Post-Mothú 2025 Thoughts 3: Writing the Game

The third of a series of posts after Mothú, XX Iúil 2025, by Siskey

Now that I had my characters done it was finally time to start with what they were actually going to be doing: reading a bunch of books! I had decided that Saoi Kervall was going to be madly prolific, at least on the surface. In reality, most of his works were going to be lifted directly from the minds of others and written down for his own glorification. As I realised the morning of the LARP, and as the players pointed out once the LARP was finished, he was basically the Five Oaths version of the con-artist teacher Gilderoy Lockheart in the Harry Potter books.

I had my list of 26 books, that I had made by starting with A through to Z and writing a title for each letter. I've used this prompt a lot, I find it helps to stir the ideas a bit better than having a purely blank page. This ended up with a fairly wide-ranging list of titles, as follows:

• A Quest for the Truth: Who Killed the Dragons?
• A Year of Fear: An Account of the Deathspine Gwyllt’s Activities
• Against Scoil Raibhse: A Study of the Efficacy of Targeting Greater Gwyllt
• An Examination of Heroism Throughout The Five Realms
• Bewitching Symbols: Runic Forms And Their Multifold Uses
• Condensing Ritual Forms Through Runic Expressions
• Draíodach Cavernology and Its Application In Practical Experiments
• Fear Incarnate: A Study of Three Greater Gwyllt
• Greater Uses of Attunement
• Holy War: The Moral Duty of the Shaper's Children?
• In Defence of King Draíod
• Justifications For The Use Of Cataclysmic Magic
• Killing Time: An Examination of Mass Gwyllt Slaughter
• Lessons from Torchbearer Prelates in Addressing the Gwyllt Problem
• Memory Encrystallisation: A New Approach
• Nether Draíod And Its Ecology
• Of Heretical Theologies And Their Origins
• Possibilities Arising From A Greater Understanding of Gwyllt Energies
• Runic Use In Ritual Magic
• Seven Hitherto-Undiscovered Wellsprings And Their Properties
• Theories of Attunement and Oppositions
• Unseen Enemies: A Study of the Insidious Nature of Gwyllt Infiltration
• Varying Torchbearer Practices: The Scoil Aonar Argument
• Weaponised Rituals: A Study
• Xerxes the Runecarver: A Chronicle
• Zones of Power: An Investigation of Wellsprings Outside of Draíod

Each of these books related to a particular skill, for example Killing Time would be relevant to characters with Gwyllt Lore, while Of Heretical Theologies related to Religion Lore. I wanted the books to be good props, so I put card covers on some of the extensive library of sci-fi and fantasy books that we have at home. Inside, then, would be a normal paper page with a bit of a blurb that had keywords that the characters would be able to link to their character sheets. Below there's a picture of the stack of books I ended up with, and a closer photo of one of the books, In Defence of King Draíod, a controversial and legendary figure in the setting of Five Oaths. On the inside then, there is the blurb, with keywords in bold. The keywords all started with the same letter as the title of the book, more or less. For X I had to make adjustments as I thought it would be weird to be talking about xylan and xat in a fantasy setting.

So I had 26 books, and 3 keywords per book. Time to write 78 clues! I left this until way too late, and I was frantically trying to remember all of the things I had hoped to cram in there. I wanted the following trends of information to be seeded among the group:

• Saoi Kervall is a massive glory hog and often takes credit for the work of others, even those closest to him.
• Saoi Kervall is obsessed with heroes and heroic sacrifice.
• Saoi Kervall is a proto-fascist who believes strong leaders who disregard commonly accepted wisdom are what the world needs to solve its problems.
• There are runes which are known but not understood to be magical, which Saoi Kervall has found a way to use for magical purposes.
• There are magical locations called wellsprings which Saoi Kervall claims are the origins of the leylines.
• The gallóglaigh band An Misneach Diongbháilteachta has had missions which not all of its former band members remember fully.

In the example photographed above, the three characters who had relevant clues were Broc Liath, Builean, and Sceallach. Their clues were as follows:

• Broc Liath - incredible
  Only Kervall could write something like this, in your view, it has just the right mix of bombast and sincerity to provoke a visceral response but make the reader think as well. Kervall certainly has a point in that Draíodach society would look completely different today if not for the Mad King, but you’re not sure that the threats facing Draíod today are so dire that another comparatively strong leader would be desirable. After all, the Saoi Assembly works fairly well doesn't it? And while the Iarla is there to lead the Realm, it's always been the wise who have led Draíod safely through the centuries.
• Builean - isolate
  Well Kervall doesn’t care who he rubs up the wrong way does he? It's rare that you even hear someone talk about the Mad King these days on the Saoi Assembly, more often you'll hear someone refer to "the mistakes of the past" as something to avoid. And here Kervall is extolling the virtues of what the Mad King did, and how even today we are living in his legacy. Oh, you're sure it's all some allegory for how Kervall wants things to be today, but it's no wonder he's controversial among the Saoi if this is the sort of tripe he's spouting. The only thing you can see worth emulating in the Mad King's rule of Draíod was that the Gwyllt were kept at bay. That's it!
• Sceallach - ivory
  You know your creator has had a fascination of the Mad King for his whole life. You suspect that many Sunspear vartach are just as interested but don’t admit it. In this text, Saoi Kervall spends a lot of time outlining the many threats that faced Draíod in those times, against which King Draíod was forced to take unsavoury actions to protect his people, in turn making himself unpopular and despised. Saoi Kervall posits that this makes King Draíod somewhat admirable, even though his methods were wrong.

This book, then, was more about establishing the characters' opinions of Saoi Kervall, and understanding what motivated him. Other books gave clues about the runes picture at the top of this post. I had started with portentous words in Welsh, which is associated with the Gwyllt in the Five Oaths setting. Words like hearth, thunder, wheel, and so on. I wanted these runes to seem portentous, so I kept them as simple as I could. I was inspired by futhark runes and the runes used in the Empire LARP. Each rune was linked to resonances, the resonances were in pairs. I had it in mind that the players would be able to do things like overpower the Deathspine Gwyllt, or repel it.

The runes and the resonances are where the time crunch really started to show its effects. While I drew out the runes a few weeks beforehand, and had ideas about the resonances, I didn't properly write any of it down until the night before the game was due to run. This meant that element of the game was a little under-baked, and it didn't