Twilight in Amarmulan

In the doomed city of Amarmulan, the night before they are all cursed to die, the sorcerer-nobles of the royal court pursue their last ambitions and their last desires at a masquerade ball.

Long Description

Weep for Amarmulan, ye lords and lovers! O ye sages and storytellers - raise your voices in sorrow, and give lament for great Amarmulan!

Amarmulan, ancient Amarmulan, fabled city of secrets and sorcery! Here the black basalt towers, and the cyclopean theaters, are all etched with the glyphs of the elder ages. Here the archives are filled with lore-tablets of stone and clay, from which dread wisdom may be learned. Here the kings and queens wed brother to sister, so that they may speak with the voice of the Golden Mystery, and the courtier nobles wield potent magics through their service to the throne.

Amarmulan, wicked Amarmulan, cruel city of danger and decadence! Here the great and good pursue their merry gilded wickednesses, while the slum-district streets flash with knives in the night. Here, the peddlers of vice never close their doors. Here, for centuries untold, armies have been sent forth to do the bloody work of armies, in the name of claiming tribute for the throne and crushing the city’s rivals. Here, the priests of the Crimson Eye wreak miracles of fire and metal as they speak their unforgiving judgments, and the people wail in their penitent ecstasy.

Amarmulan, glorious Amarmulan, the loveliest thing ever wrought by the hands of man –

– will fall. This very night. Doom has stretched out its hands for the great city, doom upon doom upon doom upon doom.

Plague winds blow through the avenues of Amarmulan, stealing sight and breath from those whom they touch. The Kozeki hordes are riding to the city gates, with murder in their eyes, seeking plunder and vengeance and glory. The Yawning Sea seethes, and swells, and threatens an unimaginable flood. And above, and beyond, all those things: the reign of Queen Essira has been cursed from its beginning. Her royal father violated the one and only edict of the Golden Mystery, and the wrath of the Golden Mystery is slow, but it is inexorable. Now the curse has come into its fulfillment, and none who are bound to the throne will escape. Not the royals, and not their highborn retainers.

What can be done, has been done. What can be saved, has been saved. Now there is only the waiting, and the doom.

The Queen is throwing a grand masquerade ball, a final party to celebrate the end of everything that matters. All the royal treasures will be on display. All the cursed grandees of the palace - all the men and women whose magic has become a death sentence - are invited to don their most elegant court clothes and attend.

They will dance. They will consume the finest food, the finest wine. They will find what comfort they can in each other, and in the beauty of the moment.

And for some of them, perhaps, not everything that can be done has yet been done.

Twilight in Amarmulan is a LARP for 24 players. It is about facing down death, deciding what really matters, negotiating difficult emotional ties under extreme stress, and doing all the things you want to do on your last night alive. It is also about decadent gothic grandeur and weird numinous magic. It is also about pretty dancing.

This LARP has a very definite genre, and that genre is gothic tragedy. A city is going to be destroyed; this is not something that can be averted, not through cleverness or determination or the Power of Friendship and Heart. Many people, including many PCs, are going to die. If you somehow manage to find a way to avoid dying, the thing that you find will probably be strange and troubling in its own right. Do not expect a straightforwardly happy ending.

The game is heavily roleplay-driven, with a lot of focus on navigating thorny feelings and having psychologically-important conversations. We have done our best to ensure that there is ample time and bandwidth for those things. There are also substantial mechanics, and you'll spend a fair amount of time pursuing crunchy goals, but...if you're hoping for wall-to-wall goal-driven crunch, you may be disappointed.

Expect the game proper to last for just about six hours; the remaining time will go towards the rules briefing, dealing with inevitable player delays, etc.

This game features a lot of dancing; there are both promenade-around-the-room-style dances and ballroom waltzes, and there's a fair number of each. Be prepared for that.

The Twilight in Amarmulan rulebook can be read here.