The Very First Epoch Games

[Sylvie]

Hey everyone!

I'm working on a little project, and it requires me to know as much as possible about the early epoch games and the history of Holdfast. What happened politically, what monsters you fought, what Holdfast was before it became...what it is now...etc. I'm looking at you Volk, Torvallis, Lady Val/Ira, Timmean, Malva, and the other OG members!

[Torvallis!]

"It began, as I recall, with a chance meeting in the woods. Several groups of people happened upon the same patch of woods that I was in, meditating, and they rather rudely interrupted me.

It was then that we first noticed the unusual nature of the area, facing a number of monster attacks, from, as I recall, giant snakes, giant rats, and the occasional ne'er-do-well, all in the course of one afternoon. As well as an unusual quantity of alchemically powerful plants.

We, the lot of us, accidental wanderers all, found ourselves unintentionally thrust together to keep alive against this sudden and unexpected uprising of the local fauna. There were some too weak to fight, and those were healers. There were some who couldn't do that, and they still served to retrieve unconscious bodies. Everyone was needed for survival, back in those days.

I had been wandering alone for a long time, and to be quite honest, I had adapted the trappings and behaviours of a hermit.I sought to calm down the frantic proceedings by teaching others to meditate, with my mantra, 'Burn Them All', but it did not have the desired effect. Nonetheless, I was accepted by the town, even in my manic state.

A stout halfing merchant following the roads near where we had accidentally camped took note of the obscene amount of wealth we were generating by harvesting the flora and fauna and immediately capitalized on it by establishing trade routes and claiming ownership of what we all called 'Holdfast'.

Back then, we had all just recently washed ashore, and had no idea how the Island worked, or that there are substantially safer places on 'the Isle of the Dead', rather, we thought our impromptu encampment just outside of the forest was a collective safety measure, rather than a suicide risk. So we accepted that bastard Phinea's offer, not realizing what we were buying into.

So it progressed for a little while. We trained with each other, and learned of each other what we could teach, and learned from strangers even more. We helped messengers, and merchants, and when Maximillian came by, we were glad for his trainings and the tournament he put off.

Back then, a single bear was a large trouble to us, and a giant rat could put down any of our best warriors if they had no help. I wasted so much mana throwing fireballs!

There were several things that occurred at once that changed things, and brought us to our more permanent encampment that we inhabit at the current moment. The first being, if I recall, a magical chalice that teleported us all here? However, it did so in the dream realm of some demon sheep and . . . my memory's not so great, can someone else recall for me, how those events progressed?"

[Kuromori, Taka]

Hmm what can I remember from our first game or two...

It was at Sharon's house. We had all gathered in her living room, and were going over safety or something, maybe. And we all had our characters and Hilary came in the door, she had a costume. She was asked what her character was and she didn't have one and seemed very confused, thus she was dubbed Confuschia the Confused, who was later named Ira.

Game was in the backyard. It was a bit of woods and a small field with a stand set up in it full of food. You could poor yourself a drink or buy a can of iced tea for in-game currency. Mind you, we hadn't established a rough-rock-rare system so it was just trading in anything shiny we found. People also traded the fake flowers cast had set out in the woods.

We quickly figured out that going into the woods was dangerous. I dropped my lipbalm in the woods so I went in looking for it and I ended up finding a box full of gems. I bought myself and some other characters iced tea and still had a ton left. Later we did the tournament or something and because I didn't really have any pockets or anything I set the box down. Someone ended up finding it and taking them. I didn't really mind.

Later Phineas (?) brought out some chocolate covered cherries that had various alchemical effects. I got toughness 7 for a few minutes and so I decided to go back and look for my lip balm. Instead I ended up finding another box full of gems. People were not impressed (lol). I ended up handing the box in at the end of game and putting a tag request in for it which I don't think I ever got....

What did we fight? A lot of rats, snakes, spiders... maybe also frogs? There was one bear that we bet by spinning it a bunch and getting the entire town to grapple it. You may be asking yourself "Can't only two people grapple someone at once?" And you'd be right. Cast just took pity on us.
There was also that ghost that was Helene's npc who would entrance people and give them visions about falling of a cliff into the ocean. She ended up coming back in a later season.

Also nobody could remember anyone's names. "Horns" ended up sticking, but unfortunately the ever changing nicknames for Borin such as "Dwarfey McAxebeard" and "Beardy McBeardface" did not.

Yeah that's all I can remember from Sharon's house. I might post again with memories from Macshack.

[Lady Val]

I wasn’t there for a lot of the second season because I was off galavanting in the Scarred Lands with a well known Dwarf as Ira.

As Danica said a lot of the early games were in Sharon and Rob’s backyard while they were still living on Polina road. It used to take 5 of us to take down a single spider and bears were terrifying. Timmean also died because we couldn’t count but that was at MacShack during the 2014/2015 season and not at Polina.

As Danica said of the Nicknames Torvallis! gave us only Horns’ stuck and yes Hilary once played a human! Shocking I know. It’s ok though, Confusia only lasted one game (and existed because I missed every single prep event so I had no clue what the lore was or how characters worked or anything). She got mulliganed into the flighty happy go luck Elf Ira is today.

Politically there was nothing. Wil was made Sheriff by Phineas and people just kind of went with that. It was lawless. Really until Ryerson came along and proposed a council most of game revolves around just surviving in the wilderness. Although Phineas was an authority figure giving advice and quests, other than Volk there was no governing body and laws were made up on the spot. This was also back when Volk actually took on assassination jobs as well so it was basically utter chaos until Val and the Knights showed up and people decided to put a council together.

I remember when we transitioned to MacShack it was a big change. I was just about to leave for the UK and all of us were still adjusting to the amount of space. We were used to foraging in a small copse behind Sharon’s old house so MacShack was actually intimidating. In fact, the first event we had I want home to sleep because we didn’t have any light and I was afraid of being in a strange place in the dark.

This is also when our town first earned the name Holdfast. Before this we had no name for the small settlement around the Watering Hole inn.

In game the transition was accomplished using mass dream state and amnesia affects caused by dream sheep and dream dragons. There were small sheep that Billy the Faun used to care for and they could cause sleep effects. As a result the entire time spent in Sharon’s back yard was explained away as being “all part of a dream” and Holdfast was actually where we were the whole time (the dragons were just hallucinations that held the clues to our escape from the dream world). It was during this season that Torvallis! drank an entire goblet of fire and Volk first procured cake. Indeed the Fire Feast held in Nov. 2014 was our first out of season event followed by the first potato day in December of 2014. It was then that Lady Val and her servant Faye first appeared due to the massive amount of Goblin shenanigans going on. Faye ended up leaving but Val stayed and unintentionally may have almost led to the inn burning down after helping Torvallis! burn a plot of land for Timmean. Ira helped Timmean put out the fire but she failed to put it out completely and was very unhappy when more of the forest burnt down then expected.

I rejoined you folks as Val and Ira in September 2015 just in time for the necrodancer fight. Val was super surprised things had gotten so out of control while she was travelling across Annwm and Ira was just happy to be back from the Scarred Lands (that place was scary!).

[Torvallis!]

The first Fire Feast was at my place, and was originally intended to be more of a thank you to cast, but ended up moreorless just being a barbeque in character at my place because I'm a depressive fuck with no control over my life. (I didn't arrange things in time, in fact, I almost arranged nothing at all. I'm was even more of a depressive mess back then, if you can believe it).

I led people through chants, a ritual burning away of sins, and also got Timmean to prove that earth magic isn't real by cutting him open and getting him to rub dirt in his wounds!

((It was a long convo, but it basically used a tortured chain of logic to get him to say that earth mana is in all earth, therefore, he should use ordinary mud to plug up his wounds to prove that earth can heal))

We had alchemical brews, (cans of soda), letters from home for some characters, Volk brought cake, (for the 2nd time? Or was that the first?), and everything was a sandwich.

[Timmean]

A lot of the stuff from the early games has been covered. Before the first actual game, we had two sessions of prep: the first was for making boffers (I couldn't attend that one due to prior commitments), and the second was for costume-making; that was my first Epoch event, and I knew absolutely nobody That was when we built Timmean's original costume, and I got a bunch of questions for character-building ideas. I was living back in Musgravetown at the time, and used the entire 2.5hr drive home to come up with Timmean's back-story. We also had events every 2 weeks, since they were short and literally in the middle of St. John's.

The first actual game has been described quite well by Torvallis; from Timmean's perspective, he washed ashore on a beach, and ran into a bunch of people a few hours later. I think we started by gathering herbs for Phineas, but I'm not certain, there might've been a monster attack. I do remember things were kind of crazy; more than once, an exasperated Timmean muttered "Where the hell did I wash up?"

At one point I remember Sharon coming out as a barbarian and taking most people down with some big attacks. I had been hit with some kind of alchemical effect (madness I think, possibly from either a frog or the early version of egg mods), and I was likewise taken out. Someone revived me after the alchemy had worn off, and when I walked out of the woods, the barbarian extended a hand in greeting. I remember using the OOG-hand to ask "I don't remember anything from when I was inflicted with madness, do I?" I got the expected answer of "Nope," so I reached to shake the barbarian's hand... and was promptly knocked out, again, but another axe hit. I don't know how we managed to defeat her, but eventually we did. We stabilized her and tied her up, and then... I think Sharon went to play some other character, and we forgot the barbarian existed

At one point Phineas told us a merchant friend of his named Chloe would be visiting. I think we were waiting for her for a while, and later in the day she ran into town yelling that she had been robbed. We all teamed up to take down the bandit (some effort probably went into keeping Timmean from going stupid from his intolerance), who Chloe had frozen. We all circled around the bandit, Chloe dropped the spell, and we just attacked him until he died. Chloe got her magic bracers back (those were probably the first magic item we encountered), and gave everyone some minor reward as payment. I think that's when Timmean learned the Untaint spell.

It's hard to remember what happened in each game; since the early games were short, and we took no record of events, they mostly blend together for me. I remember we did have giant spiders, and the giant spider webs were a thing back in those days. Later on in 2014 was when we moved to MackShack for 2 events. I can detail those games a little more if you like Timmean was the first PC to die, because I found an egg mod in the woods and was attacked by a spider while the others I was with had run on ahead of me. Then people mis-counted the number of people in the field (we had 8 players that game!), and wouldn't approach Timmean's body because there was a spider nearby, and they couldn't see me behind a log.

The early MackShack games only ran on Saturdays; we would start in the afternoon and play until sometime after dark. After game was called, we'd clean up a little and then most of us would hang around the inn and just chat about stuff. We'd sleep for the night, then finish cleaning up in the morning.

After the first season was officially finished is when we created this forum, based on the layout of the Epoch Toronto forum at the time. There are memories of the Fire Feast and Potato Day on here, and during the off season, we cleared a section of forest behind the inn which became Timmean's farm (and yes, we accidentally burned down a lot more than we intended). Timmean got his first letter from Lynn at the Fire Feast, and started learning psychic so he could properly read it. Actually, that's why we first made the farm: it was Timmean's way of paying back Phineas and the town for his magic and psychic training.

That should be a good amount of info If you have any specific questions, or if you'd like to hear more about the first two MackShack games, just ask. Also feel free to ask if there's anything in the Potato Day or Fire Feast memories threads that you'd like more info on We also haven't talked much about season 2, if that's relevant to you.

[Torvallis!]

Also, it was Torvallis! who found Chloe's missing bag in the woods, minus the bracer which had already been taken, and Torvallis! who stole most of the contents of it.

[Kuromori, Taka]

At one point I remember Sharon coming out as a barbarian and taking most people down with some big attacks. 

Is that the one who was wailing on unconscious bodies with an axe without actually calling damage and then doing victory poses with her foot on their chests?

[Torvallis!]

I do believe that's the one!

[Sylvie]

Next question; when were the elemental circles set up and why?

Gimme as much detail as possible :3

[Lady Val]

I believe they were set up in 2014/2015 season and were formed because the area had very interesting particular magical energies.

Sophie was the one to help form them, and the Lords Chose the Champions.

[Torvallis!]

In a meta-game sense, it's because Torvallis! chose 'making the fire circle' as one of their story goals :p

So in-game, Sophie came and said, well, there's some severe imbalances here, magic circles would help protect your town, there's none out this far away, you would have the backing of the lords, it'll seal away some of the evil shit that's going on, etc.

So we chose different circles, and for one summer, we raised a different circle every event, meeting a lord each time. At the end, the lords came down and made us champions. Volk, Torvallis!, Timmean, and . . . Jennifer's character. I forget her characters name now.

Torvallis! probably would have kept it forever if I didn't go away for a whole summer, the others were all more shaky :p

[Lady Val]

Well Volk is still around, mostly, when he's not fighting off sirens for the gay pirates. Opal left because she either went home or got married to the Selkie Prince and Timmean got Elf-ed.

[Torvallis!]

Opal didn't want to be champion, Timmean always intended to go home at some point, and Volk isn't very trustworthy :p

I'm so surprised he's still the champion, tbh, I legit thought he had been replaced.

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