The event started, for me, with a length trek north to The Tower in Burnley.  I'd been there before, in about 1998 or something, but couldn't really remember the place.  Turns out it was a pretty good site; amenities very basic, but the tunnels reminded me of my youth at the Portly Pixie.

It was the first time I've done play-only at a Bladelands event; normally I go on the standard play-and-assist ticket (where you play your character about two-thirds of the time, and crew the remainder), but this time the idea was that we were in character as much as possible.

The plot for the weekend was that we were recovering a section of the Triplex (powerful world-saving/world-crushing magic item in three parts) that had recently been stolen (from, uh, my character).  We were in an underground town/city called Skullport, full of scum, villainy and fun sorts.

The first evening was pretty straightforward; learning the local laws (1.  No stealing, 2. No killing, 3. No annoying the local Inquisitor), learning that public displays of faith were frowned upon, and learning that the evil shrine next door belonged to the nicest guy you've ever met!  He just happened to worship the Stillborn God of undeadness and general evil.

So, mostly, it was a combat-free interaction session, which worked really nicely.  Later on, when the religious fanatics arrived, they made a decision to destroy the evil shrine, which ended up with a PC being under a death curse and a broken shrine.  Result!

We started getting attacked while we slept, despite setting watch, which led to me being able to make good on my threat to murder someone while dressed only in my underwear.  This was definitely one of my highlights!

On Saturday morning, we got a tip from an NPC that the Triplex piece we were looking for was being auctioned off, and also got a map of the vault where it was being held.  Accordingly, about half the party went off to break into the vault.  We were in there for about two or three hours, and there was plenty of puzzlery and combat to keep us all interested.  We lost 2 of the PCs (out of 18 -- this was a deliberately small event for Bladelands) in the process, however.

The rest of the group had been attacked a lot while we were out, and had the other piece of the Triplex stolen, so the afternoon session was the remainder of the group, and the two new PCs, trying to recover it.  I wasn't there, so I don't know for sure, but the reports back were that it was both hellish and awesome; really tight tunnel crawls, plus an opposition pitched towards the upper end of PC ability, really made it worthwhile for people.  No deaths on this segment, either!

The ref team were kind enough to feed the players on chicken (cold by now, but still...) and various other items before the push to retrieve the last segment of the Triplex -- naturally, this was in the big temple to the evil god whose shrine we'd earlier destroyed.  It took a fair bit of planning, which meant dead time for some players, and we also had quite a wait for the refs, so it wasn't until about midnight that we set off, minus two players who'd gone to bed.

The night-time section was awesome; lots of drama, lots of combat, and some puzzles (both intellectual and swing-across-this-chasm-on-a-rope type) too.  Thanks to evil-Outsider (read: demon) control over a PC (again, me) there was very nearly a TPK, which certainly added to the drama and sense of risk, before the party were narrowly successful in defeating the big bad and escaping.  We lost about 5 more PCs in the process.

As it was 5am by this point, we all hit the sack.  Sunday morning's content was basically finding a way out and dealing with fallout.

Overall, I had an excellent weekend, despite being one of the PC deaths, and I thought the refs and crew worked really hard to deliver a really good event.  My only criticism was that there were some definite slow points for those who didn't go on missions, but I guess that was people's choices (or at least an IC decision taken by someone) and there was definitely stuff going on for people who didn't go into the complex for whatever reason.

I'd definitely recommend Bladelands to people when they begin Volume Two; there's no dates in for next year yet, but they usually run something around May and a couple later in the summer.  They're looking at Midlands sites for next year, too.

---
Joe Rooney, the Enemy Of Fun

Insurrection LRP: high fantasy in a dystopian setting. First event: 24-26 October 2008, in Leicestershire. Book online before October 1st for £10 discount!

Bladelands: Raoul Ortez - heretic, medium, bodyguard and scumbag
EOS: staff

Joe R's LARPCard