What You Missed: Folkestone Weekend 2017

By Gerry Chartier

It’s the Monday after Feast of Folkestone and Folkestone Questing, and I am super glad it’s a holiday, because I’m about as energetic as a three toed sloth after a sloth marathon.  So, I hope you’ll forgive me if the quality of my after-event report isn’t up to my usual standards.  I do plan on writing an in-character chronicle of the event, but the View editors are hovering over me, keen to motivate me with pointy things to complete an event review in time to be released Wednesday, so I have to prioritize.

Friday night brought us Feast of Folkestone XVIII.  It was a beautiful evening, nice and cool, ideal for attending a feast in garb.  It was a good chance to catch up both OOC and IC.  In-character as Gray, I learned about the temporal anomalies that are plaguing some members of the Chimeron court.  The Adventurers Guild also had a booth outside the tavern, with information about various endeavors they are offering gold for.  Out of character, I learned a lot of new players seem to be working their way up the Blacksmith path.  At least, it seems like I got asked several times if I knew Repair Item (I don’t).

The food was definitely worth the price of admission, with plenty of tasty appetizers, two soup choices, three main course options, and a plethora of desserts appealing enough to make a guy very glad he was going to be getting a lot of exercise the next day.  The highlight of the menu for me was the chicken parmesan soup – had a little zip to it, which I like.

The auction was held between the main course and the serving of dessert, and for me it’s the only off-note of the event.  For those of us who don’t have enough gold to compete seriously for the high-demand items, the auction is a big chunk of dead time.  The staff did their best to move it along quickly and with some verve, and there is some entertainment to be had watching people bid up an item to spite someone who shall remain nameless (but whose moniker starts with “S”, and ends in “Ir Shean O’Quinnlin”), but for the most part even starting bids were beyond what I had to spend, so I had no dog in the fight.

There was a night-quest after the feast, but from what I heard it was kind of an in-house thing for one of the nations, and the people who participated didn’t manage to stumble to their sleeping bags until around 4am.  I definitely wasn’t sorry I opted to take a shower and go to sleep.

            Folkestone Questing started Saturday, with the weather being a near-perfect day for questing, sunny, but cool enough for people to be comfortable in their full questing garb.  Lone Tree Scout Camp is an excellent site, with a lot of space and a variety of different locations that lend themselves to various different scenes and encounters.  It’s also reasonably well isolated, but also conveniently close enough to a main road with various restaurants if you prefer not to prepare your own meals in camp, and a Market Basket if you do and you need to run out for something.

In-character, the action was in New Verai, because adventurers go where adventure is, and there was adventure to be had in New Verai.  My nation, Mayerling, attended in some numbers for once, which is a treat for me, because I don’t get to quest with them all that often.  What was even more fun was that it was the first event for one of the Mayerling attendees – one of Dan Wohlmuth’s younger siblings (I referred to her as Mk III till I learned her name).  She played Sapphire, an aspiring healer (she’d made up her mind before I got to sell her on the merits of Sorcery), and her very first IC act was to kill Zink, her brother David’s* character.  Off to a good start, I say!

            *For those interested in keeping track, Dan is Mk I and David is Mk II.  There is also a Mk IV who is apt to be making an appearance in the not so distant future – Black & White would be a safe bet.

            Zink then flatted Sapphire when he got raised, and as Gray I flatted Zink and threw a Circle of Protection around him, then woke him up and yelled at him for being mean.  Being mean is Gray’s job!

Mayerling’s questing M.O. tends to lean towards following me around as I go looking for trouble, and it didn’t take long to find some.  The initial adversaries running around were blighted wolves, who would attack PCs on sight.  They weren’t too difficult to defeat, but could be dangerous when they grouped up in packs.  There was also a game warden who went around fining PCs for killing the blighted wolves because they were out of season.  In retrospect, he may have been a con man shaking people down, but I wouldn’t have liked to bet on that, as later events would show that New Verai is kind of heavy-handed with the authority.  I paid the fine and tried to scare off the wolves as the warden advised.  When that didn’t work, I went back to lightning-bolting them, because when all you have is a hammer (but it’s a really, really good hammer…)

It didn’t take us long to find Sil, an NPC druid who was looking for help creating wine with exotic and dangerous plants that required a certain amount of cooperation and problem-solving to combine in the formulas he wanted to try.  We had the most trouble with the fire blossom, which we could only hold onto for 1 second per person.  We had several failures, including one explosion caused by Rillan (who had joined us) wearing a plant-magic-bearing headband when he touched the fire blossom.  Eventually we did succeed, the wine was made, and sampled by a member of the militant Brotherhood, for whom Sil was making the wine.  After all that, the Brotherhood jerk spit it out and said it was horrible, which almost made me hit him with the lightning bolt, but shortly after that he tossed me a gold for helping with some bandits, so I was glad I didn’t.

I met an NPC who told he was a member of the Pale Hand.  He said his order offered teaching into certain mysteries (which was an opportunity to learn some Regional magic), and offered information on quests helping ghosts stuck in the mortal realm pass into the hereafter.  He seemed creepy but not ill-intentioned, but I didn’t take him up on his offer.

After some more exploring, we stopped by the tavern to rest and get some refreshments – food was being sold IC for gold.  Ran into Van Duke, who told me Asharn had been brainwashed, and asked if I’d try to cure him with electro-shock therapy.  All I’ve got is a hammer, but it’s a really really good hammer, so I gave it a whirl.  All it got me was yelled at by the tavern mistress and Asharn’s still-brainwashed ghost asking me what the heck I was doing.

I had a confab with Therran about a treasure map an NPC treasure hunter was frantically looking for.  A New Verai guard spotted me holding the map, which led to an exploration of New Verai’s heavy-handed authority.  The guard told me the magistrate wanted to speak to me, so I went with him.  The magistrate asked if I had the map (which I didn’t), then leaned on me to name who did have it (which I wouldn’t).  The magistrate detailed a guard to follow me around when I went back to Therran, but we collectively bullshitted him till he left us alone.  We then went to the location indicated on the map, on the theory that the treasure may be important/dangerous.  We were followed by the guard and the treasure hunter.  The guard tried to arrest me for resisting arrest, so I used my really really good hammer on him.

Unfortunately, I let Charwindle (Carol Wohlmuth’s character) deal with him afterwards – she’s so straight, she took him to get raised.  In the meantime, we talked to the treasure hunter, who was only faking being a citizen of New Verai to get the guards to help him get his map back.  We determined he was just after good honest loot and not any sort of dangerous Realms-threatening artifact, so we helped him find the treasure, and he shared it with us after taking his cut.  I took a pretty gold plated butterfly pin and headed out to catch up with the rest of Mayerling.

I found my companions at the tavern, and sat to adjust a kneepad, when I heard a shout and a whole pack of the guards came running at me, led by none other than the one I’d lightning bolted earlier.  He got to ride the lightning again, but the rest of the guards put me down and arrested the rest of Mayerling based on guilt by association.  Darvan (Dan’s character) kicked up a fuss, which drew quite a crowd of PCs, which made me hope for a riot.  The guards threatened to gag him, and he took off running.  The guards tried to chase him, but Dan is fast, and so Darvan got away clean.  The rest of us got hauled off to the castle to be judged by the magistrate.

The short trial gave Carol a chance to do some roleplay, negotiating with the magistrate to keep Mayerling as a whole out of hot water, then Van Duke raised me after putting me in a Circle of Protection (oh the irony).  I sassed the twice-bolted guard, and was hearing my sentence options when I thought my hoped-for riot started, but what was actually happening was Grimloch and Neden using my trial as a distraction to storm the castle and get to the magistrate’s treasure chest.  There was an obvious financial reason, but also one of the spirits the Pale Hand guy mentioned earlier had been looking for someone to break into the magistrate’s home to get something out of the treasure chest, so they were also working on a quest.  I may or may not have zapped another guard, and may or may not have accidentally zapped a member of Chimeron who was behind another guard I may or may not have been trying to zap, which could hypothetically have led to her getting raised, killing me, and bringing me to Saka, who had me raised and explained that Chimeron had a treaty with New Verai, so they were looking to keep the apple cart from getting upset.  Hypothetically.

Anyway, the magistrate and guards were not getting scalped, so I thought it best to try and keep up the appearance of respecting his authority, so my sentencing resumed (my late participation in the robbery went unnoticed, or at least unremarked).  I was offered imprisonment, hard labor, or a 50-gold fine.  Wanting to stay in-character for the event, I forked over all my gold and borrowed some from Charwindle, and was released with a lighter purse and an in-character diminished esteem for Chimeron.  At least I wound up with a theme song out of it!

Shortly after was dinner break, and towards the end of dinner break when we were gearing up for the night quest, I had an IC visitor – Lucien’s Dragon, who brought some ominous portents about a gate Gray is supposed to collapse to keep the Dreaming and the Realms separate, plus some warnings about someone trying to summon the Night Master and some threats to Gray personally.  When we gathered IC, I brought this information to Therran, who brought Janus in on it.  They’d received similar omens, as had Avendar.  The situation seemed dire enough for Gray to put aside his earlier misgivings about Chimeron and work with them towards preserving the Realms and not getting murdered.

Collectively, we went forth with Sil with an ultimate goal of defeating a pestilence demon.  We fought our way to the beach, where we collected some appropriately gross props for summoning the thing, then to the field where we tried to defeat it.  The pestilence demon had a cool big crab monster working for it, which proved to be a problem because we couldn’t figure out how to defeat it.  We wound up getting pushed through a gate we really really didn’t want to get pushed through, and wound up in a parallel reality where things were different than they are in our current IC one.

I grabbed a shower and shuteye.  Everyone must have been exhausted, because the Chimeron campfire was doused by the time I got out of the shower.

Sunday was windy and overcast.  My two companions and I were able to break camp and get geared up just before the rain started coming down.  The PCs gathered under the pavilion.  Saka reiterated our situation to everybody, and we did some note swapping.  We developed a strong theory that the “One True God” whose followers had been brainwashing PCs may well be the aforementioned Night Master, and that we had to keep an eye on the converts.

We PCs witnessed a moot between New Verai factions.  Worryingly, the biggest seemed to be the followers of Mr. One-True, followed by the Brotherhood, with Sil seeming to represent the nature respecting contingent all by himself.  Things were clearly different in this New Verai – they had not had recent problems with blight, as had been the case in our dimension.  There was considerable disagreement between the Onesies-Truesies and the Brotherhood over wine consumption, and I thought the OTs were going to make a move, but the moot broke up peacefully – just in time for bandits to start attacking us.

Me and my really, really good hammer spent a little time helping the more aggressive PCs suppress waves of bandit attacks, and then I joined a small group of PCs being led by Valley Girl on a mission to re-consecrate the shrines to the four Elemental Sacreds.  Guilliam loaned his magic sword, Smoke, to a young adventurer whose name I didn’t catch.  We didn’t wind up having to do any fighting, but it was a pretty classy gesture. 

We started off with the Water Shrine, where Valley Girl almost got herself killed and dumped in the lake by Sir Guilliam for making a blood sacrifice – funny how that kind of thing doesn’t sit well with angels.  That said, Valley got the job done, but had to sacrifice her magic to do it.  We moved onto the Fire shrine and managed to get that one back in order without having anyone lose any magic or making Guilliam want to punch anybody.  Since my character Gray is both a sorcerer and a sailor, I took the lead with the Air shrine, kick-starting it with a few words, a small offering, a song about drunken sailors, and a little regional magic.  Guilliam helped by generating some wind by angel-flying over the shrine.  The Earth shrine kind of just needed a few kind words to get it back in order.

When we returned to the pavilion and linked back up with the rest of the PCs, we began fighting our way down the trail to the beach.  When we got most of the way there, we discovered another rift-gate on the trail leading up to the field.  Through magical means, we learned it led to a plane where the source of the corruption was.  Having the choice between staying in Bizzaro-Verai and going forward, we went forward, finding ourselves in another Realms-adjacent dimension.  We gathered in the inn, and Jason Gray announced the event had concluded.

All in all, I had a fantastic weekend!  Mayerling got to be the center of attention for a bit, I got to be involved in plot, I got to RP a self-doubt angle in regards to said plot, we hooked Wohlmuth Mk III, and I even slept well both nights, which I can’t usually manage to do at events.

I’d like to thank everyone who attended the event, starting of course with Jason and his crew, who put in sterling work bringing us both the feast and a weekend-long quest.  I’d also like to thank everyone who attended the event to PC.  At the beginning of the quest, Jason asked everyone assembled to embrace immersion, and darned if the players didn’t deliver!  I genuinely enjoyed every minute of questing, bickering, and bantering, and was largely able to stay IC for the entire event with little difficulty.  Each and every person who attended is responsible for a piece of that, for which you all have my deepest thanks.