Long Nights and Winter Lights

Winter traditions have been part of the human experience since we're clawed out of the primordial muck using thumbs and thought to ourselves "I ought to buy my child nine pairs of socks”. First thing we did with those dexterous extra digits was to throw up a pine tree in the den and shove some well smoked meats under it to give to people on a specific day but not before. We’ve been doing that for about thirty thousand years, give or take. So let’s try something a little different? 

The setting-specific holiday we focus on in Bravado is Winter Lights, a Quiet-Folk holiday focused on the notion of Ritual and Tradition, honoring the beliefs of the varied many across the Lonestar. The Lovelace community celebrates this season every year not on a specific day, but as a kind of blanket period during which they assume and honor the traditions of their neighbors. What that looks like in the playspace, in terms of decoration, is a ton of tea lights all over the camp. So if you want to buy into this tradition and thusly the attentions of the Quiet Folk who celebrate the soft and quiet light of community, you should put tea lights all over your personal areas. 

In addition, the Nomads who travel the Long 360 out of Essex have their own tradition of decorating “Loop” trees along the highways. What was once a seemingly out-of-place garish display of garland and lights that has slowly become an important cultural touchstone of the Winter season in the Lonestar. We can’t wait to see how our players bring the trees of Bravado to life with festive in-genre decorations (that of course, can be easily cleaned up after game off).

Similarly, the Junkerpunks celebrate Cargo-Net Day, another “new/old” tradition based on holiday themes. This holiday and its rituals have been completely designed by our amazing players, and we are excited to support it by honoring the related plot requests they’ve put in to our writers. We love the tales of Nopalito Joe and Kelpie. 

We encourage you to put your brilliant minds to work to come up with amazing holiday traditions to fit within our shared story. Something from your character’s past? Something entirely new? Winter Lights is all about discovering and celebrating tradition, and we are excited to see the creativity our players bring to that.

We’re attaching a link HERE to a useful article that we hope will give you something to think about when designing holidays for the LARPspace that are clever and respectful. 

THE LONG NIGHT 

Every year in January Camp Kachina closes its massive eyes and takes a long nap to rejuvenate itself and heal from all of our intense LARPing on its pine-studded spine. And by that we mean the Girl Scouts of America use that month to fix up the camp infrastructure and DR:TX takes a month off for holidays and our own sanity. 

The way we explain that in character is The Long Night; a period of time at the end of every year during which the sun does not shine on Bravado. Massive clouds appear over the town, huge stationary mountains that block the light of the sun. It lasts about a month until the sun comes out again and life resumes itself in all its baleful splendor. So when your LCs aren’t here in January (or maybe they are you masochistic maniacs) it’s probably because it’s VERY DARK and VERY COLD. Oh and there are strange creatures that emerge in the darkness and take a long walk in their own ineffable customs.