Story | System7LARP

WAR IN THE HEAVENS

This is a story of mortals, but it starts in the heavens ages ago with a war among the gods. It rampaged across the plains of existence for the power of a god often reaches well beyond one world. Details, how the war started, who was lost and even how long it raged, have been lost. We know a few things for absolute certain; The gods knew could share power, trade it back and forth like currency. That currency is strewn across the mortal worlds. We call them Shards and a mortal can pick one up, bond with it, and part of an ability once posssesed by a god. Fragments of the gods have fallen from the heavens and are available to those who would hunt for them.

We also know that the gods have been silent for generations. Faith has returned to being just that, belief and commitment without reward. Many eschew faith and worship only the acquisition of Shards as the most important goal in life beleiving that they might somehow collect enough to become a god themselves.

SHARDS

Shards aren't actually things. They are energy that latches onto solid objects. What keeps this energy from leaving the way hot objects grow cold, or how darkness appears after a light goes out, is a matter of divine magic. Many draw comparisons between the energy of a shard and a living creature. Shards were made famous of a set of shards in crystals which is where their name comes from.

A mortal can pick up and carry around a single un-bonded Shard. If they try to pick up a second one, they feel the weight of the gods pressing down on them. Inexplicably some mortals have been able to carry around two or even multiple shards but only when they didn't know they were doing it. So greed and intention are a factor. Once a mortal bonds with a Shard or 'learns' it, that Shard carries no divine weight for them. In fact, once someone bonds with a Shard, no one else can ever use it, even after that person dies. There remain rumors of Shards that allow Shards to be traded and Shard Seekers have struggled to find them.

A DIMINISHING NON-RENEWABLE RESOURCE

There are a limited number of Shards. How many is not known. Some Shards look completely mundane. Others glow, move around and make themselves known easily. Only ancient texts talk about Shards falling from the sky, so we know new ones have not appeared in generations. We also know that when someone dies, they take their Shards with them. The physical objects that contained the power of their Shards become inert and no longer offer special powers. This has lead to long conflict between Conservationists and Shard Seekers. One is trying to leave Shards for the next generations and the other wants as many as they can get for themselves.

OTHER KINDS OF SHARDS

There are different kinds of Shards. Most people are aware of the elemental Shards that are each attuned to Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Life and Death. There is another type of Shard that is almost always a sub-type of Death that is attuned to the Dead. You often learn your first one without knowing it and you only find out if you have one if you die. The most common one lets you come back for a few minutes as a quasi-stable being able to interact with the living world for a little while before you return to the spirit realm. Shard Seekers were the first to document this type of Shard and simply call them Dead Shards.

There are also Monstrous Shards. If they were created that way or if the monsters that use them changed them, that is debated. For the interested, the Conservationists, firmly insist all Shards are equal and adapt to the bonder, while the Shard Seekers have a much more varied opinion and beleive that some Shards just start out bad. They also beleive that other forms of Shards are likely to be discovered and continue to search for them.

MAKE THE STORY YOUR OWN

System 7 LARP is a framework for you to tell the story of -your- LARP Club. You could make Shards very rare, something that has to be found during the game. To that end, we've created Proto-Shards, a Shard that hasn't been learned yet. But maybe that's something you don't want to deal with and you make Shards very common and your story is something beyond what we could think of.

New Shards might appear in your world, or there could be a limited number that runs out as each Player learns more of them. Shards could be the power of dead gods or they could merely be naturally occuring in your world, a product of the magic that already exists in your world. Even our rules are yours to manipulate and adjust until you are happy with them. We have said you learn 2 Shards after crewing for a game, and that you are limited to 7 Shards and 1 Character Card at a time, but you could tinker with that formula until it works better for you. Play your way!