Cerise Magazine

By Samara Hayley Steele

Or, The Damsel & The Distress

Part Two

When I left you at the end of my last article, a teenaged boy, his face caked in fake blood, was pulling me out the back door of a summer camp cafeteria and into the woods.

…only that’s not what was really happening.

Mere physical observation of the events in a Live-Action Role Play is meaningless.

Just as any written story appears to be lifeless ink on paper, a LARP resembles a troupe of actors in silly costumes running through the woods and bonking each other with padded swords. It is only by filtering the events through one’s imagination that the player is able to enter the complex, vibrant world of the game.

I had spent so many of my afternoons nestled in armchairs, fingers curled around a thick novel or video game controller, that I knew how to interpret stories with eyes more powerful than the ones located above my nose.

When I read The Lord of The Rings, I became Bilbo Baggins. I journeyed through Middle Earth and ran from dragons and soared over mountain ranges and ate Lembas bread and slept in warm, sun-speckled meadows.

Now I had entered a strange new type of story, but I was already literate in the language of imagination, and it was easy to fill in the gaps and make it real. I was Left Ear the Fehu, and I was dead, and I was being dragged into the forest by a blood-soaked Vampire-Zombie.

Twigs snapped beneath our boots as he dragged me. Where on earth are we going?

I tripped over a cluster of tree roots and the Vampire caught my arm.

“You okay?” he asked, momentarily slipping Out of Character. It was reassuring to see that despite the fact he had killed me, he was still concerned about my safety.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” I staggered back up to my feet.

He grunted, getting back in character, and we moved on.

Suddenly a man jumped from the trees and charged us, sword drawn. “Six Silver!” he shouted, hitting the Vampire in the shoulder. I recognized the voice: it was Ranas, the loner Satyr who had guided me to the tavern earlier. I hadn’t expected to see him again so soon.

The Vampire dropped my arm and returned the blows, shouting, “Seven Drain! Seven Drain!”

I slumped down onto the pine needles, trying my best to fall realistically without getting stepped on.

“Six Silver! Six Silver!”

Soon the Vampire crumpled to the ground beside me, and then I felt a beanbag lightly touch my shoulder. “I Summon of the Powers of the Earth to Revive You,” Ranas said.

Meanwhile, the Vampire turned to dust (i.e. the teenaged boy said, “I turn to dust,” then stood up, put his hands on this head, and wandered off into the forest).

My wounds were now healed, and I sat up and shook the pine needles from my hair. “Ranas?”

“Hello again,” the Satyr said. “You all right?”

“Yeah.” There was dirt in my mouth.

“Where’s your sword?”

“I don’t know.”

Suddenly we heard the sound of several people crunching through the underbrush.

“Get down!” Ranas whispered and before I could protest, he shoved me under a large fern at the edge of the path. Then he wedged himself in next to me, just in time to hide from the three shadowy figures that appeared from the trees.

The one in front wore a long black cloak, with the hood draped over his eyes, and behind him marched two very tall men in skeleton costumes. They wore matching hockey masks, and in the dim light, the white plastic bones of their costumes seemed to move of their own accord, floating menacingly behind the cloaked man.

My stomach lurched and my body tensed. I felt scared in a way that penetrated far deeper than the books or video games could ever go. The animal part of my brain screamed for me to run, but Ranas stayed calm and motionless, his body wedging me in place. I knew that if I tried to move, I would get both of us killed.

Perhaps it sounds like I was overreacting to the situation, but anyone who has ever been in an intense game of capture the flag or played Halo for money at a LAN party can identify with the fear that accompanies hiding in the forest while an enemy is near. But in this situation, I didn’t even know all the rules. And there was no off-switch. My avatar was inside my body.

The skeletons came within a few inches of our heads. I shut my eyes tightly. It’s just a game. It’s just a game. They were so close I could hear the crunch of twigs beneath their boots.

Then they stopped. I opened my eyes and held my breath. I could feel Ranas also grow tense beside me. Had they heard us?

The leader addressed the skeletons. “Go!” he said, motioning toward the tavern. “Kill anything that’s living! And bring one of them back.” His voice was brittle and deep, like all the TV villains that ever gave me nightmares. I shivered.

The skeletons grunted in reply and disappeared down the trail, but the cloaked man remained where he was. He knows we’re here! I prepared to run, but the man didn’t move. He just stood there, listening.

“Ellie!” a distant voice called my name. “Ellie!” The battle in the tavern had ended and someone was looking for me now.

“I think he took her this way!” someone else yelled.

“Break into groups! She’s got to be around here somewhere!”

Wow. I was flattered, but also a bit confused. From the sound of it, an entire search party was looking for me. These people had met me less than an hour ago. Why did they care?

The cloaked figure did not move from his place on the path for a very long time.

As I lay there in the pine needles, wedged awkwardly between a fern and a strange young man, trying to breathe as quietly as possible, I suddenly became aware that, beyond a doubt, I was alive.

I could feel the furnace inside my chest, pounding, pumping, pushing the adrenaline and warm blood through my veins, jumpstarting my senses. My nose tingled, tickled by the perfume of the sword ferns and salal; my skin rippled, as the chilly night air swathed my exposed hands and neck with its cold kisses; my eyes refocused and my vision became so clear, it was like I’d switched to night vision:

My body was a newly repaired computer, booting up after several years of being ignored.

Later, other LARPers would tell me that this phenomenon is quite common. In the high-adrenaline, drama-filled world of the game, physical reality suddenly becomes a lot more…real.

A deep smile folded across my face. So this is what it feels like to be inside the story!

Suddenly I felt a small creature scuttling up my shoulder. I bit my lip and tried not to scream. Shitfuck! That better not be a spider!

“Ellie! Ellie!” My would-be rescuers shouted my name as they crackled through the underbrush.

Then one of them shouted, “Death Knights! We’ve got Death Knights!”

A hollow voice retorted, “I Curse you with Death! Death! Death!”

“Heeeeeelp!”

“Ten Chaos!” The skeletal warrior replied.

The slap of a boffer-sword smacking a body resounded through the woods, then there was a loud crunch, like something falling dead into the leaves.

Then silence.

Then a panicked voice: “Puck! They got Puck!”

“Gleeck, where are you?”

“Help! Someone—”

Then a deep, menacing growl: “Twelve Chaos! Twelve Chaos! Twelve Chaos!

Another loud death-crash.

“Arcturus is down!”

“Ten Chaos!”

The cloaked man chuckled. The warriors were being picked off one by one.

Suddenly there was a sound like a gypsy caravan crashing through the forest—bells and trinkets and chainmail all chiming together. I knew it was the Rat.

His confident voice cut through the air like a cleaver, “Thirteen Nightmare! Thirteen Nightmare!”

“Twelve Chaos! Ten Chaos! Twelve Chaos!” the skeletons replied.

He was fighting both of them at once.

His cries were fast, like the rattle of a machinegun. “Thirteen Nightmare! Thirteen Nightmare! Thirteen Nightmare!” The trinkets on his costume clanked and chimed, like he was dancing some sort of strange jig. I wished I were close enough to watch.

Then, suddenly, there were two loud crashes.

Did we win?

Then the Rat’s voice resounded through the woods, “We need healers over here, NOW!”

Victory!

After that, too many words and footsteps blurred together, and it was impossible to decipher the scene by sound only.

The cloaked man growled with dissatisfaction, then said, “I Phase Out One…I Phase Out Two…I Phase Out Three.” He put his hands on his head and disappeared down the dark path and into the woods.

“Finally!” Ranas said, and rolled out from under the fern. “He’s gone.”

I wiggled out and jumped to my feet, frantically shaking out my tunic, hoping that whatever creature had crawled in there hadn’t reached my hair, my bra, or my underwear. I straightened myself back up and I asked, “Who…or what was that?”

“A Necromancer,” Ranas replied solemnly.

“Necromancer?” I wasn’t sure what that was, but it sounded frightening, and also a bit perverted. I made a mental note to look up the word later.

Someone was running down the path toward us. “Ellie? Is that you?”

Ranas bowed slightly. “I’ll be seeing you,” he said. Then, before I could thank him, he turned and disappeared into the shadows. Little did I know, I would never get a chance to extend to him my gratitude.

As mentioned in my second article, Ranas would meet his end the next day, his body strewn across a sunlit meadow, ripped to pieces by claws and swords.

I smiled as I watched him go. I was so sure he would remain a permanent character in my story, a friendly face popping from the bushes from time to time to chat about town history or fight monsters side-by-side.

“Ellie!” Arcturus appeared from around the corner. “We thought you were done for!”

Gleeck the Ogre rounded the corner as well, and plowed into the Arcturus’s back, knocking him into the bushes.

“You dumbass!” the indignant Satyr shouted.

Gleeck was oblivious. “Ellie! You alive!”

“Yeah!” I said, “Ranas s-saved me.” Saved? Why had I used that word? It’s so trite! So cliché! So Disney-esque! So…gendered. …but it’s what really happened.

This was my first taste of my new role as a female character in a male-dominated LARP.

Playing Roles

In my second article, I discussed the nature of the male LARPer’s role within the game society. He must integrate into a hierarchy, competing for rank while supporting the men above him. Any male who rejects this system becomes an outcast, and, in a land filled with evil wizards and hungry monsters, societal rejection is a death sentence, as Ranas’s fate would soon demonstrate.

While the males must work their way up a hierarchical ladder, the female character finds herself as an object for their competitions. She is a grail. A gem. A treasure. An end instead of a means. A background character.

The men try to outdo each other to help her, and to do favors for her, and the lucky ones get to rescue her. And they also give her things. Lots of things.

I would soon receive beautiful and expensive necklaces from both Arcturus and the Wolf, dozens of valuable Magic Items and Protective Charms from various casters, and impassioned speeches from warriors about their willingness to risk their lives to protect me—and they would. Repeatedly, I would watch them throw their bodies in front of me like living shields. Occasionally, I would stop and wonder, Why do they do this?

They could talk to me. Between the mêlées and sieges, I would find myself bombarded by eager men, ready to tell me their passions, explain their philosophies, and reveal their deepest secrets. I listened respectfully, without trying to one-up them, and in doing this, I allowed them to add depth to their characters, and at the same time, develop my own.

I enjoyed this role. Out of Game, these people were office workers, grocery store clerks, bouncers and bankers, and most of them had spent their lives being told they weren’t supposed to make up stories; their fantasy worlds were to be handed down to them by authors and video game designers, instead of arising from within their chests. But now that they had been given permission to let the stories flow, it was like a dam bursting, and the flood of creativity gushed from their imaginations to their lips, and from for their lips to my eager ears. I felt privileged to listen to them.

This is, perhaps, the most important function of the female LARPer. By passively listening—as women in our society are already trained to do—the female character becomes an emotional oasis in a desert of competitive militarism. Her presence gives the battles more meaning than mere victory or defeat. She gives the warriors and casters something to protect; something to cry about if it is taken away.

Perhaps, because of this, the female is the most powerful object in the game. The hearts of the men dangle on strings from her fingers, and she has the power to pull…

I would have never consciously used this manipulative power, but, even before the battle had ended, the lone Vampire-teenager staggered off to tell his masters of my existence. Now the Storytellers, the true puppeteers, were huddled together, plotting my fate, debating how to use this valuable new pawn in an already complex game.

But for now, all I knew was that the battle was over, and I marched back to the tavern with my new companions, excitedly telling them about my adventure hiding from the “necker-mancer.”

“Necromancer?” corrected the Wolf.

“Uh…yeah.”

We clustered around the long plastic tables, still high on adrenalin and adventure, and the men bantered about the size of the Death Knights and epic victory of the Rat. One of the Gypsies handed me a warm mug of apple cider to sip on while I listened to the warriors compete in an unofficial tournament to tell the best tale:

“There is a land covered in fire, far to the west, and the flames rise to the top of the sky, ever burning. See this pendant? It allows me to enter…”

“The Mistress of the Hunt—a very powerful sorceress—used to come here every winter with a huge pack of fire-breathing hounds. They would spread through the forest, hunting us down one-by-one, as though we were stags or rabbits, and she would skin anyone who died permanently, keeping their pelt as a trophy…”

“Four years ago the Kami of Love and the Kami of Hate went to war, and they used this city, and the hearts of its people, as a battleground…”

The night seemed to melt away too quickly, and I felt drunk on it all. My mind was swimming with images of distant lands, tragic romances, and epic battles. And now I was part of these stories!

When the moon crossed the zenith and eyelids began to droop, Arcturus asked where I planned to sleep, and I realized I didn’t know. I had not yet met up with the people who drove me to the game, and the group of us had planned to share a cabin.

Before I had time to reply, Arcturus said, “There’s a free bunk at my place.”

Top Bunk, Furthest from the Door

Now I am in a small Boy Scout cabin, wrapped in Arcturus’s extra sleeping bag, with Gleeck snoring on the bunk below me. Various Elves and Gypsies whose names I don’t remember are scattered across the room, breathing heavily and shifting on their thin mattresses.

I press my face to the small, chicken-wire-covered window that is above my bed, gazing out at the empty meadow. The moon has shifted since I started playing, and now the shadows are on the wrong side of everything.

What happened to my character? She was supposed to be a rude, tough, independent barmaid with a bad attitude and too much bravado. But somewhere between the soup and the sword clashes, she had dissolved into a quiet, friendly…damsel in distress.

Earlier, as I was climbing into my bunk, Arcturus had proclaimed, “We’ll do everything in our power protect you!” The warriors and casters around the room had nodded. “You are an island of purity in a sea of evil and greed.”

Crimony! What a mess! This was all my fault! If only I’d been quicker with my comebacks! More adamant with my insults!

But the game isn’t over yet. There are still thirty-eight hours left, and perhaps that is enough time to fix this.

I close my eyes, and I feel as though I am on the cusp of a first page. And as I drift into sleep, the page is turning…

Watch for the turn of Samara’s next page in December’s issue!

Article © November 2007 by Samara Hayley Steele.