"With tensions between the White City and the City of Crossroads running at an all-time high following the theft of the First Hammer, a banquet has been arranged for the people of the two cities to mingle, politic and socialise in an effort to foster more cordial diplomatic relations while current events are discussed."
This event is an In Character banquet set in the White City world. No prior knowledge of the setting or of the system is required to play - the game will be a freeform live roleplaying event with no game rules involved. You can play an existing character from the setting, generate a new character using the character generation rules found elsewhere on this website or ask the GM team to provide you with an NPC for the evening. Food and drink are provided, costume is encouraged but by no means obligatory - just dress up nicely! The deadline for letting the organisers know you want to attend is midnight on Tuesday 3rd May.
When - Where - Cost & Catering - Organisers - Attendance - IC Details - Background
"Gossip goes through the White City like chilli through a short grandmother. And when the gossip is that an army is on your doorstep that chilli has extra peppers!
The city is now a-buzz as people are preparing for war. The blacksmiths have gone into overproduction. Food and goods are being called in from the city's hinterlands. Far from panic, people seem to have an attitude along the lines of "We knew something was coming" and they are just glad to get on with it. The De Courcis are overseeing the main efforts and the war chests are being broached. Money comes forth to pay for troops, the High Guard and Low Guard look busy. The entire city is galvanised, from the highest noble to the lowest sewer cleaner. Everyone has a sharp knife in waiting.
The De Courcis have announced that the small event they had organised to smooth things over further between the White City and the City of Crossroads now has greater importance. They wish in the comming conflict to see their allies stand with them so they can be counted and praised. Let the fair weather friends retreat before the storm. A storm the White City will weather."
When: Friday 6th May (Friday 2nd week) from 7 p.m.
The venue is booked from 6:00 in the evening, the actual event is scheduled to start between 7:00 and 7:30, time-out will be at 11:00 and we need to vacate the room by 11:20.
Where: The Mitre public house, Oxford High Street, OX1 4AG
The Mitre is a Beefeater restaurant and public house in Oxford city centre, on the corner of the High Street and Turl Street, close to Carfax Tower and Lincoln College. A map to the Mitre can be found here on Streetmap.co.uk and here on Multimap.com.
Those travelling to the banquet from outside Oxford may want to have a look at the travel details below.
The banquet is taking place in the private upstairs function room - go in through the front doors and look for the door on your right leading to a short hallway with a set of stairs curving up to the right. At the top of the stairs, take the door on the left into the function room, which overlooks the High Street.
Cost: £10 including catering
There is a charge of £10 for the evening to cover room hire and catering. Home cooked mediaeval style food (prepared by Ellie) and soft drinks will be provided, though the term "banquet" is a slight misnomer - rather, it's a freeform roleplaying event with buffet. Alcoholic drinks and miscellaneous snacks can be purchased from the bar downstairs. Don't bring any of your own drinks, the venue management would not be pleased.
If you're a vegetarian or have any other special dietary requirements then please email the organisers by midnight on Tuesday 3rd May to let them know.
Organisers
Chief GM: Rich, the LARP Organiser - you can email him here.
Organisation Team: Chris V, Ellie, Helen & Joe R - you can email them here.
Attendance
If you wish to attend the event, please let the organiser team know as soon as possible. Payment is required in advance, so that the venue can be paid for and the food and drink purchased - representatives of the organiser team will be at Horizon, Games Night and the regular LARP events to take your money and note down your intention to attend. If you've not paid and confirmed your attendance by midnight on Tuesday 3rd May then your presence won't be taken into account when organising the catering and so there won't be any food for you.
Please also let the GMs and organisers know in advance which character you intend to play at the event. If you wish to create a new character for the event or would rather play an NPC, they will be happy to help and advise.
In Character Details
The event has been organised by Rebecca De Courci, the Governor of the White City, in concert with the White City's embassy from the City of Crossroads. As well as the politicians, nobles and diplomats that one would expect the event is also open to adventurers, merchants, priests, sorcerors and scholars so that the people of the two cities may mingle freely and get to know each other, warts and all.
The event will take place in the "Knight Inn", which stands alone on a small hillock just inside a small park in the White City. An excellent venue if you want a trouble free event, as it is easily guarded and surrounded by a cordon of troops. Those who wish can make a grand entrance or sneek up unseen.
Special measures have been taken to ensure that nothing interrupts this meeting. The Cloistered Brethren of Chains have brought out a huge chain which has encircled the Knight Inn. Those who cross into the chain are bound to do no harm and to use no magic or skill to harm another while within. It is traditional to carry a small chain to be seen to accept these conditions.
The banquet is a non-contact, non-violent, non-magical event by its nature. Nobody will be able to harm anybody In Character in any way or form. Please don't ask as a refusal often offends. No magic can be used at all; no poisonings; no cutting the chandelier from the roof halfway through the soup course; etc. etc.
Background
If you've not played in any of the White City LARPs before then it's probably worth a look at the page which gives you an introduction to the setting. Below is a brief summary of the recent events which have led up to the banquet.
Both of these will hopefully be available in hardcopy at the event itself as well.
A thousand years ago there was a world-shattering war. On one side the strange gods from the East known as the Bound Ones, their armies of human followers and the legions of strange creatures they created or twisted to serve them. On the other side, priests and sorcerors of the Light, sorcerors of Chains and their armies of human followers. Empires fell, cities were razed to the ground, the Bound Ones were defeated, chained and imprisoned deep beneath the earth, their armies were scattered to the winds and history was written by the victors.
Several weeks' travel to the East of what is now the White City, beyond the site where the City of Crossroads now stands, lie the three Battlefields, sites of great conflict in the Binding War where the land was warped and blasted by powerful magics and gods were imprisoned beneath it. Beyond the Battlefields lie the razed ruins of the City of Chains, guarded by undead knights bound there to protect its secrets from intruders.
The White City was founded by the Exalted Church of the Light and the Cloistered Brethren of Chains at the end of the Binding War. Ever since that time the Cloistered Brethren of Chains have watched the Battlefields and City of Chains for any sign that the Bound Ones or their minions may be stirring.
The City of Crossroads started as a collection of outposts, villages and trading settlements, only becoming a full fledged city a couple of centuries ago. It dominates trade with the distant Eastern Kingdoms and prides itself on its openness and freedom, the practice of Chain sorcery is a rarity within its walls.
The Army of the Red Gryphon came out of the East less than five years ago. At first they were encountered only as occasional small patrols wandering the Eastern plains, sometimes friendly and helpful to strangers, sometimes hostile and aggressive, mostly largely indifferent and busy with their own affairs. Always uniformed, well equipped, well trained, highly disciplined and uninformative.
Tragedy struck just under two years ago, when a powerful sorceror who was both a priest of the Exalted Church of the Light and a high ranking member of the Cloistered Brethren of Chains apparently went mad. He travelled to one of the Battlefields and there attempted to bind the Light itself - he succeeded to some degree, but his plans were stopped (fatally) by a group of White City sorcerors and adventurers acting on behalf of the Church and the Cloistered Brethren. But during the battle he used one of his final spells to release the Bound One held beneath the Battlefield, the god known as He Who Walks Wilderness.
Shortly afterwards He Who Walks Wilderness was encountered by another group of adventurers travelling to the Battlefield in order to prevent the dead slain there in the Binding War from being raised again by the Necromancer of Three Rivers. They described him as a tall, beautiful, angelic being with great white wings and glowing purple eyes who offered them gifts and created strange creatures from nothing. Unnatural beasts and people with strange names and even stranger supernatural powers became more common in the East, including the great living forest known as the Mahogadon (which was cordoned off by the Army of the Red Gryphon and eventually slain by White City adventurers).
It was a little over a year ago that a merchant-adventurer met the man claiming to be the leader of the Army of the Red Gryphon, a powerful Name sorceror with glowing purple eyes (similar to those of He Who Walks Wilderness) who calls himself "The Prince of the East".
During this time, He Who Walks Wilderness was travelling the East twisting the land and its inhabitants. His passing woke an ancient sentient artefact from the Binding War known as the Serpent of Chains. A gigantic snake made from dozens of yards of iron chain and given powers of speech and Chain sorcery, it claimed to have been created to hunt down Bound Ones and roused by the re-emergence of He Who Walks Wilderness. After some negotiation it was persuaded to minimise the collateral damage resulting from its hunt.
Last October a party sent to the City of Chains by the Cloistered Brethren of Chains found the whole place surrounded by the Army of the Red Gryphon, who were patrolling the area heavily. After some civilised negotiations the party are given aid from the Army and access to the city, where the Knight Protectors are battling a necromancer and his undead minions. The party aid the Knight Protectors against the hostile undead and retrieve the items they were sent for, though not without some trouble from a shapeshifting creature imprisoned beneath the ruins since the Binding War.
A month later another group was sent to the City of Chains and met only one small patrol of Red Gryphon soldiers, who escorted them to the gates of the city in a businesslike manner and then departed. This new group aided the Knight Protectors in the final defeat of the foreign necromancer, who was discovered to be an apprentice of the Necromancer at Three Rivers. There was much trouble from Chain-Wraiths, Lesser Bound Ones and another imprisoned shapeshifter.
In January of this year word reached the Low Guard that a charismatic Name sorceror and Bound One cultist called Wate had gathered a small army of impressionable young followers and begun searching the Great Forest to the southwest of the White City for an ancient and powerful artefact. The De Courcis hired a small group of nobles and adventurers to assassinate Wate - his followers were slaughtered and scattered and Wate's head was brought back to the city in a sack for sorcerous interrogation, but rumours soon began to fly. Treasure hunters ran rampage through the Great Forest looking for the artefact, which was discovered to be The First Hammer (the first tool ever used by human hand, thus an item possessed of considerable mystic and symbolic significance). There is suggestion that it is capable of destroying almost any chain or binding, including the sorcery imprisoning the Bound Ones. Another group of adventurers managed to recover the First Hammer (which has the appearance of a six foot length of petrified wood) and bring it back to the White City, despite strangely ineffective opposition from Chain-Wraiths and the remnants of Wate's cult (now apparently receiving orders from some new source).
The De Courcis give the First Hammer into the custody of the Cloistered Brethren of Chains, who after initial investigation passed it to the College of the Thousand Arts for further study. But while at the College under heavy guard the First Hammer was stolen - papers found in the office of Senior Lecturer Imran Lidstone, a Blood sorceror in the Faculty of the Arcane, implicated him and the City of Crossroads in the theft, but he hasn't been arrested. More rumours fly around and tensions between the White City and the City of Crossroads steadily escalate.
A group of Glass sorcerors take advantage of the tensions to sorcerously disguise themselves as White City citizens and attempt to rob a prominent Crossroads merchant, but are fortunately uncovered and foiled. Cultists of the Bound One known as the Eater-Of-Wings become more public around the City of Crossroads and prophesy the imminent release of the deity.
The lands of the Eastern plains are by now becoming increasingly twisted by the presence of He Who Walks Wilderness - time, distance and weather act in strange and unexpected ways, when people look back the way they've come the landscape behind them is not always the landscape over which they've just travelled.
However, all other concerns have mostly fallen by the wayside now that a group sent to scout out the Army of the Red Gryphon has found it apparently planning war on the White City. An army thousands strong was discovered in a mountain valley concealed in a fold of space masquerading as a small rocky outcrop, complete with siege weaponry practicing on mock-up sections of the White City's walls. The human troops are seemingly allied with ogres, giant ogres thirty feet tall able to take the form of gigantic red gryphons, Chain-Wraiths and shapeshifting creatures of the Bound Ones like those seen in the City of Chains. Many of the Army's officers reportedly have glowing purple eyes, and there are rumours of one individual of great strength with purple eyes and pulsing black veins across his skin who wields the legendary sword named Vengeance.
Travel:
By coach: Coaches from various parts of the country stop at the Gloucester Green coach station, which is a ten minute walk from the venue. In particular, there are 24-hour coach services between Oxford and London which stop at the Gloucester Green coach station and also on Oxford High Street, five minutes' walk from the venue; People travelling from London may want to look at details of the Oxford Espress and Oxford Tube coach services.
By train: Oxford railway station is a fifteen minute walk from the venue, for those who don't want to walk that far the number 5 bus runs from the railway station to Queen Street which is a few minutes' walk from the venue. Check the National Rail site for timetable information.
By car: Those coming by car are best off parking in the Westgate multi-storey carpark off Oxpens Road (a ten minute walk from the venue) or, if they don't want to brave Oxford's labyrinthine and confusing one-way system, in one of the Park-&-Ride carparks on the Oxford ring road and taking a Park-&-Ride bus in to the city centre. Pay-and-display parking is also available on Broad Street, St. Giles and Mansfield Road, but spaces can sometimes be hard to find and there may be time limits on how long vehicles can stay there.
See the following website for general information on parking in Oxford.
It's also worth having a look at the maps page put up for CamarillaUK events by Chris V.
This page last updated: 5th May 2005
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