What I Did On My Holidays Part Two: Locko

The day after getting back from Ireland, we paid a quick visit to our pet degus who were holidaying at friends' house, repacked, and headed Derby-wards. Specifically, we went to Locko Park.

The Spring Moot is the smallest of the four main Lorien Trust events, so despite going on the Thursday, we were still only away for four days. The benefit of going early though is getting to put tent up at leisure and getting to spend time drinking with friends and chatting instead of running around scared trying not to get hit. Or whatever it is the rest of them do while I'm going that.

After a night of Apple Sourz and throwing ice cubes at people, we actually went to bed fairly early and got a decent night's sleep. I was awake the next morning, only some hours after the boy got up, and we went to get breakfast at "the marketplace". There was a coffee van, so that was me sorted, especially when we discovered he sold cakes too.

At some point that morning I hit a slump, probably when more people were arriving and putting up tents and I was failing to help. I never really recovered from this, although the oppressive heat didn't help too much either. I'll try and remember what happened though, apologies if I got it all hideously wrong.

Shortly after time in we had word that the annoying illusion demon lord that had been repeatedly attacking our lands had taken one of our islands. This made us realise that we hadn't seen any of the scouts that had been sent to look into the situation on that island. This was especially troubling for my character (Rhiann) as amongst those that had gone were several friends, including the one cooking for us all weekend. A transport group did come back in, not looking happy, and with people missing. Was relieved to discover the member of my group (Order of Celestial) had been sent out earlier (out of character reason: the player arrived late), then felt very guilty as it turned out four characters had died. Everyone was a bit stunned by this, and it mostly wiped out my memory of the rest of the evening. Other than a void gate opening in a neighbouring faction camp and another character dying in the ensuing fight.

Saturday breakfast was enlivened by the young Ben Hunter, friend of Striker (my boy's character), turning on the High Scout and asking "Why did you leave my adoptive mother to die?" Arms folded, the lot. The lad is turning into a great little role-player. Later in the day everyone rushed to see the "big thing with wings" that had walked out of the ritual circle: turned out to be the Archon of Good who is now cured of being a Balrog and walked about a bit scaring the bejeebus out of the not-so-good characters on the field and putting a very big smile on the face of Seraphim: one of our faction who'd done a lot to help this come about. Things get fuzzy here. At some point some bad people turned up and had a heart-stopping moment when word got back to camp that apparently Seraphim had been "dismissed" (effectively insta-killed). I ran further than I've ran in a long time in an effort to catch up with Rhapsody (J's character) but it turned out to be a false alarm. I also discovered I'm hideously unfit, and really can't run very far, even if it's all downhill.

I then got embroiled in the ongoing battle for a bit, before managing to drag Rhapsody back up to camp so we could have dinner. We mostly then sat in a tent being out-of-character as at least two people had left in-character due to threat of dismissal and the rest of us were just knackered and hungry. This dragged on into night, J went to bed and others were considering it when the bells went off at the ritual circle (this is not a Good Thing generally). Some people raced down to be big shiny heroes, me and Ryn hung around at the camp gate before hesitantly deciding to try and see what was happening (it sounded like a big fight). Part way there we ran into someone else who was trying to get away from big fight who convinced us wading in would be foolish and we went back to camp. Eventually everyone else came back too and I went to bed.

Sunday I got up late (I think) and started packing early and then there was a bit fight. It was a bit vague, as final battles tend to be, but we were watching a ritual for the beginning of it which probably didn't help. I only fell over a few times (by being hit, not by just being clumsy) - once while trying to get to Rhapsody who was lying behind a couple of monsters, at least one of whom, unsurprisingly, noticed me run past them and whacked me on the back. Won't catch me doing that again in a hurry. Stupid me. We were all a bit spread out and there were worries that we might run out of healing power, but it turned out to be ok. I honestly can't remember what else might have happened.

After scorching hot weather all weekend, it naturally started raining just as everyone was trying to take down their tents. I mostly hid in ours and packed, J got soaked doing most of the loading into the car. The boy fell asleep listening to Muse while hiding in car from rain. I helped take down our tent once it had mostly stopped and then went and dozed in car too while J helped other people. We did our usual post-event meet-up at the nearby Toby Carvery - chatted with friends we didn't get to see much of at the event, and drank lots of lots of Pepsi Max. J drove us back home as the boy and I both fell asleep. She really is a star (but then it is her fault we go to these things in the first place).