Hello everyone, Josée here.
I haven't been updating this blog recently as...to be honest...my gaming season has pretty much come to an end until April (when there will be lots of froth about one priestess' wedding!) so things have quietened down a lot. However...something has been eating at me for the past day or so, and I thought, "well, it's gaming related..." and so thought I would post it here.
If you have been particularly interested in this blog, then you might remember that very early on I posted a couple of pieces about a character called Emily. [Links to her background and two froth pieces are here :) ] To cut that down, for those who don't want to go reading through walls of text, Emily Richards was my first ever live character, made on-the-fly for a live Vampire: the Requiem game back home in Norwich (Shades of Norwich). When I made her, I was seventeen years old. The game has been running for seven years, and Emily has been active for two of those, and semi-active/occasionally-active for the other two.
On Saturday night, back in Norwich, that game came to an end.
I knew the game was going to end - the STs (Storytellers) had told us as much about a year and a half ago, if not two years. Due to issues beyond their control, finding a space to run this final game had taken its time, and there was hope that it might occur during last summer. Unfortunately for me, that was not possible.
I have been - to put it bluntly - a very lax player. I was constantly active in uptime (when the games were running) when I lived in Norwich, missing only one game as far as I can remember. However, I was horrible at getting my downtimes in (what my character was up to during the time the games weren't running). Every time I missed the deadline, I'd tell myself "I'll do better next time. I'll get one in next time", and, sure enough, I would fail. I was an STs nightmare. And I didn't realise how much I would regret not getting my downtimes in...until now.
...It's strange to "mourn" a character. How can you "mourn" someone who never lived; who is a being you imagined so you could act out their journeys, troubles and successes? Answer: actually, quite easily, I've found. It's like losing an old friend; someone you know better than you know yourself, and someone you almost welcome "meeting" again every time you play them. Arguably, I should have "mourned" Emily about a year ago, as I haven't played her since Christmas 2013. But there was always that chance that I might get another game in as her, especially as the date for the game was so in flux. There was always the possibility that Emily's story might not quite have ended. That's not the case any more. Christmas last year was, unbeknownst to me, the last time I would get to play her.
Not many of my characters have made me actually feel sad at not playing them any more. A lot of them have died due to player stupidity, or plot relevance, or in an AWESOMELY EPIC way that makes their death hilarious/memorable/poignant etc. Emily...didn't die. She just...stopped being played. This is my fault above anyone else's; it comes back to the point I made above about downtimes. I feel that I did my character a disservice by failing to get my downtimes in. It feels like I failed to get her story told, because I failed to send in those little emails that prodded and poked plot. In some ways, Emily's story feels unfinished, not because of her...but because of me.
I think another of the reasons Emily's story's end makes me so sad, is because this character - this frightened, lonely, angry, determined seventeen year old vampire - grew with me. As I grew up; began to change my appearance and taste in clothes and style, and to try out new demeanours and outwards appearance, so did she. And not only that, but through her I learnt a little bit of body confidence, a little bit of persuasion and tact, a little bit of nuance and suggestion. It was as Emily I first tried on a corset, walking in not meekly and uncertainly, but tall and commanding. It was as Emily I wore a gothic dress and tried to pretend I didn't notice the room turning and looking at me as if seeing me clearly for the first time. "Little" Emily (we had another Emily when I joined), the nervous seventeen year old, played by Josée, the very, very nervous seventeen year old college student, grew into Miss Emily Richards, Minister and Judex of the First Estate, Harpy of the Fief of Norfolk, the determined, proud twenty-year old (though as a vampire...who counts any more?), played by Josée...the proud, twenty-year old second-year University student. She and I grew together, and that's not something I can say of any other character I have played.
She was also my first live-game character. I had never acted out my character's actions before, and Emily was my first foray into such games. I have to say, without Emily, I would never have played half the games I have played, or met half the people I have met. Emily was my introduction into the Games Society, and without her, I would not have met all the people I have met in the society and through it, I would not have found love, if only short-term as it turned out, nor been convinced to attend the 24 hour gaming sessions to try all manner of board and tabletop roleplaying games. Most importantly to a lot of people I know who read this blog...I would never have met the man who convinced me to hang up my preconceptions about LARP and to try Empire. Yes, without Emily, there would be no Lunetta. Indeed, there would be no Ali, either. And there would be no friends [or rediscovered friends!] from Empire or Resurgence.
I also think that another of the reasons I am sad to let her go is one that many other people have pointed out to me. I am proud of her. "Little" Emily, with her family secrets (Spoiler: she was the daughter of a vampire hunter, training to continue the family trade) proved herself. In one game, she went from being the "new Invictus" to being Deputy Sheriff. In three, she was Sheriff. With the departure of "Big" Emily (Emily Granby) and AJ Chester, she found herself promoted to Minister and Judex of the Invictus, and then later to Harpy of the entire Fief - oh! And gaining a puppy along the way! She made allies and friends from most, if not all, clans and covenants, and proved herself to be of worth to her covenant and to the fief. I have so much pride in my little fledgling! Her player might have been lax as hell - she definitely deserved a better player than me! - but she did me proud!
Sitting here, I am so jealous of those who got to be there when the curtains closed and the game reached its conclusion. I wish I could have been there, for Emily; as Emily. I wish I could be frothing with them all, and being able to say I had been a part of that last momentous game, rather than sitting here several hundred miles away feeling like I should have done more to have kept my links with the group despite the distance.
Regardless, I can still raise a glass to Shades, and to the wonderful STs and players I have had the pleasure of working against and alongside over the years I have played. I could list you all but it would take forever and I would be afraid of missing people out. Thank you to everyone who made Emily's first game so welcoming I felt I could come back, thank you to everyone who didn't treat me like an outsider each time I returned after months away at Uni, and thank you to the STs for putting up with a player as unresponsive as me. On Emily's behalf, I also should thank Crispin Gladstone for being the best Primogen an ex-vampire hunter could have hoped for, Emily Granby and AJ Chester for teaching Emily exactly how an Invictus should be, Pierré for putting up with her continual poking about remembering titles, and Orlo for giving her someone to have her petty games of oneupmanship with. And Robin, Ellie, Fay and Hannah for being the best disembodied voices/frightening elder vampires/frightened kine a vampire could ever have met/heard/frightened/looked after [insert as applicable].
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