Chorea Daemonium

The year is 1915, and seven scholars of the New York Learned Society of Magicians pass through a hazy shadow of a door in a little-traveled Manhattan alleyway. In each hand, an invitation in shimmering black ink:

"The Archfiend of the Tehom invites you to a dance. Wear your finest. Watch your step."

The histories of magic speak plainly on the binding of daemons. Choose wisely, they say, and you will find power beyond measure at your command. Choose poorly, and death or ruin awaits. But in this dim-lit speakeasy at the heart of a thousand nowheres, the most vital choices may not be in your hands…

Chorea Daemonium is a dance LARP about magicians making dangerous deals and binding themselves to daemons, in the style of The Dance and the Dawn.

Long Description

The year is 1915, and seven scholars of the New York Learned Society of Magicians pass through a hazy shadow of a door in a little-traveled Manhattan alleyway. In each hand, an invitation in shimmering black ink:

The Archfiend of the Tehom invites you to a dance. Wear your finest. Watch your step.

Inside the ballroom wait six of the Archfiend’s children - beings of primordial chaos, hungry to get their first taste of these strange mortals.

The histories of magic speak plainly on the binding of daemons. Choose wisely, they say, and you will find power beyond measure at your command. Choose poorly, and death or ruin awaits. But in this dim-lit speakeasy at the heart of a thousand nowheres, the most vital choices may not be in your hands…

Chorea Daemonium is a dance larp about magicians and daemons performing a dangerous binding ritual in a potentially unwise search for power. It borrows its structure from the Dance and the Dawn games - players will find matches by “speed dating” in a series of 18 blues/fusion dances, and will at the end of the game be offered the choice of entering a contract and binding themself to a magical partner. While this game does not have one set of “correct” pairings, there will be pairings which are more or less advantageous to the characters. Chorea Daemonium is an adversarial social puzzle game - the best match for one character may not be the same as the best match for another character, and the characters in this game will be attempting to scheme, manipulate, or deceive their way into a match which is advantageous for them, but potentially not for their partner. Characters may also attempt to sabotage or steal each other’s matches. At least one of the magician characters will end the game without a familiar.

While some of the relationships in this game may be romantically or sexually charged, and the dances might get flirty, Chorea Daemonium is not explicitly a romance game, and the relationship between magicians and familiars is not understood to be romantic by default.

Chorea Daemonium will use blues/fusion dance and ars rego inspired dance mechanics. No knowledge/experience with blues/fusion dance is required to enjoy this game - we will run a dance workshop ahead of time - but this game will be the most fun for players who are comfortable with partnered dance and would enjoy dancing for ~3.5 hours (with breaks).

Chorea Daemonium is a good game for you if you are excited about extravagant costuming, partner dancing, dark deals and bargains, wizard feuding, and exploring relationships between beings who don't trust each other but both must make themselves vulnerable to the other to access power. Aesthetic inspirations for this game include Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, The Prestige, and The Bartimaeus Trilogy.

This game requires players to participate in ~3 hours of dances with interspersed 15 minute breaks, plus a dance workshop. While accommodations can be made, and players who find dancing for that entire time exhausting are able to take alternatives to dances like walking or sitting, this game will probably be the most fun for people who can comfortably dance for the full time. Wizard duels in this game will be represented by acting out casting spells with props, and can be acted physically to whatever extent players feel comfortable. Chorea Daemonium is played in low lighting conditions with moderate volume music. Please contact the GMs if you have any questions about accessibility!

About the roles:

Magicians are proud, vain, and avaricious individuals who achieve power through dealings with daemons. Alone, magicians are capable of small acts of magic and cantrips which can be enacted through incantations and minor bindings - but to achieve true power, magicians must enter into a contract with a daemon familiar, binding the daemon to their soul. Only the most elite members of the The Learned Society are invited by the Magister to take part in the occult rituals to attempt this binding, and nobody knows exactly how these candidates are selected; but a magician with a daemon familiar is a man worthy of respect, and fear. Magicians dance the follower role in dances, and do not get to choose partners. Most, but not all, of the magician roles are male. One magician will end the game without a daemonic partner.

Daemons are wild and powerful creatures of raw magic and energy. Scholars continue to debate their true nature - whether they are faeries, spirits, or devils - but all agree that they hail from a world other than our own. Usually, a daemon’s power to act in the human realm is extremely limited. But by entering a contract with a magician and binding their soul to his as a familiar, daemons can make themselves manifest in the human world. A magician who can bind a familiar can achieve awesome power to bend the world, and even fate itself, to his will - but daemons are dangerous and cunning creatures who hold human life in no high esteem, and will attempt to twist the magician who binds them to their own ends. Many a magician has met death, or far worse fates, in dealings with daemons they believed to be under their control until the last fateful second. Daemons dance the leader role in dances and choose partners. Daemons may be of any, all, or no genders.