Blackwood Questing The Slumber of Kul'Rhex

September 06 - September 08, 2024

Site was Camp Blanchard Y Camp - Sutton, MA.

Event Holders were Matt Butler, Keith Cronyn, Benjamin Lacasse.

Event Description
**IC:**
*A missive is posted in taverns across the Realms*

People of the Realms,

	We send out this missive to alert the populace to a threat we have found in the north-eastern woodlands of Najena. The small lumber village Kul’Rhex on Najena’s Achorian border has seemingly broken out in what we can only describe as a never-before cataloged necrotic malady.
	
	It has taken effect on nearly the whole town and is seemingly beginning to spread to the surrounding areas.  We’ve set our best healers to tracing its roots and finding a cure, but with the sheer volume of cases, this task has quickly overwhelmed our mystics and medicine-men.  We believe it is in our people’s best interest to reach out to our allies and request their aid before this situation can spiral any further.
	
		The affliction can be characterized by an immobilizing wave of lethargy.  Seemingly once it's taken root, the dimmunition of bodily function brings the ailing into a motionless, coma-like state and slows their internal faculties until their body starts to physically and mentally decay.  We’ve yet to record a death with this ailment, but of those who’ve become bedridden, none have recovered, which has entirely decommissioned this small self reliant community of arborists.  We fear what it could do if it were to spread far enough that it reaches a city, and thus we’ve done our best to isolate the town, but we are willing to open the borders to those who feel they could help us find a remedy before it spreads.
	
	We implore our allies to send us their brightest medical and mystical minds, but also must warn that this town is deep in the wilderness, and the woods are restless and volatile.  We trust in your abilities to defend your own caravans, but the wilds across our whole nation have stirred and shifted in the absence of our patron goddess.  Stay on the roads where you can, and where you must brave the wood, stay vigilant.
	
May your travels be safe and swift,
Together, even this we shall overcome.



**OOC:**

Hello friends!  We hope to see you at our first installment of a new venture: Blackwood Questing!

To give a general overview of the weekend for the sake of your planning, Friday we hope to blend the opt-in tight knit world of a tavern night, with a rich heavy questing setting to allow people to trickle in from their real world lives, and fall into our lore rich world. Put simply, there will be quest to do for interested parties, and in the Tavern games and activities for those looking to relax after a long journey.  Specifically, the Blackwood Clontarf Casino will be in the tavern running Blackjack and providing general merriment!

Content on Saturday will start rolling around Noon and feature a full Day and Night quest with a dinner break around 7.  We are aiming for Night Quest to begin at 9:30pm to best adhere to the sites quiet hours (Times are subject to change .  The Day Quest will be a guided, relatively linear experience with some opportunities for diverging paths and Saturday Night we expect to be a traditional dungeon crawl.

On Sunday, we are aiming for an earlier start around 11 am and are planning for content to run until 5pm.  You can expect a decent amount of role playing content with some questing to wrap up any loose ends left from the 2 nights of questing prior.

For those tenting on site, there will be a designated tenting area along the edge of the field (on the fence).  We ask that you please leave the space below the tavern open as we intend to run content in that area throughout the weekend.

We look forward to seeing you all, and hope to enjoy the weekend with you!
Event Wrap-up
**IC**
Friends, Allies, Heroes of the Realms,

	The Kingdom of Blackwood would like to extend its heartfelt gratitude to the many brave adventurers who aided us in curbing The Affliction.  Thanks to you, even the most chaotic and unpredictable parts of our home may know a glimmer of peace and safety.
	
	For those worried about the spread of The Affliction, we are happy to report that its symptoms have begun to fade, and the afflicted have been slowly returning to their lives with the aid of our healers.  We suspect that what had initially presented as a communicable illness was actually the side effect of the leylines being drunk by a foreign entity, an Astral Dragon that slipped the Prisms’ yoke . Once the dragon was slain, and the natural Etherchannels were rebuilt and reinforced, Najeena’s populace almost immediately began the healing process.
	
	Our Kingdom also owes many thanks to those among you who helped our Great Spirits set new boundaries.  A Blackwood without our goddess to guide us has proven to be a difficult reality for many, but to see her life's work assumed by beings we’ve trusted and loved for millenia seems like the perfect first step towards a new normal.  The very earth itself rejoices, and I personally have heard its excitement on the wind.  Though I sense Edaeone’s echoes in the world around me always, I hear the harmony of ancient beings building something new. I hear her voice in that symphony as well, and for this I, on behalf of the Crown, People and Country, know that I have all of you to thank.
	
We look forward to being there for all of you as you have for us in this year's trials.

Signed-
Sir Pilpus Jainrose
The Stag’s Rook
Knight of Blackwood
Squire of the Blue Rose
Squire of the Knights of Garm
Squire of the Knights of the Aberrant Gate
Steward of Eroewan, Keeper of the Grove	



**OOC**
Blackwood Staff would like to thank all who attended our event for supporting us at our first ever Blackwood Questing!

To Our Players:  Thank you for making the trek out, and thank you for participating in this fun episode in our nation's history!  We love getting to lay out our world for you to be a part of and you always make us feel proud to be a part of the community.  We sincerely hope you had a great time and wanted to let you all know that watching you interact with our world this year was our great joy in and of itself.

To Our Staff:  To your astounding work in the studio building this year's quest, to your physical dedication to providing great experiences for our players, we would like to thank you for everything and then some.  We deeply appreciate you all sacrificing your time, energy and bodies to make our event fun for our players.  Without you, there would be no Blackwood anything and with this year’s endeavors more than ever, we as EHs find ourselves so fortunate and loved as to have so many talented, driven people around us every step of the way.  We count ourselves even luckier to get to call you all our family. 

	We would especially like to thank our Kitchen Staff (Liz, Matt, Joe Sims) for providing us with food all weekend and keeping us full and operational at crucial moments.  We also would like to thank Emma, Dani, Kris and Lynna for their artistic contributions to our props department that really took our Props,NPCs and Rigs to a hyper immersive level. And of course, we’d also like to thank our various faceroll NPCs (Cody, Dustin, Dani, Steve, Lynn, Matt, Sean, Anna) for bringing ink to life in a meaningful and fun way that all of our players could enjoy and dynamically interact with.  And of course, last but never least, we extend our deepest of gratitudes to James Murphy for providing our gamblers with a fun time on friday night and for ensuring that all of the props we worked hard on made it to  and from site in one piece.
	
This year has been so chalked full of great times that the Blackwood Staff has gotten to spend with the Realms community and we extend our deepest gratitude that we get to be a part of your world in the same way that all of you are a part of ours.   We look forward to what the Fall season has in store for us, and are even more excited to take on the next year at your side!

Below is a link to a Google form that we use to collect data to improve for next year! If you have the time, We’d appreciate it if you could fill it out for us so we can improve your experiences in the coming year!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdWQ9q42vyJF0bJ5NZbNuYUAtQDwWBlYSM7iEg1R1_wz-9PAg/viewform?usp=sf_link
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