Dark Light

The biggest LARP that I attend is Profound Decisions‘ Empire campaign.

Backstage at Empire. Game Operations being set up on the Thursday before we start

Empire is a massive system, not only in terms of the size of the events – well over a thousand people – but also in that the background literature for the game is an effort of worldbuilding that you’d expect for something like the world of A Song of Ice and Fire (or Game of Thrones), Dragon Age’s Thedas, or Tolkien’s Middle Earth. The wiki’s wordcount exceeded the full set of Harry Potter novels when the game launched, and has only been added to since then.

Yr Hmbl Crspdt as Imperial Auditor L. Nileus of the Imperial Civil Service
Reichard Callan Remidos von Holmauer, photo by Beth Dooner

I’m a member of PD’s crew (I currently administer the wikis, help with the setup of networking on the game field and generally provide IT support; but previously was part of the NPC Civil Service and briefly helped run Game Operations and wrote some plot) but right now I play the game as Reichard Callan Remidos von Holmauer, part of The Seven Mirrors, a political salon and publishing house, which is in The League, an Imperial nation inspired by history such as the Republic of Venice, the Hanseatic League and Prague. The Prince of our guild is also currently the Empress, after a long and complicated campaign, and the image above is her being crowned last summer.

A map of the Empire in cloth, with figures representing armies. Photo by Tom Garnett
Drin, waving a flag of Dawn, framed by the gateway through which imperial strike teams go on battle. Photo by Tom Garnett

One of the things I love about Empire is the things created by the players that enhance the game world. From Steph Morris‘ banners of the nations that hang in the Imperial Senate, though to Daisy Abbott‘s glorious map of the Empire, and the photos around this article of other things. Roz & Simon, who head up and organise our Guild both in and out of character, do some fantastic work on the publishing house side of the guild too, creating mastercrafts of pamphlets and booklets. A lot are information that can be found on the wiki online, but brought into character in a pretty way, and the latest and best of these is the brand new Book of the Empire, a professionally printed, gold-leaf titled, 766 page hard-back book of beautifully designed and typeset (THE FONTS! THE TYPOGRAPHY! THE WOODCUTS!) sections of the ruleset about things like the houses of government, the Imperial religion, the history of the empire and its rulers, all the nations and how their magic works, how their senators are elected, what they’re like.

The Book of the Empire, opened. No, I haven’t gotten around to taking off my character’s nail varnish

 

The Book of the Empire, Closed

I’m consistently amazed at the time and effort people go to for this game. I’m not sure what’s next to top this, but I’m excited to find out…

(Header image is The crowning of the Empress of Flowers, photo by Tom Garnett)

4 comments
  1. Holy crap… That is absolutely stunning!
    Did they have just the one copy printed? And do they have plans for a second one if that’s Volume 1? 😀

    1. I think they printed about 50 or so, short run print went at ~£50 each with inkylittlefingers.co.uk. Vol 2 is likely to be a shorter thing with more changeable data, a gazetteer of the territories and things.

  2. Do you know if they plan a second printing of Volume 1 and if there is a reserve list?

    1. There was one, not sure if they’re planning another. I’ll add you to the fb group about it

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Related Posts

Sleep

Ah, the first daily update fail. I went to a LARP event. I meant to queue some posts…