March 2023 The Wilted Flower

[Z]

Post your memories! Thanks for everyone's patience in this different, and rather snowy event! Hope everyone enjoyed!

[Pavel Vesely]

Spying on the entire ordeal outside the abandoned inn while trying not to get spotted on the treeline behind and in what became the medic station, and eventually sneaking a few weapons in — at least one at request — just in case was pretty tense. Makes me wanna do more Metal Gear Luis.

[Z]

Friday
- Ahh our first inn, Freemans Inn, in Freemans Post!
- Teff and Bernard were nice, and wow you guys brought all of your money, I guess no one wants spiders, so that's pretty fair honestly
- Once we were done our currency exchange we enjoyed the chili, and got to chit chat and enjoy the "open mike night"
- Friday night was the calm before the storm I like to think

Saturday
- Get up early, get some breakfast, bundle up and go to set up the silk road
- The snow isn't super deep, but it is deep enough that it's mildly uncomfortable
- Once everything is ready, the players depart for The Mire!
- Vines and Flowers and Ice and Nuts and Logs oh my!
- THE B O G M A N (Thedward my love)
- Oh and the worms, loved the worms, get rice'd idiots
- I stayed relatively warm for The Mire, however after about 2.5-3 hours I got pretty soaked, it also turned more to rain than snow which was rather unfortunate
- Overall The Mire was rough, took somewhere between 3.5-4.5 hours I think? I didn't keep track
- Misery's Compromise is our next inn, run by none other than Vadim! So that's where he went
- Chaotic Subway was fun, I got to play Jéan who was a bit of fun! A different fellow I came up with in about 10 minutes lol
- Everyone gets de-wormed and warmed up as well, armour is repaired, wounds are mended, everyone gets to recuperate
- They head out once more with Billy, the Boat Boy
- After another quick inn rearrange they arrive at Rosemary's Reprieve
- Peter! Long time platonic partner of Francis and old friend of [REDACTED] who now goes as Gull
- Don't think I quite got him perfect, but still got most of what makes him him out there and really enjoyed playing him
- Athena, Eugene, Martha, Dede, Iris, this inn was loaded and rather interested
- PleasedontgotothecavesPleasedontgotothecavesPleasedontgotothecavesPleasedontgotothecavesPleasedontgotothecaves
- Off to Poor Harvest!

- THE TALON
- Standing guard... waiting in the cold...
- Of course Templar Knight! Anything you say Templar Knight!
- Intruders! Protect the Arch-Prime!
- They've taken the Arch-Prime! That one is slow! Grab him!
- Negotiations begin and are ongoing
- "Kill the prisoner" Yes Templar Knight, Killing Blow 1, 2, 3, 4-
- "With Water I Freeze You 40 Minutes"
- Traitor! Knock her out and take her inside, it seems Ayla has acquired some poor ambitions
- Negotiations continue to be tense and take quite a while
- Dominicus and Degren come to an honourable agreement, we shall face each others forces in combat
- We get overrun before not too long, and they then realize we really aren't that old, hell we aren't even Talon proper, we're just trainees, little more than kids
- They at least tend our wounds a little, a few of us escape into the night with some valuable documents, talks are tense and I become the defacto 2ic
- Harsh words are exchanged, Ayla leaves with them as they depart into the night with the Arch-Prime
- We depart for our boat a little later back to the Empire

- Returning to Rosemary's Reprieve they are greeted by Peter and Athena, and celebrations are had at Francis' safe return
- Dinner is served, songs are sung, drinks are had, it's a lovely rest of the evening
- I am tired, and head to bed a little early, it's been a long day

Sunday
- I sleep in until 11, oof I ache
- Time for Z! Haven't done that in a while and it's nice once I get going
- Sorta help with the tournament, still have a good time, get to thwack Franklin a couple times lol
- Get some Imperial Coin, I don't want spiders either
- End of game Melee! Can't beat it lol
- Had to leave early, but was still a great game

[Drixar]

First one i can post in on!! lets see lets see

Friday
- Freedman's inn! excitement is building as i interact with people
- Met another faun!! very fun, 11/10 handshakes would shake hands again
- Got asked if i was the animal of the circus by the gambler, the racism rumour spread from there
- got given a silver!!! very very shiny protected it with my life
- yeah so an octopus is an ocean spider, also they got beaks and 3 hearts, enjoy that fun fact!
- The empire? whats that? ... oh, oh no now fear
- sleep time, got a big day ahead

Saturday
- morning b o g time
- very cold but otherwise manageable... until my boot broke
- very pretty flowers, very very pretty.. lemme just go to- oh nevermind time to keep moving
- memory loss time come with me, ur my friend were having soft tacos later
- wait who am i, where am i, who are you?
- hi vines dont break my legs again plz
- thank god people got earth mana broken leg ouchie
- leg got broken AGAIN, OW
- Yanna for the win, carried drix and corin a decent chunk across the mire with a broken leg each
- ignore broken leggie with snacks (thanks for the snacks yanna)
- bog man bog man BOG MAN BOG MAN
- maggots, ick ick ick
- why does theo now talk to the bog
- we gotta run okay nyoom

- Inn number 2 time, remove the maggots plz they are not friend shaped when theyre in my arms
- talked with lexicus about faery!! plans to go to say hi in the works
- Wait what do you mean we are in the wrong place
- Oh we heard from francis? well cmon lets go!
- ay billy what up take us to the right place plz
- gull is not enjoying this boat ride
- one more inn!! Rosemary reprieve time
- oo oo i know these symbols theyre alchemy symbols!! (they in fact, were not alchemy symbols)
- we just missed francis? shittttt
- 2 days in the forest or 2 weeks in the caves... sorry eugene we are on a time crunch
- we taking off tonight gang? we are running out of time ahaha panic
- VERY close to the empire, drix panic.exe activated
- time to go, lets hope we get to francis

- sneaky through the woods time
- aha not sneaky enough hi guys hows it going dont kill us
- run?? do i run? im running
- what do you mean they got gull???
- hi francis nice to meet you uhhhhh any ideas
- gentelman's fight, RAAAHHHH
- we got gull back!! we are now a band of 18
- finally going inside, people taking talon weapons and screaming ensuing
- what do you mean theyre just kids???? what????
- "why am i taking advice from a faun just go away" Understandable have a nice day imma go over here
- Wait why are we taking that one? oh friend? okay 19 now!
- We survived!! no one died!! night of celebration begins
- stayed up far too late, its fineeee sleep time

Sunday
- Mornin legs sore, whens the tournament
- fuck it ill join in
- brackets made, who's my opponent?.. Corin?... aha fuck
- brief outside panic time, oh hi Z hows it going!
- tournament begins, surprisingly holding my own pretty well
- still lost, but a victory in my heart for not falling after 2 seconds
- end of game melee, absolute fucking chaos
- amazing fucking game, widget tracker already set up for the next one <3

[Rudi]

Friday
- MERRIL!! MERRILL!!!!!!!!!!!!! MERRILL <3 <3 <3 <3 <3. Merril, my beloved.
- Talks with Lexicus where Rudi accidentally calls him unattractive. Whoops. She’s just awkward, I swear.

Saturday
- Never again. Never again.
- Shout out to Lexicus for carrying Rudi up the more when she had a broken leg. Lexicus bog MVP.
- Dmitri’s player got my vote for getting everyone to take a break. I would have tapped out if we had to keep going.
- Deworming at the inn, then Jesse takes a very well needed nap and gets a even more needed cuddle. It was Really Good to talk to another medic 5 NPC. I love talking to surgeons IG. Having a naturopath was cool too, even if we didn’t interact much.
- Sandvich
- Boat time!! Billy the boat man. We reach inn #3.
- We meet Peter, we get exposition. People are talking far too long to make choices so Rudi goes out to the deck until decisions are made and has a nice little RP with Corin.
- Corin nudges me at the mention of an Ayla, because they know what my favorite book series is now. (If this is a clan of the cave bear reference. I see u. I appreciate u. thank u)
- We get Francis! Then lose Gull. Is Zero dead? No one knows (she’s not, she’s right here).
- We manage to strike a honorable combat though, so that was nice. Medics were completely safe.
- We celebrate back at Rosemary's Reprieve! I wish I had stayed up later to hang out with Francis, but there's always next time.

Sunday
- Tournament!!!
- The medic corner was horny the whole time. Thank you Finn for helping to contribute that energy (Rudi just needs One Reason to be a horndog and Finn already being one was enough of a reason.)

[Malva]

I've had this note on my phone since March 20th:

Freedman's Inn:
-Spending the whole night making fun of Dimitri for saying "we're pretty tough to kill" when warned about the white death.
-Also just gossiping with Allan & Amanda's NPCs
-Oh no oh no. They’re supposed to be gathering clues about the mire but I just told them void squirrels exist.
-Managed to get my clue out that Earth Mends was a best-seller and was well-understood by Degren. Unfortunately didn't get anyone to buy any about it though, that might have helped y'all.

The Mire:
-I don't know how so many of you other vines broke so many legs. Players either played perfectly or killed me instantly lol.

Misery's Compromise:
-Sleepy lunch-eating inn-goer is only acknowledged by Marr.

Rosemary's Reprieve:
-Suspiciously expensive snail shell.
-Selling a magic ring that lets you touch cast 3 spells for 4 gold. Roland is my second visitor and offers me 3 gold. I tell him I'll wait and see if anyone buys it for full price and if not I'll take that deal. He ended up getting it!

Poor Harvest:
-"Ha! We're not buying that bait!" *Opens door for Lex & Roland*
-"Ayla! Activate your ability!" (Ayla did not, in fact, activate her ability)
-"Are you going to tell them that I'm a traitor?" "That you what?"

Rosemary's Reprieve (again):
-It was really nice running into Roland again after the ring saved his life!

Holdfast (The Tournament!):
-Globetrot poor child I'm so sorry
-At least we figured out a way to get him over my toughness threshold
-Ivy I'm marginally less sorry but that was admittedly still kind of mean. Was sick as hell though.
-Even though I lost to Auron, it was still pretty cool to workshop strategies about it. Figured out a couple cool tricks I could have done afterwards.

[Sage (Cast)]

So I’ve put off posting my memories for this event because… hoo boy I have a lot to say, so it was hard to pare it down to a reasonable length.
Which is why I didn’t! Pare it down, that is. I didn’t even cut the part where I just listed off the bad guys’ names. I mean, what is this, a letter from Francis??


I arrived full of nerves Friday afternoon, with my banjo and green tunic in my trunk for the first time since 2019. First thing to do is to scout the silk road to see if it's hikable. We walk up and down a few times to preemptively pack the snow down, though we’d have to do it again in the morning.

Friday night begins with our first set change. After safety speech, the players are taken outside, and while we’re alone, the cast team starts redecorating the inn. Watching 10+ people push tables and place decorations at light speed takes me back to my days in theatre <3 It's a little hypnotic to watch, and it’s extremely satisfying when the players walk in and explore this “new” locale! Which in this case was a tiny inn in Freedman’s Post called Freedman’s Inn. We filled it with a few friendly faces and chatted to the players about their circus, which, for some reason, had more security than performers. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The usual inn musician, Mike, couldn’t make it so there was an “open Mike night” in Freedman’s Inn that night. A few players took the bait and played some songs, but what I wasn’t expecting was for Haji to do some sweet backflips?? Pretty sick 🛹
The players’ first real test of the weekend was intel gathering. We warned them that both paths ahead were dangerous, and luckily they got the hint that one of them was less dangerous than the other. The next morning, they were off on the correct path.

The Mire was definitely the biggest challenge of the weekend, and we knew that going in. It was soggy and exhausting but I’m proud of us all for pulling through! One of the props we made for the event was the logs which I made by rolling some puzzle piece foam mats into a tube, with some of the connectors exposed at one end so they could be linked together. It was really exciting to throw them at players and have them break dramatically on their shields! At one point Lexicus chopped one in half in midair with his staff, like he was a goddamn samurai God that was cool
Also Thedward! I had no idea what Thedward was going to be like, but he sure was something!

I wasn’t around much for Misery’s Compromise in Port Brown, but that's when we got to meet Vadim! Our first cameo of the event! Woah!

From there the players sailed off to Depson’s pass, where they found Rosemary’s Reprieve. We had several NPCs of note there including Hugo and Peter, our second and third cameo characters (though I don’t know if you can call Peter a cameo, as this was his first time played in person ) as well as Didi and Arch-Prime Athena, 2 newly introduced friends of Francis. There was also fan-favourites Rincewind: Very Normal Wizard, and Eugene: Guy Who Really Likes Rocks. I spent most of this time oog whispering into cast’s ears to make sure they delivered all the right hints so that we could move on to the next chapter


Speaking of, the final chapter starts and funny enough, this is actually the portion I remember the least I put on my Francis kit, and what do you know, it still fits! The players arrive at some abandoned shack in Poor Harvest and… long story short I got counter-kidnaped. Huzzah! Although I don’t remember the events very clearly, what I do remember is all the villain’s names. Let's see if I can get them all…
Octavia, Romulus, Noire, Serena, Aversa, Alexander, Vel, Tacita, Dominicus Gaius, Marcus Marcus Decimus Third of his Name, & Aella. Admittedly I had to check my notes for 2 of those, but 9 out of 11 is pretty impressive for me considering it was like 10 months ago! At one point we had talked about naming all those characters after Fire Emblem 13 characters, but we scrapped that idea so we only half committed
Planning for this part was stressful, because there was a non-zero chance it could’ve ended in a pretty rough tpk. So we had backup plans, and backup plans for the backup plans. Glad we didn’t have to rely on those!
Afterwards we head back to the Reprieve to vibe out for the rest of the night and hang out with some NPCs. Had a lot of fun playing Francis for the first time in earnest and leading some people in song with the banjo It felt like the pay off for all the hard work of putting this event together 🪕

Sunday back in Holdfast I pop in as Reginald to watch the tournament. Reginald is kind of a dick about it, but. You know. It's Reginald. We also debuted a new nameless Marwel minion, and let players give suggestions for what her name would be. We ended up going with Ember!


The name of the event was derived from a Simon & Garfunkel song, and the names of the inns and (most) towns were direct references to the abolition of slavery.
-“Freedman” is a term that refers to someone who used to be a slave, as opposed to “freeman,” which is someone who’s never been a slave.
-Port Brown was named for John Brown, one of the most famous abolitionists in history
-Misery’s Compromise is a corruption of the Missouri compromise, which was an american law passed that made it so that if an anti slavery state joined the union, a pro slavery state would have to join at the same time to keep things “balanced.” It's one of the reasons why slavery was legal for so long in America even after so many other countries outlawed it.
-And for one to be reprieved of something is to have one's debts/responsibilities removed. In the context of emancipation, to be reprieved is to achieve manumission
-Barren Hope, Depson’s Pass, and Poor Harvest are not references, they were pre-existing canonical places in the frontier. You can find them on the map on page 2 of the rulebook!

—------

Well this event was really a long time coming. I retired Fr. Francis in 2019 to start casting full-time, and ever since I had always thought it’d be fun to make him the damsel character in some kind of rescue mission. Then around 2021 I started brainstorming some of the broad strokes of this story, and began to foreshadow it in my letters to the town. Finally, across 2022 and ‘23 is when the story really started to take shape, but it couldn't have been done without the huge amount of help from my cast team. Sharon and I spent hours and hours planning not just the story, but the settings and the format of the game itself. This was the first time an Epoch event has been in the “adventure” format, and seriously, let's not overlook the accomplishment there. Sharon and myself (but like 90% Sharon lmao) rebuilt the game format from the bottom up to accommodate this story and that's pretty incredible.I estimate the planning and meetings for this event was roughly 300 man hours, with about 200 of that between me and Sharon in several meetings over a period of several months. When I say we couldn’t have done this without Sharon, I mean that we couldn’t have done ANY of it without her. I don't want to understate how much work she did for this event

During the many months of planning, I started to realize how important the character of Francis is to me. I’ve played a lot of characters over the years between table top games, stage acting, and casting for Epoch, but no other character brings to my life what this silly little priest does. At the starting stages I wasn’t planning to bring Francis back into game long term, but pretty quickly I realized I had to, for my own sake. I spoke briefly at safety debrief of this event that a lot of my own father’s DNA is in Francis, some of which I had put there consciously, some unconsciously. My father was a scholar, a musician, a philosopher, a priest, and of course much like Francis, deeply opinionated. He died in June 2021, and it feels very appropriate that Francis’ first appearance since that was a story in which I had to rely on my friends to take care of me in a dark hour. Thanks, everyone, for this. Players, cast, everyone.



So I’ll continue to continue to pretend
My life will never end
And flowers never bend with the rainfall

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