Revised Essay 3/4

Striving For Evermoore

They came to the isolated Boy Scout camp in the middle of the winter wearing jeans, and business suits and thick woolen coats. Their ages ranged from 16 to well into their fifties, and what struck me the first time I came to one of the events is how normal everyone seemed. The schoolteacher with her husband the banker stroll up to the kitchen house of the small campground, still dressed in their work attire and carrying large duffle bags. The college kids, in jeans and converse sneakers, all with backpacks packed to bursting with the necessities for the weekend slung over their shoulders, poured out of cars five or six at to a vehicle, since they tended to carpool to save money.

They all made their way through to the kitchen house in the back of the campground, through the complex of six wooden cabins and a larger troop house with an open, sandy area in front of it and past the carved totem pole. It was cold, but many of the people didn’t even seem to notice the weather as they stood outside chatting with friends they hadn’t seen in the month since the last time they’d all gathered here. They caught up on stories and gossip from around the state of New Jersey. They hugged and joked and laughed like any large group of friends would. To an onlooker, it would just be a normal, if large, group of friends getting ready for a weekend of camping. The comfortable air between everyone showed just how familiar they were with each other.

Earlier that month, I’d heard my friends talking about how much fun they’d had at the last event. I had just started hanging out with them when I’d started taking classes at the local community college. I’d always had a kind of amazing nerd radar, and my first day of classes I’d met a few of these people in the game room that used to be on that campus. I shouldn’t have been surprised, then, that my friends all played this game. They all played Mystic Realms, a live action roleplaying game, or LARP, that’s held events all over the state of New Jersey for over ten years, which is a long life for one of these games.

All of my friends sat around one person’s computer pointing at pictures of people in masks and felt tabards holding log pieces of foam and duct tape. They all pointed at people and made comments like “What about that time Rose cut off Asha’s tail and he turned into like Satan’s weetle for a moment. I’ve never heard Charlie’s voice that low even outside the game!” I was starting to feel out of place when a few of them turned to me and asked if I wanted to come to the next event.

“Sure, as long as I don’t have to paint my face.”

In an hour, this ordinary campground would become the remnants of the crystal city of Evermoore, a once great city at the center of the Realm of the Five. Crumbled crystal spires that stood thousands of years earlier, in the Age of Life, would surround the wooden structures. These ordinary people would put away their street clothes and would don the garb of the magical characters that they would become for the weekend. The costumes were colorful, many handmade, chainmail and boots, the symbols of their orders, or groups of players that worked together and received bonuses for their cooperation, displayed proudly on cloth tabards over their chests. The gypsy women wore skirts and colorful scarves tied about their waists, their every step jingling with the loud jewelry they wore. The druids adorned themselves with brightly colored flowers. The necromancers wore black. Elves had facial markings denoting what culture they came from, the rakish, pirate-like sea elves with blue spirals about their eyes, proclaiming their connection to the sea and the great ships built from fallen trees which housed whole communities. The haughty, flamboyant high elves wore silver spiraled marks and dressed in regal finery that proclaimed the status they had in their home in the Elder Tree Valley. The low elves dressed plainly, with brown markings about their eyes and a quieter demeanor. Deep elves, the rebels who had been banished to intricate underground tunnels among the roots of the old trees, wore black tattoos about their eyes and shouldered crossbows. Green orcs and the cat-like rakkarins mingled with the many races of elf and human. All about ran the mouse-like weetles, many of whom followed the gypsies, entranced by the shiny coins at their waists.

“You should play a gypsy, Erin! That’s what I play, it’ll be a lot of fun,” my friend Jill had taken it upon herself to help me get ready for the event in two weeks. She was a plump, short girl who was about a year older than me. She took classes for nursing and I bet she would have made a great one, if she hadn’t changed her major a year later. Her ex-boyfriend, a guy named Charles, had made me a saber out of the PVC pipe, insulation foam, and duct tape that was regulation for the game. He wrapped the hilt of the sword in purple tape, telling me that I’d always know which weapon was mine because of it. It seemed big and clunky, and I had a hard time using it at first when we practiced in Charlie’s large backyard.

“You should definitely be a magic user,” he said after a laughably lame attempt to get a hit on him, “because you can’t do this stuff to save your life.”

The Inn of Evermoore, the central meeting place for the Tradesmen, or people capable of manipulating magic and performing amazing feats because of it, was the campground’s troop house draped with colorful banners and the symbols of the many religions of the realm. Many of those banners had been painted or stitched by players who played clerics, or the holy healers who rallied troops around the symbols of their gods and kept the fighting forces able to battle through healing magic. I played a cleric.

Before the campground could be fully transformed, however, there were speeches made in the troop house. Tony, the man who had created the game, gave the speech my first event. He stood on the hearth of the large stone fireplace, already dressed as his character Deadalus, the bloodthirsty necromancer well known for stabbing first and asking questions after they’re zombies. Tony explained the rules of the game, emphasizing the importance of staying in character for the experience of the other players. Then his voice lowered as he began to tell us a story intended to capture our imaginations, “the veil between worlds is thin this night, and perhaps we may see echoes of the past. The old souls that have been reborn in some of the heroes of Guildhall will take the form of the protectors of the Five, the gods who created this realm. Tonight, we may see history replayed in the mists. So, with no further ado, let the event begin. Three, two, one, GAME ON!”

From that moment on, the people at that campground truly were the tradesmen of Evermoore, the most respected protectors of a troubled world. I knew nothing that weekend, and so as I sat out on the steps of the Inn, listening to people talk, I didn’t know what to expect. Fog began to roll in, produced by machines placed just in the woods around the buildings. From the thick fog figures started to emerge, men and women in white rags, their faces painted. One wore a colorful jester’s cap. The people around fell silent and watched as the people approached. I grabbed the nearest man, who was adjusting the part of his kilt that was thrown over his shoulder, “Excuse me sir, but what’s happening, I just came from the Isle of Lore and I’m confused.” That was what I was taught by my friends to say, code for “I’m a newbie, and I don’t understand what’s going on.”

“Ah lass, those are the spirits of the old souls. They will lead us to the Realmspire. We will finally close this realm off from those who wish to invade from outside! The Nexus will not be able to swallow this world,” he said and I tilted my head to the side, still unsure of what was going on. “What trade are you and what’s your name? I’m Cloud’ku, you can come with me.”

“Tana,” I said, giving him the name I’d chosen earlier that month for the character I was playing, “I’m a cleric.” I followed Cloud’ku, whose real name is Pat, for that whole night, talking to the “old souls,” who believed that they were fighting the hoards that had destroyed the crystal city that once stood where the town of Evermoore was. That night we were lead out into the woods in search of a mystical item that would keep the Realm of the Five safe from something that I didn’t understand. Throughout the entire night, I was fighting the urge to laugh at the ridiculous situation and the enemies that wore felt masks and wielded weapons like mine, just painted white, to symbolize claws.

Everyone’s first event they are outside their characters, but the longer they play, the more likely it is that they can look at the campground and see the spires. It became easier each month for me to see hounds where there are really people in felt masks, little mouse people when it was really my friends from school with whiskers painted on their noses. Every month it became easier to step out of reality for a few days and live in a fantasy. All fantasies, however, come to the end in their time.

At the end of the weekend, all the tired, sore, elated people clean, pack up their stuff, and once again they leave in their jeans and tee shirts. The town of Evermoore again becomes just a Boy Scout camp in southern New Jersey, and the people are no longer rogues, rangers, wizards and warriors, and instead are schoolteachers, college students, lawyers, and bankers. The next month, they will return, ready for the next Evermoore market day and once again make a world come alive for the few people who know how to look at it.