ICC 2003, St. Louis, Mo.

This entry is going to be as if I’m writing about my long weekend at ICC to my mom. I wanted to tell her by phone but she herself had a long weekend and was napping so I told her I would just email her.

Imagine over 900+ people from around the world coming together in St. Louis, Mo, to play Live Action Role Playing. I know I’ve never fully explained to you the game other than most of our actions are decided by playing Rock Paper Scissors. So Im going to explain to you so you might better understand my favorite activity. I know I’ve told you that there is a publishing company that makes these dice and paper role playing games, (Dungeons and dragons is dice and paper) based on a fictional World of Darkness. The primary game is based on vampires. In the Vampire game (we call each different game a venue) there are two different games. The first that was played this weekend is Sabbat. (Sa – bot) not like the catholic pronunciation. This group of vampires are basically a cult. They believe in Caine (WoD first ever vampire) is the true father of vampirism. They worship him as catholics worship, with a touch more fanaticism. They believe Caine wanted them to embrace being vampires, embrace and control the beast inside them. The Sabbat also believe in the antiduluvians (the 3rd generation of vamires) are using other vampires (Camarilla vampires) as pawns in the jyhad (Kinda like the Great Game in Wheel of Time mom, but for vampires). The Sabbat rebel against their elder vampires, in a way that is more than a rebelious teenager. This vampire is the icky, monster vampire world that revels in blood feasts, games of instict, creating new vampires for war etc. This was the first game of ICC, it happened Thursday night, and my character Maribelle Lombroso achieved her primary goal for Palla Grande. Palla Grande is the Sabbat’s yearly festival in Mexico City (THE main holding place and holy place of the Sabbat). Maribelle also learned a lot in regards to her own clan the Lasombra (clan is a type of vampire, deteremined by who created (sired) you as a vampire. Clan comes down from the antiduluvian, and is what determines what powers you will have as a vampire that you wont need a teacher for), she learned a bit more about secrecy and me Jenn as a player learned how to play one better. Over all the Sabbat venue at ICC was slightly disappointing, mostly because there was nothing major happening in the way of plotlines that could involve the entire game.

Friday:

The next game of ICC that I got to play was Mage. Mage is along the lines of Matrix, we are different from D&D mage’s in that magic is way different. Mage use Magic yes, but its along the lines of Matrix and the control of reality. I just started playing Mage and I found the game at ICC a great game. Plotlines involved all who played and in the end the Council of Nine was reformed as was prophesied. Council of Nine was destroyed (many years ago but I cant say in our chronicle how long because I only just started playing mage) a long time ago when the Avatar Storms swept through. I think it had to do with the War of Ascention. (Ascending is what the game Mage has as a goal.) The plotline allowed members of specific types of mages to get together meet each other, and interact while at the same time working on a common goal.

The other game played at the same time as Mage was Garou, Garou is our wherewolf game, and unfortunately I only have heard, IT WAS AWESOME… I chose to play Mage instead. I can give you a bit of background on Garou though. Garou is more than the typical werewolves you’ve seen in movies before. They have 5 different forms, one human, one wolf, one right smack in the middle called Chrinos which is their war form, one slightly off from chrinos towards human called Glabro, and the other slightly off from chrinos towards wolf called Hispo. The basic idea of garou is that they are warriors for Gaia, mother earth/nature. They are fighting a losing battle against the Wyrm (i’d tell you more but I just dont know it). They deal a lot with Spirits, think along the lines of Native american beliefs of spirits that live in everything. For the most part this is all I know of them, but on Saturday this week I begin playing Garou.

Friday night:

Began all the specified events of the Camarilla vampire venue. Clan meetings, Prince’s meeting, Harpy’s Tea, etc. Since my Camarilla character was killed at my last home game before ICC I did not get to participate in this. I did go around and take pictures so I did get to see some of the awesomeness that the Camarilla venue truely is.

At midnight I played Wraith. I’d like to say that this is my favorite venue. There is more role playing than playing RPS (rock paper scissors) in this venue. The ICC storytelling staff did an awesome job. Let me give you some background on Wraith. You died, but did not move on. There are things (fetters) that tie you to this world. You exsist in the Shadowlands, which actually overlaps with the real world called the skinlands. The goal of Wraith, depending on your ‘faction’ is to either avoid going to obivion (which is actually a goal for all wraiths) or to transend to “heaven” or where ever you are supposed to go. Heirchy is a faction that believes in strict rules and this is it, until oblivion. Heretics are those who believe in something more… the religious who believe this is not the end until oblivion that there is more. My character is a catholic child about 8 years old in appearance but has been dead 2 years. She was killed as her family was returning from midnight mass and walked in on her house being robbed. She is part of the Heretic group and truely believes if she repents of her sins enough she will transend into heaven. There are bad things that happen called Malestorms, these things basically are your worste hurricanes ever. They are chaos that rip wraiths and things made from wraiths in the shadowlands appart. At ICC we “started” the 6th Malestorm. In White Wolfs World of Darkness (WoD) this is prophesied to be a starter of the end of the world. There was tons of good RP based on Wraiths and their shadows (shadows are the dark sides of wraiths who constantly try and fight with the other trying to over take the “good” side.) It was an excellent game and my favorite at ICC. This game was slotted to only be 2 hours but instead ran 5.

continued in next entry.