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| Photo by Linda Weldell |
How did you learn about Realms?
Pure, blissful accident.
It was fall of 2004. A friend of mine walking across the UCONN campus called me up and
said, "CAROL! There are people with swords! You must come!" I turned up the next week and stood
by the lamp-post just in time to watch Aeston win a 3-on-1. He walks over to me, holds out a boff
weapon, and inquires, "Do you want to try?" Silly me, I said yes...
I had stumbled across one of the earliest SMAC fight practices. I never actually made it to an event,
though, and I was a graduating senior, off to college out-of-state. That could have been the end of
my Realms career. Just this past summer, though, I was chatting with a stranger at a wedding and he
mentioned “boffing”. The word sparked a memory, and I had to wonder – did that group at UCONN
still meet? So I just... showed up, 8 yrs later, out of the blue. Surprise! Remember me?
How many events have you been to?
Eight. QoH '11, On the Brink (1 & 2), War of Shadows, Order of the Lists, Tournaments of Artemis,
Feast of Leviathan, Green & Gold '12.
Have you ever LARP'd before?
Never. I have, however, done a lot of OLRP – online literate roleplay – so I'm pretty versed in world-
building and writing a character. Still, living it is an entirely different matter!
What is your character like? Where are they from? What is their race? What's important to them?
With Char, what you see is what you get: she's human, a warrior, a captain, quite practical and no-
nonsense, always concerned with the welfare of her soldiers and above all, the efficient and effective
success of “the mission”. Her most defining characteristic is probably her loyalty to Mayerling –
which is why she's in the Realms in the first place.
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| Photo by Robyn Nielsen |
Mayerling refers to both the kingdom Char hails from, and the plane that kingdom rules – a plane
stacked somewhere “above” the Realms. Char (and the others with her) haven't migrated down to
the Realms looking for glory, riches, or adventure. She came here for one reason: to find and retrieve
Mayerling's prince. Once that happens she will happily return home again. If she can get home. That's
a whole different problem...
Do you have any game related goals (as either a player or a character)?
As a player? Have as much fun as possible! As a character? The best way I can see to answer this is
put up a little first-person spiel I wrote about Mayerling a little back...
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This place is foreign to us.
The air, the trees, the night, the people – all of it is strange, and new. The customs and the currency, the magic and the gods of this reality, we see with the eyes of men and women who have never seen them before. Understand: this world, this plane, is not our own.
We hail from Mayerling.
Across many lands and cultures, in all planes and worlds, the myth recurs of a Higher Reality, an
ascendant place of fire and light, overflowing with music and beauty. Such a world is ours, and we
would never have left it, but duty and honor give us with little choice...
Please, allow me to step back and explain.
The place we name home is a world united under one banner and one king. Our nation, Mayerling,
has stood for five centuries, born out of the union of the House of Faë and the Brotherhood of Man.
The dragon has two heads, as the saying goes. The two have intermingled, so that most members of
Mayerling have a bit of faë blood in them somewhere.
Five hundred years Mayerling stood strong, and surely it would last five hundred more – or five
thousand, or five hundred thousand. But an old empire is an unchanging one, and the king like his
fathers before him keeps all the reins of power in his hand, his highest duty to maintain the state.
His son, the Crown Prince, is of a different mind. The conflicts between father and son are the stuff of
legend. Not war, no; never anything as powerful and terrible as that... but there is no worse enmity than
that between members of the same family.
Since its inception, Mayerling has been ruled under the absolute authority of the kingship, an unbroken
line of sovereignty passed from father to son. It is this bloodline that joins man and faë, and the
reverence and power in it which unite Mayerling's many nations, regions, cultures, and factions. Yet
the king approaches his seventieth year, and he has but the one son. Should the throne ever sit empty, I
fear to think what fate would befall our great empire.
Such is the uncertainty Mayerling now faces, for the Crown Prince is lost to us.
Of what actually occurred, there are as many rumors as there are voices to speak them. This alone is
true: together he and the faë woman they call Mary have opened a downward gate, and left Mayerling
behind to stray among these strange, shifting planes you call your own.
Some swear the Crown Prince left of his own choice, fleeing his father's traditionalist stubbornness,
and that the chains of court cut too tight; others claim it was not duty that drove him out, but love for
Mary that enticed him. (The world will always have its romantics.) Still others dare to whisper the king
arranged for his banishment – or his quiet elimination. Did he leave of his own free will? Or was he
driven out? Every man, woman, and child of Mayerling will give you a different answer.
As for me: I believe the faë woman, Mary, to be a sorceress. I believe she has ensared the Crown
Prince with her magics, and her false charm; that she has ensorcelled him, and bewitched him into
following her. Perhaps even into falling in love with her. Her ultimate goal, though, is not love, but
Mayerling's ruin. When we find the Crown Prince, there shall we also find her, and I tell you now: my
sword calls out her name, and I will be her end.
For this, too, is where our tale begins – we men and women of Mayerling, so far from home.
We are soldiers all, sworn in undying loyalty to uphold Crown and Empire and to defend the bloodline
that rules it. I am a mere captain, of no special merit, junior to many officers of greater rank and
prestige. But small hands may do great deeds, and change the course of empires.
No man can be commanded to open a downward gate. We chose this of our own volition, propelled by
duty and honor - the honor of soldiers sworn to defend the bloodline of kings; the duty to step into the
unknown, with no certainty that we shall ever be able to return. Descending through the planes is easy,
understand... with that ability all of us are born. It is the power to climb back up again that we lack. We
do not let ourselves be troubled by it too greatly. We will find the Crown Prince, or we will fail, and
should we fail, there is no need to return.
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What do you remember most about your first event?
Rain. Lots and lots of rain. It was QoH '11 and we were battling against that fierce tempestress,
Hurricane Irene. Oh, and that I killed two of my own teammates. (Oops.) Going to a pvp war event
when you know 'nobody' probably isn't that wise, because you won't have any clue who's on your team and who isn't once the lines dissolve into the chaos of a general melee... but I remember having a blast all the same! And very wet socks. So I learned my first Realms lesson. Always bring spare socks, if for nothing more than the ride home.
What things have helped to make you feel more welcome in game?
You have some really great people playing this game. I've had folks of all nations reach out IC to ask
where we were from, what our goals and history were, etc. I've had teams happily accept us into their
ranks spontaneously, or even hire us out for war maneuvers... I'm a massive introvert, quite content to
hover on the fringes
There are two people I can't write this without thanking. First, Aeston, without whom I'd never have
gotten into this, and who made such an impression I still remembered seven years later. By extension,
the rest of the crew of SMAC, who taught (teach!) me everything I know about combat, and who turn
up, week after week, and remind me how much I love hitting people with sticks. Second, Ranger, who
dragged me to my first event, stole me from my rightful place in the melee, and taught me how to craft
an arrow that will fly true...
What parts of the game do you find the most challenging?
It sounds a bit stupid – calling armor. I'm used to limited practices, even though I'm a fighter, so being
able to keep track of my hits while still fighting occasionally still trips me up.
I'm also a natural support person. I see what needs to be done but no one else is doing it (because truth
be told, you don't get much glory fighting rearguard, and you miss a lot of the plot) and I do it, because
I love knowing I contributed to the group and shored up a weak point. There's heroism at the back, too.
But again... you can miss a lot of the changes that happen “up front”, the excitement and the magic of
the experience.
What advice would you give to other new players?
Spare socks. Seriously.
Also, bring a friend in with you when you begin. Two newbies going through the same experiences
together double the fun and the surprise, and when all else fails, you'll always have each other to lean
on (or to sit dead in the field with in the middle of the night). Also – remember the point of the game is
to have fun; try many things, but do what you want to do.
What have you enjoyed most about the game so far?
Killing people! Taking that impossible shot and making it. Picking off the enemy healer at JUST that
moment. The squish brigade from On The Brink 1. I'm kidding, I did NOT love the squish brigade,
but it will be a joke among Mayerling till the day we die. So I guess that means, most of all, I love
sharing the experience with friends and family, and the event-chatter on the ride home...
Anything else you'd like to take the opportunity to put into print?
Coventry. If you hear this place associated with the Mayerling folks, it's because the OOC town we
come from is Coventry, CT... not because we have any affiliation with the IC Coventry!
A special shout-out to Koshka, who designed the Mayerling heraldry, based, of course, on the imperial-
royal Habsburg eagle. The Dragon looks both East and West.
