Lorien Trust

Lorien Trust

A battle at The Gathering
Location	UK
Founded	1992
Active?	Yes
Structure	National business
Genre(s)	High Fantasy
System	Proprietary (foam weapons)
Event style	Weekend fest events with up to 4000 participants
Website	www.lorientrust.com

Lorien Trust (sometimes abbreviated to LT) is the trading name of Merlinroute ltd., a live action role-play organisation that runs LARP events in Locko Park, Derby, UK. It runs what were some of Britain's largest Live Roleplay events,^[1] once attracting around 4,000 people to the larger events.^[2] Numbers however are significantly less in recent years with an estimation of around 1000 attending the larger events due to strong competition from rival organisers such as Profound Decisions. It was formed in 1992, originally as a charitable organisation (hence "Trust" in the name), in response to perceived problems with the Summerfest (LARP) event. The Lorien Trust uses its own set of LARP rules, known simply as the "Lorien Trust rules system". In addition to the four events held per year, the Lorien Trust also sanctions many smaller events to use the same system and game world.

The Lorien Trust's flagship event is The Gathering. It is held over the August bank holiday weekend. The final battle of The Gathering normally draws over 1200 players on each side.^[3] Lorien Trust claims that these are the largest live action battles in Europe.^[3]

These events are set in the fictional world of Erdreja. The Erdreja setting is described as "high fantasy/medieval".

In 1995 Curious Pastimes broke away from Lorien Trust due to internal schisms.^[4]

Lorien Trust Events

• The Great Edrejan Fayre (GEF)- A sports competition themed event, previously known as the Heartland Games
• Spring Moot
• Summer Moot
• The Gathering - Lorien Trust's flagship event

Erdreja

Erdreja is a relatively free-form fantasy world which imports its concepts from numerous sources including D&D and fantasy novels. The LT's campaign focuses around a small region of the Erdreja, known as the Heartlands. This region is divided into ten separate kingdoms, each governed by one of the Factions of Erdreja. Each Faction takes its name from an animal associated with the country. Every player character belongs to one of the ten Factions. Characters may also be members of none/any/all of the ten Guilds.

The ten factions and their main inspirations are:

• The Bears (primarily Scottish clansmen)
• The Dragons (based on Celts from Ireland and Wales)
• The Gryphons (French and Spanish noblemen)
• The Harts (English in the tradition of King Arthur)
• The Jackals (Arabic and Ancient Greek people)
• The Lions (also English, sharing the Harts' background with Viking Roots)
• The Tarantulas (mainly Drow from the Underdark)
• The Unicorns (seafaring traders)
• The Vipers (Teutonic people including many Goblins and Orcs)
• The Wolves (based on Viking cultures)

The fourteen guilds are:

• The Healers
• The Incantors
• The Bards
• The Alchemists
• The Militia
• The Bank
• The Archers
• The Scouts
• The Mages
• The Armourers
• The Watchers
• The Great Library
• The Casino
• The Corruptors

Within the Factions, players organise themselves into semi-independent groups. Each group usually has some kind of common purpose (a military unit, for example, or a trading company), and many players will put great effort into giving their group a strong identity.

In addition to the Factions, there are also a number of international Guilds, whose In Character role is to provide training and support for members of different professions. Out of Character, the Guilds also help to administer the LT system - the Mages' Guild, for example, handles the distribution of spell-cards (OOC items needed by players of magic-using characters).

In the early years of the LT, Erdreja was conceived as an open gameworld: players were allowed to play any kind of character they wished. Over time, the problems of maintaining continuity in such a free-flowing system, coupled with the growing prevalence of larps with closed gameworlds, led the LT to exert some control over the types of character permitted in the system. That said, there is still a wide variety of races and character roles available to players. The races, like much of the rest of the gameworld, are drawn from fantasy literature:

• Humans
• Beastkin Beastmen, etc.)
• Elves
• Urucks (Goblins, Orcs, etc.)
• Ologs (Ogres, Trolls, etc.)
• Dark Elves - Dark Elves, Drow and Norns
• Dwarves
• Fey - Wild Fey, Seelie, Unseelie
• Wee folk (Halflings, etc.)
• Other (Which encompasses anything else a player can make an acceptable costume for, including; Golems, Genies or Garthim. Though only in very special cases are the related attributes of these races applied to the character.)

Erdreja is saturated with magic of various kinds, and spell-casting characters are common. In-character rituals are often carried out by players to create magical items or to further an ongoing plot. Religion is universally based around ancestor worship.

Media References

In June 2011 the Lorien Trust gameworld (more specifically the bears faction forums) was found to be the 385th most visited website by the UK's Department of Transport.^[5] This was picked up by various newspapers^[6][7] and the BBC.^[8] In September 2012 the Sun newspaper^[9] published an article mistaking the game world for one replicating middle earth and the lord of the rings, rather than having its own fantasy setting. In October 2012 the Huffintton Post^[10] posted an in depth article exploring a first time roleplayers view of the Live Roleplay scene from the point of view of someone attending the Gathering for the first time and interviewing a number of attendees, charting The Lorien Trust and other systems in the UK.

References

• BBC article covering the Gathering in 2001
• Lorien Trust rules
• Live Role-Playing Games: Implications for Pervasive Gaming, a conference paper employing the Lorien Trust as an example of a live roleplay system

External links

• Lorien Trust Homepage
• Lorien Trust - Harts Faction library