The Castle

RPG system: LARP
Participants: 22 players

By

✏️	David Owen
✏️	Karolina Soltys
	David Owen
	Karolina Soltys

Description

In the midst of a thick forest, there was a castle that gave shelter to all travellers overtaken by night on their journey: lords and ladies, royalty and their retinue, humble wayfarers.

I crossed a rattling drawbridge. I slipped from my saddle in a dark courtyard. Silent grooms took my horse. I was breathless, hardly able to stand on my legs; after entering the forest I had faced so many trials, encounters, apparitions, duels, that I could no longer order my actions or my thoughts.

​About the larp
I climbed some stairs; I found myself in a high, spacious hall. Many people—also transient guests surely, who had preceded me along the path through the woods—were seated at supper at a table lighted by candelabra. As I looked around, I felt a curious sensation, or, rather, two distinct sensations, which mingled in my mind, still upset and somewhat unstable in my weariness.

The larp is set in the court of The Wounded King, and recounts the noble deeds of lords and ladies dwelling within. No, that’s not true. The larp is set in the modern day, and tells the story of regular people struggling in their grey, mundane lives. No, that’s not true either. Let’s try again. The larp is set in a very special castle...

The Charade
I seemed to be at a sumptuous court, which no one would have expected to find in such a rustic and out-of-the-way castle; and its wealth was evident not only in the costly furnishings and the graven vessels, but also in the calm and ease which reigned among those at the table, all handsome of person and clothed with elaborate elegance.

Inside the Castle, we stage the Charade. We do not speak of its nature, or fully understand its rules. You can be anyone in the Charade – a queen or her page, a knight-errant on the quest for the Holy Grail or a holy maiden seeing visions from God, a servant, a jester or an herbalist – painted in indigo and vermilion on a Tarot card.

In the Charade we feast and we dance, we duel and we reminisce about the crusades. We knead bread and tend to the livestock, compose courtly poetry, pray and sing hymns, and seek the Philosopher’s Stone. We perform irreverent plays, break our chastity vows, make deals with the Devil – and we flagellate to atone for our sins. But most of all, we try to forget about the Plague.

The Plague
At the same time, I remarked a feeling of random, of disorder, if not actually of license, as if this were not a lordly dwelling but an inn of passage, where people unknown to one another live together for one night and where, in that enforced promiscuity, all feel a relaxation of the rules by which they live in their own surroundings, and—as one resigns oneself to less comfortable ways of life—so one also indulges in freer, unfamiliar behaviour.

Outside of the Castle, the world is being ravaged by the Plague. The Plague has no name, no cause and no cure. It turns the world grey, noisy and confusing, it makes the air hard to breathe and the food taste of plastic. It mesmerises you with television screens and deafens you with elevator music. It muddles your thoughts and makes you forget the courtly ways and the values of beauty, chivalry, honour, and the duty to your liege. It makes you betray the King, God, and your sweet Dulcinea. Instead, it fills your mind with alien words and phrases: nine-to-five, retirement funds, carbon footprint, custody, mortgage, financial crisis, chemotherapy, 12 steps, microtransactions, swipe left to say no, rush hour, service is disrupted due to a passenger on the tracks, please hold, all of our lines are currently busy, put on your own mask before assisting others, stand clear of the closing doors.

Runs

Links

• Homepage for the scenario