The Leviathan special was not canceled so last Friday I drove to Uden with all the gear of my healer Enid, plus some decorative stuff and lots of lanterns. Matthijs did not join me because he had a concert that evening and he did not know what Mottul would do at a special like this. That felt weird. But Cora and Rene would be there, so all would be well.

I was the first person on the grounds, except for our SL's. Made my bed, ate the bread I brought and waited for the rest to arrive. I was a bit apprehensive when I found out that some of the people that I had hoped to see as players were actually npc's. Like the Dvergar men and Baerwhyn. Still, in the end the player group was big enough and we had lots of 'useful' people with us.

There was plenty of fighting this weekend and thus a lot of healing to be done. Even a few fatals and at some point I was right in time to cure Ceryni of a disease that was turning him into a zombie. Enid was kind of shaken by that experience, and that was not because she was vomited all over by Ceryni. Feeling someone turn to a walking corpse while you're fighting the disease that is doing it is hard.

I was very glad that bandages can heal some damage now too. They were needed. I have washed and dried (yay for sunny weather) about 8 bandages I think, so I could reuse them. However, on Saturday night I had bandages and even some mana left because that final battle of the weekend could not be won by us.

Backlight and too much undead that kept standing up (even when they were decapitated) prevented us from reaching our goal (and sometimes reaching the wounded too) and in the end Rydgar (Rene) decided to call the retreat. Most of us were badly wounded and had been running around in circles trying to stay out of the hands of those stinking corpses. It was chaos.

That night we lost Ceryni. Which shook Enid even more. She liked the man, he was good to talk with and quite good looking too. Enid is blaming herself a bit for his death. She just could not get to him in time because of all the walking dead surrounding them. She was once so close, she could (should!) have darted past that one shambling corpse and saved Ceryni. But she was too scared. (She would probably have died with him if she had tried, but she's ignoring that)

So, disheartened we went back to camp to lick our wounds. Rydgar tried to lift our spirits a bit. We had only lost one man, it could have been so much worse. Still, Enid could not shake the feeling that they had gained nothing in that last battle yet lost a good man. And she could (should!) have done something about it.

So, emo, emo... Fortunately Oog (Verik) suggested to play "Wortel en Waarheid" (truth and carrot) which is quite a hilarious game. It's like truth or dare but there's no dare. It's a questioning game; you ask someone an (embarrassing) question which has to be answered truthfully. However, if you do not want to reveal the truth you may stuff your mouth with carrot and speak with your mouth full so that nobody can understand what you're saying, which makes it all the more hilarious. This lifted Enid's spirit a bit.

For Brenda however it was not such a good idea. It meant that I went to bed around 04:00 and I felt sick. My stomach was bothering me. I now know what "her bowels turned to water" means... It appeared to be a food poisoning (however there was no vomiting or nausea and it did not stop when there was not much left to dispose of), but Sunday afternoon I was still ill so it might have been a virus. Whatever it was, it did not allow for a good night's rest and I was worried about the 1,5 hour drive back to Enschede. Fortunately, that went well enough. I think driving is a bit like sports: it gets a bit of adrenaline going so that the parasympathetic nervous system gets laid low and digestion is put on hold.

It took me till Monday afternoon to get better. The stomach cramps had subsided the night before, but I was still weak. The bicycle ride to town to sign our civil partnership (we now officially live together!) exhausted me. In the evening I felt much better and we made the pizza's that had been planned for the Sunday.

I bought some Loperamide which will from now on accompany me to LARPs. At the Dela 'fruitwisseling' I had been ill too, so if this is a promise for the rest of the year... I'll be prepared. Still, I'm looking forward to the LARPs this year. First we'll have the Symbols epilogue and the weekend after that the Moots where we'll continue our quest to finish of Wulthgar.

We now have 3 of the 5 'emotions' that Wulthgar wants to get rid of: compassion, faith and doubt. Saturday night we were looking for humility and then we'll have to find out what the last one is. These pieces correspond with wooden sticks on a board, which will in the end probably from a pattern of some sort. And then what?

I am glad that we did not solve the whole problem this weekend. The teaser text kind of suggested that the npc's would come to solve our problem entirely, I'm glad that it was not the case, though they did help a lot. They may have found us a bit dense every now and again. But that's players. ;-)