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Echo felt a gentle ache looking around and realizing that Pietro and Ella wouldn’t be at this evening’s Order of the Stick meeting. What was this feeling? Running around with a foam sword had seemed so silly before, but she had finally been convinced to give it a try herself last year…and by the end, she looked forward to Monday evenings where she could whack someone in costume. She could just…be here.

No, certainly nothing as sentimental. Perhaps Echo was going to miss having competent leaders around who knew how to weave a story in with the play fight, who had stupidly persisted in encouraging her to come and join even after a full year and a half of sitting on the sidelines. Maybe one day they would meet again and never speak of this club they had shared.

”Good evening, Galen,” Echo greeted, handing over the usual form.

”Hey Echo! Love the outfit! It looks like you’ll be joining everyone on the battlefield this year again?”

”Of course, darling. Where else would I be?” Echo smiled, proud of her work and twirling for effect. She had worked very hard on assembling this outfit: a high collar, puffed sleeves, a part-open waistcoat, heeled thigh-high boots, and reflective bracers accented with gold-tinted aluminum. The bow alone had taken all of August to get right, but finally, with Momma’s help, they had fashioned an elegant bow with scaled-wing motifs, complete with a quiver of spongey foam-padded arrows. The design had, of course, been Milan’s, but the club members needn’t know that.


Name: Echo Angharad Wellbelove
Year: 3rd
RP Experience Level:Sufficiently
LARP Experience Level: Last year.
Are you a member of The Adventurer's Guild? No
Race/Class/Style Preferences: human.

Echo Angharad didn’t have as much time to make a custom outfit and weapon this year, but she still had plenty of outfits she’d compiled and gotten help making. Today, she had repurposed the fur accent from two years ago into a coat and added a few belt accents and touches to her boots. Fashionable and interesting, perfect for in-costume and out. At her side was a foam-tipped spear– Bow combat had not been quite as interesting as Echo had wanted last year, but thankfully she had picked up a few other weapons over the year and ultimately decided on a spear this year. And she still had her bow– spelled brown to match her new costume–slung on her back.

More confidently, she had ideas for a coherent and exciting roleplay story this year. Galen was evidently more trained in tabletop games, which may have worked for the Adventurer’s Guild, but Echo understood that part of being part of a Live Action Role Play was to be part of action. Thus, last year’s Order of the Stick had entire meetings where there wouldn’t be so much whacking as just standing about roleplaying–not a terrible thing, but Echo was here in (secret) part to whack some peers with a foam stick. And last year’s drama-heavy tale of spies and betrayals had–while entertaining–involved a bit too much deathbed monologing and not quite enough stabbing for Echo’s taste’s.

”Good evening, Galen,” she greeted with her usual mix of politeness and superciliousness as the metamorphmagus captain joined her with a trunk of supplies levitating behind him.

”G’evening Echo,” Galen replied cheerfully. He had

”I had a proposal for a story for this year’s roleplay,” Echo said, handing over a small packet of information she had compiled for the purposes of ensuring her proposal was met with understanding. She quickly jotted her information down as she explained. ”We are members of fantasy kingdoms on the brink of war. Every meeting will involve at least a skirmish or encounter between the opposing human and fae kingdoms, and the build up to or resolution of the skirmish.

“So, for example, my character Angharad Fierro is a human huntress out in the Forest of the Fae. I was technically exiled from the human kingdom, but now that the humans are on the brink of war with the fae, perhaps the humans will want a skilled fighter at their side. Or perhaps I will choose to side with the fae against my own kind.” Echo swept her coat around and twirled the spear at her side with a flourish as she handed the form back. She smiled, confident in her idea.

As she was speaking, other members had arrived and Galen waved in greeting. ”What do you folks think?”




Name: Echo Angharad Wellbelove
Year: 4
RP Experience Level: Good.
LARP Experience Level: 3 years in club.
Are you a member of The Adventurer's Guild? No
Race/Class/Style Preferences: Proposed Human ranger.

Galen whistled as he set up for the Order of the Stick: there was a chest of old donated props and costumes that he laid out, along with a handful of forms and a breaking self-inking quill: the ink colour occasionally changed, leaving the text a weird mix of black, gray, and orange.

Next to the forms he set a binder of pictures next to the forms: pictures, Daily Dragon articles from previous years. Echo Wellbellove being part of the club meant there was always some feature, even if it was just photos of the various costumes and prompts. Speaking of Echo, Galen was surprised the Slytherin quadruplet wasn’t here, much less waiting for him: She was usually early, dressed in a costume she’d designed with her brother, and swinging a foam-tipped weapon around. He knew she was at school: he had seen her brandishing a beater’s bat yesterday morning. She hadn’t said anything about not being at LARP when they exchanged greetings. Well, maybe she was just late.

Galen picked out a couple of foam swords and swung them around. When someone else arrived, he morphed his features as alien as he could: for a moment, he had solid black eyes, glowing pink skin, and his hair was long and gray with green tips. He looked about two feet taller, and when he smiled, his teeth were long and jagged. He managed to swing the sword around in a dramatic flourish before all the effects fluttered into something more playful and true: his normal height, long gray hair with glowing yellow tips. "Greetings human...humanoid creature! Arm yourself!" He tossed one of the foam swords at them, then lunged playfully forward, brandishing the other sword.

Echo Wellbelove was already sitting out by the spot, twirling around in her costume when Galen arrived with the chest of donated props to set up for the Order of the Stick. ”Galen, long time no see” shechimed, but there was something off about her usually sweet tone. She sounded…less sweet, but more…vivid? Like she actually missed him.

”G’evening, Echo!” Galen replied cheerfully and wondered what was off. Echo hadn’t come to very many Order of the Stick meetings last year– studying, as he learned– but she did show up for a few, and she was here now. ”Great costume, as usual. Any plans for a plot?”

”I just threw something together. I’m sure you have something wacky and ridiculous in mind, Captain?”

She had called his ideas wacky and ridiculous before, but there was something about this time that was different. Galen had observed over the years of being in two clubs and classes together that Echo seemed more…relaxed? Friendly? She was different in Order of the Stick. Today seemed…almost more affectionate though? More…genuine. As soon as Galen thought that, Echo seemed to morph. Like how he might change his appearance with his metamorphmagus abilities, Echo’s appearance seemed to change: She just looked livelier and more at attention. He blinked, and she was the same girl he’d known the last few years in class and club: at attention, perfectly poised and lightly supercilious, as though she was critiquing everything that passed her gaze.

”I did have something in mind,” Galen said with a glimmer of mischief, setting aside his analysis of his friend down along with the club forms. His skin turned wrinkly and his brown hair turned long and gray. His irises turned pale, flickering occasionally as he tried to maintain such a detailed change. ” ‘Ello, young’un,” he croaked in the direction of the next club member to show up. ”’Ave you come to join the Order?

With her quadruplets out of usual form and her own tantrum over getting Es, Echo had completely forgotten to prepare a costume for the Order of the Stick. She hadn’t even been sure if she would return after barely attending meetings last year. But then this morning she had looked out onto the fields where the Order usually met and been struck by a flash of inspiration.

Echo spent the day in a frenzy: she tore through one of her nice dresses with a seam ripper and spelled it a darker colour. She transfigured her bed’s curtains into a heavier, faux-leather that she made into a belt and long shoe covers. Owl fluff collected from the owlery–or rather bid a younger student to collect—, cleaned with spells and glued to a strip of fabric were attached to the dress as a trim along the neckline. A few snake fangs from the potions storeroom were strung into a pair of otherwise nice but plain earrings. A few unfortunate bugs were transfigured into buckles and attached to the ends of her belt. She sliced one of her nice dress gloves apart for an asymmetric look, setting the other side off with ribbon. Finally, just before club she tied her hair in a high ponytail set off with a long snake fang. She added a snake motif in gold dust to her eyeshadow, downed a potion of warmth she’d spotted in the storeroom, and headed downstairs.

”Great costume, as usual. Any plans for a plot?”

Echo beamed at the praise. Sure, Galen probably would have complimented her if she’d worn a frumpy oversized sweater and messed up her hair into damp curls, but she thought her improved costume was quite elegant actually. ”I just threw something together,” she preened, before deflecting his question about plots. As Galen turned to the next arrival with a playful voice, Echo jotted her information on the form and sifted through the chest for the foam-tipped spear she knew she’d left behind sometime last year.

“And my axe,” Galen replied, the flicker in his eyes turning to an amused glow as he caught Nora’s reference. He grabbed the nearest foam weapon off the pile–most certainly not an axe. “It is good you have come.”

Behind them, Echo found her spear and twirled it around fancifully, grinning as the familiar weight settled back into her palms. ”Particularly so, as our elder seems to not recognize his own axe!” she acknowledged, stepping next to them so they formed a triangle. She swapped the foam sword in Galen’s hand for an axe with a worn chuck ripped out of it, then turned to Nora and mimicked her bow. She–well, Echo wasn’t sure what was going on, but making things up with half the fun of LARP. “It seems we were indeed destined to meet again, ser. Elder, just how far did you call for aid? Is the situation truly so dire?”

Galen waved the axe in hand. ”I fear it is. The scouting party we sent to An Aisling Faoi Thalamh managed to send word. They found it. An Tromluí.” he held up a scrap of parchment with a single word scrawled on it: Nightmare.


Name: Echo Angharad Wellbelove
Year: 6
RP Experience Level: Quite.
LARP Experience Level: Just in club
Are you a member of The Adventurer's Guild? No.
Race/Class/Style Preferences: Fantasy settings, sword or spear fighting, and elf or fairy races.

It was the last week before exams—and the second to last meeting of the Order of the Stick. Today, the yearlong campaign would draw to a close. In two weeks when they next convened, they would discuss epilogues, then consider ideas for the following year.

But this evening, the various sides were gathered for the final battle to determine the fate of the land.

In the past few months, the Order’s fortress had been besieged– the elder that had sent out the call for aid had fallen to sickness and been captured by the Nightmare. Over the year, some of the players themselves had fallen in service of the Nightmare. There was…a possible cure, but the only way to deploy it meant luring the Nightmare itself into physical form and into the trap at the innermost sanctum of the Order’s fortress. If the cure didn’t work…then the Order was lost.

Galen, fully back from the hospital Wing, set the scene for everyone: “As folks have told me, we ended last time with the gates crashing down. Logan, we last saw Gedeon Arseid being consumed and possessed by the Nightmare as he defended the gate. Their purpose has been corrupted, but in that darkness, there is some hope–we have the Nightmare in physical form. Nora, have you got the cure? Great. Then that’s where we’ll start.”

Galen hopped off the box and threw his hood up–the sign they used to indicate a club member playing as a character fallen to the Nightmare. He gathered a few of the others who were playing characters that had been taken by the Nightmare and started across the way, giving the defenders a few moments to set up.

Echo quickly took his place, twirling her spear with a flourish and addressing the Order members in character: Raevyn Starstriker had made a name for herself this campaign, and after the demise of the Elder, she had taken on the mantle of direction–or in this case, rallying: ”Right! Order of the Burning Stick! Fight now, brethren! For your homes and families, fight, for your redemptions and oaths!”