So my LARP character Duke Artur Corvus, ruler of House Corvus and the Godsbay (where the game is set) got something of an awesome sending off the other day. I’ve played him for roughly two years with a a year gap in the middle (so three years since I genned him) and in that time he has risen from  being an offshoot member of the House Corvus and General of the Council of Crows, to Councilman of the Coast, and then leader of the 2nd Glorious Crusade Company (that’s where he went for a year while I played someone else) before finally rising to Duke of House Corvus. He’s fought tyrants who threatened to plunder and destroy the Godsbay, as well as madmen and barbarians from across the sea. His soul was Tainted when he threw the Korth reavers back into the ocean. He has always struggled to find the righteous path and follow it, but there are no easy or right choices when you’re in charge, and Taint in the setting is exactly as bad as it sounds; there is no way to remove it and it only gets worse, but he forged on. He slew a demon that tormented his dreams, twisting them into horrific nightmare visions.

Finally it came out that Artur had a growing shadow on his soul, and the Church called for his removal and execution; he responded by explaining that he planned to hand himself over anyway once he had defeated the creature that whispered in his ear. The people saw him as a hero who had saved the Godsbay over and over, while the Church decried him as a monster and villain, but he went to them anyway, only to be told that once he crossed the border and into the custody of the Church, he would simply be executed on the side of the road, his body burnt. A friend managed to talk them down, and the offered to let him make the final pilgramage to the Arch-Basilica anonymous, stripped of his house colours to die without honour or dignity in some Inquisitors basement.

In the end he refused this. After everything he had done for the Godsbay and Cambion, he refused to let them take his last bit of pride, his honour, his colours. So he rode back to his home fief, acquired a ship, and set sail across the sea towards the Korth, to find his death elsewhere, after giving the members of the Church a (well, I like to think so) rather awesome Reason You Suck speech. It’s going to cause huge complications for the people who have taken control of the Council after he left, but there were only so many blows to his pride he could take.

I like to think Illusion by VNV Nation played as he sailed off into the sunset, never to be seen again.