Okay, so. Here's something Pel and I have been throwing around while sitting around in diners, and I'd like to see if it's something other people would be interested in.
Our idea is to bring the Trials to Paradisa sometime in the fall (exact timing is not important, lol). There'd be two main components, so that players could choose to involve their characters in fluffy funtimes, darker horrortimes, or ignore them entirely.
Fluffy funtimes would be the actual Trials celebration. What we know from the books is that one of the major entertainments is a curtain maze you can walk through. We'd plan to port in other entertainments common to festivals during the Elizabethan era, such as plays (morality and otherwise), food, dancing, maybe a bonfire. You get the idea.
Darker horrortimes would be the presence of a serious business maze, a full-on fucking labyrinth akin to the one that Felix, Mildmay, and Mehitabel walk in The Virtu. It's creepy as shit and full of mikkary, booby-traps, and general unpleasantness. (For instance, there's a point in The Virtu where Mildmay can hear his brutally murdered girlfriend calling to him from just beyond a stone wall. Without Felix and Tabby there to pull him away, he would have been there 'til his fingers bled and he starved to death, trying to get to her. Needless to say, that would be coming along with this maze, lol.) And there's something in the center that has to be dealt with. Characters would have to walk the labyrinth and lay the thing in the center to rest.
And since none of this would be a full-on immersive experience (just out on the grounds close to the castle), it would be completely avoidable if your character wants to skip it.
We don't have anything solid written up, but it's definitely something that's been percolating, as evidenced by all this tl;dr. SORRY IT'S SO LONG LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK
Trials!
The Trials of Heth-Eskaladen (generally just referred to as the Trials) are a religious holiday, sort of the equivalent of a Leap Year's/New Year's celebration, in Mélusine in the Doctrine of Labyrinths books. They occur over a five-day period in the equivalent of mid-September in our world and are a big celebration for the Lower City. (The upper echelons don't celebrate because, to quote Monette, "too, too plebeian, darling." Lol.)
Our idea is to bring the Trials to Paradisa sometime in the fall (exact timing is not important, lol). There'd be two main components, so that players could choose to involve their characters in fluffy funtimes, darker horrortimes, or ignore them entirely.
Fluffy funtimes would be the actual Trials celebration. What we know from the books is that one of the major entertainments is a curtain maze you can walk through. We'd plan to port in other entertainments common to festivals during the Elizabethan era, such as plays (morality and otherwise), food, dancing, maybe a bonfire. You get the idea.
Darker horrortimes would be the presence of a serious business maze, a full-on fucking labyrinth akin to the one that Felix, Mildmay, and Mehitabel walk in The Virtu. It's creepy as shit and full of mikkary, booby-traps, and general unpleasantness. (For instance, there's a point in The Virtu where Mildmay can hear his brutally murdered girlfriend calling to him from just beyond a stone wall. Without Felix and Tabby there to pull him away, he would have been there 'til his fingers bled and he starved to death, trying to get to her. Needless to say, that would be coming along with this maze, lol.) And there's something in the center that has to be dealt with. Characters would have to walk the labyrinth and lay the thing in the center to rest.
And since none of this would be a full-on immersive experience (just out on the grounds close to the castle), it would be completely avoidable if your character wants to skip it.
We don't have anything solid written up, but it's definitely something that's been percolating, as evidenced by all this tl;dr. SORRY IT'S SO LONG LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK