Things There Have To Be Rules Against...

...include a laboratory that causes you to start back with some exclamation or other every time you walk in and get hit by a wall of heat coming the other way.

Right, this goes back as far as Moot Two, so to avoid complaints about crassly overlong posts, I'll split it up. Today's covers the moot only.

The Sunday saw me actually bringing out a PC and getting into character for the first time since the last day of the Heartlands. Total IC time: Approximately sixty minutes - I feel like someone important.

Good monster roles throughout the weekend:
Mindstalker came out to play, and this time, he brought some friends.

Rob's hunter (living up to the characters name) dupes 'Stalker into acting as decoy at the gate while he and his mate go over the wall, into the camp and steal Whitman. We then come back to tell his wife that Barriman wants to see her or we'll kill her husband, to be told that she's currently in labour.

Damn Shame^TM.

Back we go with L'Nexa to Barriman's lair, where the hunters have fun hitting each other with her silver sword before Barriman blows the fur off Whitman in front of his wife (to within an inch of his death). We then send the pair of them packing back to the circle with 'Stalker in tow, whereupon I lose Peter and get collared by a senior ref and sent back to the monster room for throwing off effects around the guilds un-reffed.

This puts me in precisely the required mood.

Back I go into the marketplace with Peter glued to me, having received an IC stoking from Barriman who could obviously see his prodigy was in the mood for some confrontation, walk straight through the Unicorn camp wall and up the faction tent, completely unnoticed. I then proceed to scream blue murder at the players (a couple of them almost jumped out of their skin) about how we'd just chiefed their field marshall and not even broken sweat, and get in the face of Duvall and tell him he looks like crap, before storming out of the camp again. I'm still not calmed down by now, so off I stalk to the guilds and raise hell at the mages while I have a shouting/terror tennis match with Mistress, ending up in our going nose to nose and her inviting me to come right on if I think I'm hard enough.

Thank you Vicky - 'Stalker needed someone to point himself at, and you just volunteered yourself. Playtime just finished.

Lorne's plot thickened considerably, as we put together a group to go and "discuss" his wife's release. In the end, we don't need to, as she shows up, in the middle of the guild tents, in broad daylight.

Surrounded by a forbidding and a couple of heavies, one of which has a knife to her throat.

Cue a very nasty few moments as Lorne dives headlong out of the Archers tent, collapses to the ground at the edge of the forbidding and tries to reassure Brianna, treat with her captor and stop everyone else from provoking him at the same time.

Some smart arse tries repelling him out of the forbidding. He takes her throat with him.

By the time Lorne gets there, she'd dead - and it's his fault. As far as he sees it, had he not been working on his Box research, she'd never had been stolen as a bargaining chip to gain his knowledge of it. Imagine for a moment that you're holding the person you love - they've just been killed in front of you, and you're certain it's your fault they're dead.

Now stop.

No, really, stop. Before you start crying as well.

I hope copper13 didn't mind, but it really wasn't her that I was seeing as I tried to make it look genuine. I made myself look at Emma in her place, and all the tears, screams and grief that followed came naturally. It's wonderful to do a scene like that, knowing full well that in real life the person you are insensible over is safe, well, and not in anything like the danger presented.
I tried to mimic a scene I had watched on TV once, where a single mother had just been told that her young son was dead. Over about forty-five seconds, she built up from a low moan to a scream that literally sounded like her soul was falling out. Not sure I pulled it off perfectly, but it qualified as the second screaming fit I'd had round the guilds in less than thirteen hours, so it was all good on at least one level. Once again, many thanks to dantarian and feliana for giving me the opportunity to play one of a group of characters that apparently had several people thinking we were PCs and had got the bad end of some other LT plot.

My New PC, Ylelorrinel, dropped in through the transport circle, white faced and wearing a huge, deeply hooded grey robe from Velvet Glove, and promptly got watched by refs assuming I was a necromancer. More than once I was IC prodded and asked for stats by people thinking I was a monster - I think I'll put my character card on full display in future.
When he wasn't getting watched OOC, he spent his time beginning slowly to turn the Temple of Shadows upside down, and getting people to call him Lorr in an attempt to avoid their mangling the pronunciation of his name (for those who are interested: Ylelorrinel - ee-lee-eh-LAW-in-el). Look for his raising more ToS hell in a gentle, reserved manner at the Gathering.

Oh yes, a Conclave assassin crew I was part of came within five seconds of offing Sister Bethanie. I can't see many groups getting much closer than that without actually succeeding.

To come in part two - Things to do in Llandudno when you're...there.