12 Nights in the Garden

This Game Is No Longer Running

The fairies break their dances
And leave the printed lawn,
And up from India glances
The silver sail of dawn.

The candles burn their sockets,
The blinds let through the day,
The young man feels his pockets
And wonders what's to pay.

- A. E. Housman, Last Poems, stanza XXI

There, and back again, we say, as we huddle in our hidden places, our courts and freeholds sandwiched into the spaces between. Claiming freedom, as if having been taken there we ever completely return to here. It’s not that simple, and I know it. I suppose we all do, deep down. But how many of my friends hear her voice upon the air, calling them back into the darkness?

I will go to her, to walk the moonlit paths of her garden. Not tonight, but perhaps tomorrow, or the next night. Because I cannot help myself, and even as I hate myself for going I will love the smell of the flowers and the beauty she will present to my eyes. And perhaps I will return to this place, once my home, again, leaving only a little more behind.

See, I know what it means when the price of freedom is never fully paid. But I’ll pay, and love her for it each and every time.

The Game

All pages related to this game

12 Nights in the Garden is a LARP chronicle, running monthly for twelve sessions, based on Changeling: the Lost 2nd Edition from Onyx Path Publishing. Game sessions will occur in a place called The Garden, somewhere deep within the Hedge, where these changelings gather for one night each month.

But these changelings do not gather in the Garden of their own free will. The Garden is the desmesne of the Queen of Air and Darkness, a Faerie Queen who calls each of the changelings there on the nights that she chooses.

The game is intended to combine external (player-vs-environment) threats with player-vs-player rivalries. Player-character changelings will be encouraged (and assisted) to have motivations and backstories that will lead them to be at cross-purposes; it may be impossible for all players present at a session to achieve their immediate objectives.

However, the game is also intended to have a relatively low level of lethality. Players will be encouraged to gazump rivals, not murder them, and players whose characters engage in murder should expect consequences to be encountered.

Storytellers

The game will be run by Travis Hall, Nardia Kelly, Adrian Overbury, and Dylan Marshall.

System and Setting

The system will be a modified version of Changeling: the Lost 2nd Edition. System changes will be made for compatibility with LARP play and the needs of play in the Garden. Players will be encouraged to resolve outcomes using negotiation and agreement (between players - often not between characters!), with (virtual) dice only used when the participants all prefer to use them. For more details, and guidelines on how to help reach mutual agreement, see Play.

Characters

Players may create changeling characters from anywhere in the world, subject to certain restrictions.

The Queen of Air and Darkness: All characters must have some connection to the Faerie Queen who summons them to the Garden. That connection permits her to require their presence in the Garden when she wishes, on at least one night each month, even when they might rather be elsewhere.
Courts: The only Courts that will be permitted are the four Seasonal Courts, in their common form. (That is, even the Seasonal Lög of Iceland will not be used in this game.) Players are encouraged to create characters belonging to a seasonal court in their home freeholds, or a courtless character. If court allegiances become too unbalanced, the STs may require new characters to be from certain courts.
Experience: The changelings of this chronicle are generally neither recently-escaped from their durance, nor adolescent victims. As such, they will start play with a pool of 25 Experiences, which may (and usually should) be spent before the first session.
Touchstones and Aspirations: Players familiar with 1st Edition Chronicles of Darkness games should pay extra attention to these aspects of changeling characters. The STs intend to use your chosen touchstones and aspirations to connect your characters to broader plots.

For more detail, see Character Creation.