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My vampire poem reminded me of one of my favorite Moments in LARPing from back in the dark ages when I LARPed Vampire. Back before they “unionized” it and formed the national Camarilla gaming group. Ya know, back when it was still fun.

As much as I enjoyed playing the game, some of the best moments came OOC.

The bar crowds that used to hit Denny’s on Saturday nights/Sunday morn got used to large groups of oddly dressed people in their midst. But occasionally ya have to hit a 7-11 at 2am in the middle of a game where you’ve been playing a badass Brujah Sheriff, and you’re dressed in leather pants and boots with spurs, and leather bustier and cowboy hat because, hey, your sire was Wyatt Earp, and some smartass frat punk feels compelled to ask if you aren’t a little old to be dressing up like that, and well, you never really got out of character just to run in for cigs, and the guy behind the counter is used to your group, so you get right in the face of some college boy who could hurt you if he wanted to and tell him to learn some fucking manners before another of his betters comes along and does it for him, and his buddy finds it hilarious and a little hot that a short busty woman dressed like a gothic cowgirl just scared the crap out of his friend and he hits on you, so you have to sneer your very best Ventrue like sneer and tell him you don’t have time to teach him what he needs to know to ride this ride or to explain to the coroner how a person can die of embarrassment when you laugh at his small dick, then you saunter off to your car and laugh at them before driving off.

And the storyteller who watched it all from your car gives you extra XP for making him laugh.

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Left to her own devices, Thera let the tears fall. For losses too numerous to even begin counting much less to name. It made no logical sense to her that she was the only survivor of an ancient kingdom of millions. Surely others had gotten away. There were always ships out at sea, traders in other ports, and there was that festival in Persa that Lothian and … she squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t think of it now, and thinking of him right now tightened a band around her heart that caused her physical pain.

She rubbed the bruised space just below her collarbone again. The loss of the gem bothered her as much as any of the rest. Since recieving it as a baby on her Naming, it had never been off of her, and now it was just … gone.

Thera’s fingers grazed over the planes of her crystal dagger and she held it up to the light. Light that glinted over the tracery of flames along the blade that would flare to life when activated; thin lines of gold wound through the hilt and caught the eye. The naked eye couldn’t see them, but Thera knew there were ancient runes of power engraved along every one of those gold lines.

This was it; the only artifact remaining of a proud and ancient people. She wanted to stab herself through the heart with it.

Her fingers wrapped around the hilt and she actually held the point to her breastbone, but a memory stayed her hand…

The Obelisk of Rememberance had been ancient when Ashram was born, he told her, and Ashram was the oldest Arch Mage in Atlantis-the oldest person in Atlantis. So old that he had stopped counting the passing of the years.

Atlantis had once been two islands; Atla and Atlantis. When the crystal technology was still new, there had been a cascade failure of the matrix of Atla. They had time to evacuate because the Crystal Mages had sacrificed themselves to stay behind and hold back the inevitable crash that had literally torn Atla apart and severely damaged Atlantis’ eastern coast when the tidal waves hit.

One of the Crystals of Power had been housed on that island, and many had feared it lost, destroyed, and concern grew for what an unbalanced Tetra would do. How could the Heart continue when part of it was missing? But then, several months later, the Crystal of Gaia had just appeared in the middle of a field near the Eastern Seaboard. The temple had been built around it when it
was discovered.

“Atlantis,” Ashram had told her in his soft voice that resonated with power. “Finds a way. Always has been, always will be. Atlantis finds a way.”

If her initial self scans were to be believed, Tetra was no longer just an imprint within her. She carried Tetra itself inside her. If he was right, if her scans were correct, then Atlantis had found a way. She was that way.

She had been accused once of arrogance. But it would have been the height of arrogance indeed to end her life in a fit of dispair if the memory of Ashram’s words were true.

She had to believe it. It was the only hope she had.

[…]

She closed her eyes and took a breath. “I am not sure what there is to say. My entire civilization is gone. A whole race of people, ended. A place so imbuded with magic you could feel it on your skin like the sun, sundered to fragments by the rending of the earth. All I have to show for it is a dagger that I only hope I can activate again one day soon, and waterlogged robes. Even my magic seems out of sorts.”

Thera gestured at the maps again. “You show me a world so unlike what I know that it cannot even be the same place. You don’t look the same, sound the same, dress in any way that is familiar. Your naming conventions are… harsh. Your accents are foreign, and I am not sure how it is we speak the same language. You even move differently. I do not need to see the outside of this vessel to know that is is unlike any I have ever sailed upon. I can tell by the structure of this room, the woods, the way it moves and creaks. My mind just will not …. wrap around this idea. Not completely. Oh, it is not the idea of other worlds; scholars have theorized on that for centuries. It….it is the being.”

“Do you understand?”