THE story so far: the orcs have stolen the Nightmare Stone from a
small group of mages carrying it to Drakame. Badly wounded, a mage
staggers into the village and calls for help . . .
Cue stirring music and bring on the ScotRail engineer, the satellite
dish shop manager, the computer software engineer, and 20 sundry other
fantasy role-players to save the day.
Deep in the Queen Elizabeth Forest Park in Aberfoyle, the battle raged
for three hours yesterday under a slate black sky as mean as an orc's
heart.
Watched by unsuspecting walkers out for what they thought was a quiet
Sunday ramble along the park's waterfall trail, goblins, orcs, uruks,
warlocks and hobgoblins fought over the destiny of the Nightmare Stone.
At the end of the day it was left to 29-year-old Alun Clarke, the Elf
Guildmaster, to mark the scores and seal the fate of the world.
Elf, or Eskyenor Live-Roleplaying Fellowship, was formed last year in
Aberfoyle. A member of the Spirit of Adventure Network, it is the only
live-role-playing group in central Scotland.
Yesterday's foray into the realms of the imagination was its second
stint in the park, the forces of good and evil having had a warm-up the
day before.
Mr Clarke, 29, who in real life works for ScotRail on signal design,
said: ''We hope to hold the role-playing games every three to six
weeks.''
But, let's be right up front with this, did not he and the other
participants, including the computer engineer, age 35, and shop manager,
age 20, not feel like great pillocks instead of orcs?
Mr Clarke said: ''No. You feel great playing out roles.''
Mr Kevin Rutter, 35, from Wolverhampton, a computer engineer turned
elf for the day, agreed. ''After 12 years playing roles I feel more
comfortable dressed as an elf than I do dressed in civvies.
''At the end of the day role-playing helps you get rid of your stress.
You also get physical exercise and can take out any pent-up anger by
beating the living daylights out of someone with a fake sword.''
To the winners of the day would go the phys reps. The what? ''Physical
representations,'' said Mr Clarke producing what looked like a few
coloured marbles.
Not much of a prize, you might think, for a hard day's night saving
the world. But elves were never ones for material rewards.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article