all the people who were with him, that he or others might have to chose who lived and who died and that was only if they all had the physical and mental will to press on. It was also raised at one point that as the ‘Medicine Man’ there was a good chance that he would not be able to undergo the ritual himself.
This was made all the more difficult by the talk with Whittaker, whose words once again made a pretty deep, nihilistic impression on Christian even as he was rebuking him. Christian was talking big and even took a shot at Whittaker when he had the chance, but behind his words he was a mass of anxiety and uncertainty. As another aside I believe the night time shoot out has to be my favourite LARP combat situation I have ever been in. All I could see were figures moving in that darkness. I managed to spy Whittaker (Jonno) for long enough to take my shot but all I saw after making the call was Whittaker completely vanish from view into the blackness. Perhaps he had been hit, perhaps not. Looking into the pitch-black from the brightly lit bedroom it just looked like he had simply evaporated in front of my eyes. The scene, despite being short was compelling, dramatic and displayed the true lethality of the situation we were in with poor Mr Pope (Wrong Mike) taking two bullets in rapid succession and dying almost instantly in the cramped bedroom.
The vision I received after the ritual was both a relief and another heap of worries. He now no longer believed more of the Navajo rituals were necessary and that they had made significant progress to curing themselves and thus stopping Whittaker’s plans but we were now under attack by cultists and needed to continue with the healing rites and rituals outlined by Bradbury before finding some way of actually ‘using the key to close the door,’ whatever that meant.
After having reassembled in the living room Christian could only work himself into more of a state as his attempts to go over more of Bradbury’s research were foiled by the ever worsening state of himself (which included a brief period of illiteracy) and the other Attendees and his (and my) fatigue. I eventually barricaded myself in the bedroom and attempted to sleep after I had read some of Bradbury’s travel journal, which I was especially keen to do because of my Coping Mechanism.
Perhaps it was the sparse notes of the journal that allowed my mind to fill in so many blanks, perhaps it was the evocative photographs in the journal or perhaps it was just all of the anxiety I had built up (and the fact I was out of character feeling nauseas and had a tremendous headache) but reading that journal was both enthralling and terrifying. I found myself imagining all the places and scenes that were mentioned, young Ruma being found, every instance of a hacking cough or painful vomiting Bradbury went through and the effects of every disease he suffered. I thought about Whittaker’s own descent into madness, or at least what Christian saw as madness. Christian imagined an educated man so crushed under the weight of his despair, brought about by witnessing the devastation wrought by such virulent diseases, that it warped his mind. He thought about his own mortality and did wonder if Whittaker was at least correct in his statement that so few people truly understand that they will die some day. What kept him from delving further into Whittaker’s nihilistic reverence for such devastating and cruel phenomenon was the sense of inheritance he felt. He was determined to do right by Bradbury and see through things to the end. Yet even this pillar of his sanity had a twinge of corruption to it, now that he knew Bradbury himself had been for so long something of a ‘pupil’ of Whittaker. The fatalistic sense of things coming full circle strengthened Christians determination while also adding weight to Whittaker’s words. Try as he might Christian could not shake the feeling that even if he and the others were somehow able to prevail in their dire situation so many of us had already experienced too much to walk away from The Auction unscathed. We may have been able to cure our bodies, but Christian was not so confident about us being able to remedy the sickness that was clearly infecting our minds.
As you can imagine pondering all this was pretty time consuming and grim as fuck. Eventually to get some sleep I had to get up, have a wander around the room and talk a little bit OC in Connor’s voice just to help me shake the head space. I could really feel how physically and emotionally knackered I was so was able to drop off quite quickly.
I will admit that some of the questions Christian was wrestling with have not been far from Connor’s mind since the event ended. On the drive home with Ed, Amy, Josh and Katie I found myself thinking about mortality, the impact of disease on human history and how we think about illness and especially how these things related to our scientific treatment of disease and the place of disease and other similarly devastating natural phenomenon in religion. I can think of a few films and a handful of books that have challenged me to seriously question my own personal beliefs and world-view, but I don’t think a role-playing game has ever done that for me the same way until this game. For that I can only say a tremendously sincere Thank You to everyone involved.
Shortly after waking on Sunday morning I was preoccupied with the preparation for and execution of the ritual of the Black Cock (the capture of which, by myself and Mr Knowles, I am given to understand has become the central feature of a new motion picture film soon to be premièred at the Sundance Film Festival). Although it was scary to be running around outside with cultists all about there was some much appreciated comic relief in the form of spraying Mr Walker (Paul D) with the blood of Dr Bradbury’s Black Cock and then giving him a fragrant herb scrub down. Told you this event was grim as fuck...
After that ritual a large number of us collaborated on ‘creating the Panacea’ which would be the key to our salvation. This was another long ritual but I really enjoyed the discussions around its construction and how we incorporated many of what I saw as the themes of Dr Bradbury’s work (and by extension the themes of the game) into it. Our amateur Magic paid off in the form of an ‘arrow of Apollo’ sent from God-only-knows-where by I-have-no-fuckin-idea. Then there was about half an hour of waiting for the Bloated Man...
Cometh the hour cometh the man....
The last half hour was very quiet. I know some people don’t ever like waiting around for something to happen but I thought it was a good amount of time to leave empty. It allowed for the tension to build again after the successful rituals but I think did not last so long that people got bored.
I was inside when the Bloated Man appeared, lumbering out of the greenish fog. It was an excellent ending and I think will remain scary in my mind due to the fact that the final SAN effect pushed Christian over the edge and into outright flight. He did not wait around to see if Ruma, wielding the arrow LIKE A HINDU BADASS OUT OF HELL, was able to stop the Bloated Man because in those moments it no longer mattered. Finally seeing in person what remained of the mentor he had work so hard to learn from, to emulate, perhaps one day to surpass (he did have quite the ambitious streak in him) as an avatar of some unfathomably powerful god of pestilence, whose undeniable cruelty was exemplified not only in the figure Christian saw before him but in all those images, notes and his own experiences of the living hell that those suffering the afflictions IT sent went through proved to be too much for Christian. I thought the only way he could eventually recover a semblance of sanity was if he threw himself into his Coping Mechanisms. The one that fitted best in this moment was ‘Academic Rigor’, his desire to gather as much information as possible and go over it and over it until he could get his mind around the situation. Thus in the last few minutes of the game he frantically stuffed as many of the notes, drawings, artefacts and whatever else he could fit into his bag.
Time Out was moments away so I of course cannot say what would have happened after that but in my mind Christian Biesty’s immediate future was clear. He had gained a real glimpse of the truly horrific nature of his universe and he needed to know more. He needed to go over every scrap of paper, he needed to get out there and cross reference everything he had found out. He has so much to read, so many things to consult and so many terrible things to try and understand. His world had all of a sudden become a place of genuine uncertainty and only uncompromising academic rigor and knowledge will ever make him feel safe again. While he avoided death and will probably not need to be institutionalised I think that by filling Christian with an almost obsessive need to pursue knowledge (which though it will lessen overtime I don’t think it will ever truly go away) of these newly discovered terrible, eldritch aspects of the world in which he lives his encounter with the Bloated Man has set him on a path that will certainly spiral downwards further into insanity and death....
...But not before I get to reprise the character (should the chance for me to do so arise)...
tl:dr - That was grim. I went bonkers. Thanks guys.
Also just so people know Christian maybe writing to your characters at some point after the events of the Auction. Partly because I really enjoyed the letter writing I did prior to the event and partly because I bought a load of stationary for the job most of which I did not end up using. So if I end up writing you a letter I hope you like it. If you want to get on with your life and have no time for my bullshit then just let me know and I will knock your character off the correspondence list and just keep hold of any I have written.
Lastly I will at some point, after having had more time to reflect, be putting up my thoughts on the excellent PCs/NPCs, setting, props and so on as well as criticisms I have but I first wanted to talk about what an excellent time I had and give a few genuine heartfelt thank to everyone involved. Extra special thanks of course go to the refs for running such an excellent event and specifically Tom for giving me an awesome Lovecraftian character as I requested but using my input to make someone more interesting than I would have come up with on my own.
Again Many Thanks.
Connor.