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Heroic Knight
 
Group: Basic Members
Last Login: Wednesday, July 16, 2008 5:56 PM
Posts: 124,
Visits: 1,602
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Warning this will be long and involved, if all you are looking for is an indication of whether to come or not then yes, YES, come dammit, come to HT at least once in your life.
HT III The Mad Exultation of Battle When the Blue Blades Flame and Crimson
If you are familiar with the works of R.E.Howard, pulp fiction novelist of the 1920’s and 30’s then Conan and the Hyborian world needs no introduction. HT provides an heroic system where few are pitted against many in the style of a short Conan story.
The mechanism to provide many foes to face is simple, over a 3 day weekend you will play 1 and crew 2 adventures, there will also be 3 themed tavern evenings that act as a precursor to the next days adventure, you are invited to play your own characters at these taverns but there are also plenty of juicy side roles to get involved with if you so wish.
The Who:
There were 15 player places available this year and from memory 9 dedicated crew, as they seemed to be everywhere at once it was hard to count!
The Where:
Nantyr outdoor education centre in North Wales, the site itself was too small to run anything but the taverns and/or single encounters at. Being based right at the foot of the Nantyr hills there was plenty of wide and varied countryside to provide for the outdoor adventures.
What the site did provide was many pristine and hot hot showers, a toilet block, a huge drying room and an outdoor bbq area, inside the main building there were comfortable bunk rooms providing enough space for everyone to sleep and store tons of kit, a well stocked kitchen and 3 rooms to provide space for plenty of IC activities at the Taverns.
The How:
Friday tavern – Nordenheim (Viking) mead hall, the room was dressed appropriately with the Queen at the head of the table surrounded by her guards and advisors as she accepted suitors following the untimely death of her husband, we were fed huge hunks of meat or vegetarian alternatives with bread and drank deep of mead, ale and cider, skalds told stories and many intriguing plot threads unwound, escaped slaves, pursuing slavers, arm wrestling, leg wrestling and magnificent displays of rhythm!
Saturday – A leisurely start with the most magnificent omlette provided for our breakfast and people gradually got themselves into kit ready for the off by about midday. The adventure, 5 heroes, a local prince and his friend the skald set off into the mountains to try and find a troll blamed for the deaths of 12 local children. Along the way the skald seemed to lead the heroes to an ancient cairn where Mjollinir itself was protected by 10 ghostly warriors, many battles ensued, probably the hardest against the elements and the terrain. A fine in character lunch of hot vegetable stew and tea was more than welcome before the party finally located the Troll (easily 10’ tall) and a mighty battle followed. The adventure drew to a conclusion with the party set upon by more Viking warriors, something about undoing the work of centuries and unleashing a terrible war by claiming the hammer. We easily covered 7 miles of very hilly terrain through rain, sleet and snow and the occasional glimpse of sunshine. Nobody shirked, complained or failed to give it everything all day long, amazing!
After a short journey back to base everyone took a couple of hours to recover and sort out their kit for the evening tavern, hot showers were so so welcome and the drying room was soon full to capacity with dripping leather!
Saturday tavern – Corinth (Greco style city states) this one was set in a taverna that was the scene for a show down between the uptight priest of Mitra and his retinue and everyone else who was enjoying the revelries surrounding the wake of the local herbalist. We were fed an excellent Feta and Olive salad, humus and pita bread and freshly cooked fish, there was wine, cider, mead, whiskies and schnapps (see a pattern…) We had drunken revelers, women of the night and some amusement surrounding an Aesir warrior who was trying to drink her way to oblivion after drawing a demonic sword. The dead herbalist was eventually restored to life amongst much confusion and the Mithraic priest was put to death, presumably for telling people they shouldn’t drink, we had badly sung tunes, hypnotism and a demonic pact for good measure.
Sunday – 2 nights of excess and still no lack of enthusiasm, we were provided with a sumptuous scrambled egg, bacon, peppers, tomatoes feast to get us moving and by noon we were again ready for the off, despite the weather being much wetter than the previous day. 4 Warriors well armed and armoured, one a king of a local city state set out to try and find who was responsible for the death of his family years earlier. They faced many hill bandits being stirred to rebellion by a local chief and uncovered the tomb of an ancient Vampire, we can only apologise for the one arm bandit’s so many times but were they not mighty? Eventually the party met the chief and his dreaded ur-men. Finally the party made it to the lair of the sorceress behind it all, along with her heavily armoured retinue. Everyone agreed that despite being held under more wooded cover than the previous day’s excursion it was a much harder slog! The in character lunch had been provided in the form of sausages, oranges and the most amazing Halva that the party liberated from a group of bandits.
Sunday Tavern – Hykrania (Think Steppes and hill-men) Was set in a den of iniquity owned by slaver and inhabited by Lotus dealers, musicians and exotic dancers. Everyone was seated on rugs and we were fed lamb, a thick rice dish and falafel. The booze flowed as never before with fine liqueurs and mead along with the ever present cider. The 2 professional musicians and the extraordinary belly dancers provided us with entertainment that I’d have paid real money to go and watch, there were bouts of wrestling, intrigue and discussions about the malevolent slavers and the evil sorcerer who demanded the poor locals paid a tribute to him every year. There were bandits to be fought off and young daughters of the locals to be rescued, rituals performed magnificently to restore those possessed to their right minds . Did I mention the drink.. the snorting of the lotus powder (sherbet and reindeer horn) the all night revelry when it turned out that neither the musicians nor the shemite’s on tomorrows party would retire until everyone else had done so. The last shemite drifted to bed at 04-30 just as the sun was rising but I think it was an honourable draw in the end!
Monday – The planned early start did not materialise, I cannot imagine why.. but a hearty breakfast was provided, bacon, eggs, sausage and copious amounts of tea. The sun had finally beaten away the rain clouds and a dry day looked in prospect. Whilst originally it was planned to run another all day out adventure trekking far and wide it was decided to instead split it into 2 parts, each culminating back at the centre, that way if any had pressing need to leave during the day then they could do so more easily and hopefully it eased the burden on the crew as they could gradually get on with returning the centre to a more normal environment once more.
The adventure centered around 3 Shemite brothers and their journey East with a young Gunderlander “The chosen one” they had been joined the night before by an Aquilonian priest who insisted that they try to undo the work of the evil sorcerer/slaver (Sutekh) who made the lives of the locals a misery. They trekked through the sunshine, facing many bandits and rescuing a blinded archer along their way to recover the mummified body that trapped a demon. This was carried back to a temple where the local priests fed them and assisted in building a pyre so that the demon might be released to assist in the slaying of Sutekh. Of course the demon could only help by possessing the body of the chosen one, but the gods sent a sign (the sun came out) and this was allowed to happen. The afternoon session involved more trekking towards the lair of Sutekh, facing weird mutated humans and driving away spirits. It culminated in a battle with a maligned wood spirit the costume of which simply took collective breaths away. Finally the party faced the sorcerer and his hordes and of course then had to figure a way to get the demon out of the chosen one when he refused to budge.
Summation:
HT is hard core, anyone who has walked, run, fought and pranced around 21 miles of Welsh hillside in mainly driving rain deserves a round of applause. This is an event for people who like to push themselves, who like lrp combat and who love to immerse themselves in whatever role is given to them, if you want to play only your own character for the weekend then you are given the opportunity to do so, if you want as many varied and interesting roles as possible then that is available also. You can play pretty much anything that comes from a historical/fantastic background, Vikings, Greeks, Plate clad knights, savages, think of a culture and Howard probably had it covered!
The rules system is invisible, it is possible to get your character killed but it is much more likely that you will survive, battered, bruised and covered in the gore of 100 times 100 foes. One small criticism would probably be that refs need to reinforce some of the rules at the start of each day. Things like the one second rule, the no calls, it is easy to get carried away and forget them so a bit of reinforcement would probably help.
The thing that I love about HT and the people who run it is that they foster a feeling of everyone pulling together to try and provide a brilliant experience, everyone is a hero and everyone gets their moment, it was a mainly different group of players that attended HT II and a lot of them were new faces but it just seemed to happen in the same way, I can only then attribute this to the HT team.
The weather could have been a real downer on a long distance open air event like this but it just wasn’t, ok people were wet and cold and we had the occasional moan but I think it helped to pull us all closer together as a group as well.
The props, monster kit, weapons and set dressings were all well thought out and put together, I thought everything added to the immersion and nothing grated as just not looking right. The three vastly different taverns with cultural foods and entertainments thrown in were a pleasure and the willingness everyone had to be part of the story was a real plus.
Players all looked excellent, everyone had made a real effort on their kit, an indicator of this was that you could work out just by looking at people which culture they came from or which group they would probably be out with.
If I could only attend one event a year it would be HT.
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Heroic Knight
Group: Basic Members
Last Login: Yesterday @ 10:30 PM
Posts: 117,
Visits: 1,095
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yes everything jenko has put on is correct had a wonderful weekend being of a certain age and not in my prime was actually dreading it .came away on the monday having had a brill time ,will b there nxt year
Go tell the Spartans,stranger passing by,that here,obedient to their laws we lie.
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