Sorry for the awfully long post (six pages in a text editor...).
I made a quick photoshop gallery with my photos.

This Easter weekend Matthijs and I went to Bladel - Ten Vorsel, 'De zwarte schuur' - for a Dummnoni event. Celtwood, the search for Boudicea.

Friday

Boudicea is the ten year old daughter of Athea; our (the Dummnoni) queen and Ard Rhi of all the free races. Boudicea had touched a silver orb and disappeared and in despair her mother, our queen, followed. A group of brave men and woman directly followed the queen while I, Tegwen, my husband Maddox and a few others of the Arkeesh and Usipeti took time to pack up camp supplies before jumping in after them.

We reappeared in a different realm and set up camp, hoping that our fires would guide the heroes (hopefully with our queen) to us. Not long afterwards we heard howling in the surrounding forest and the voices, shouting, of our kinsmen. Without enough fighters to protect us we didn't dare venture out of the camp to meet them, so we awaited them with fear and hope in our hearts. When they entered the camp there was joy but also anger. Gwynneth of the Usipeti hit her husband, Lore, over the head with a fish because he had left her, pregnant and all, behind while Una of the Arkeesh and Deirdre met their cousin Gobáwith laughter and shouts.

The camp was now nearly complete with the Arkeesh, Usipeti, Norse and us Dummnoni. Only the Red Branch were missing.
Unfortunately the queen and her daughter were not with the group and the war leader of the Red Branch and his clansmen stayed behind as well. The group had encountered wolfmen and undead creatures and a man that was captured in a field of Wyrd energy.

We set out to free the man that was trapped in the Wyrd field in the hope that he would be able to provide us with some information as to where we were and where our queen and princess could be. This proved dangerous because the undead that were trying to get into the Wyrd field had stolen a bag from the man and he needed that to free himself. How weird his story was, we helped him and disabled the undead. We didn't have any fire at hand in the forest, or a big axe, so we couldn't eliminate them completely. However, at some point we had them down on the ground and every time one of them moved again (they seemed to regenerate) we hit them again.

We took the man back to our camp and he told us that he was from a tribe, not a clan, called the Grey. There seemed to be a second tribe as well, the Greg, and he didn't have any good word for them. Somewhere that night the Brehan and the Arkeesh and their War Leader came in as well. And then queen Athea appeared, together with an old woman called Lilith. We sat around the fire and exchanged stories when Lilith suddenly insisted on reading the future of the Brehan from his hand. He refused, but when she got hold of his hand, he disappeared with a bang. Lilith seemed taken aback by that and didn't seem to pose any threat, until suddenly she approached the queen, who backed away but not far enough. Lilith got hold of the queen and bit her, for which she was slain and her head chopped of. Her body was burned.

The queen began to act strange. She became very violent and started saying things that made no sense coming from her. Things like 'Thank you for this beautiful young body', which convinced us that she had been taken over by something. We subdued her and bound her for her own and our safety. The man of the Grey told us that we had to put the amulet the queen was wearing into salt, so we did. He also told us to sprinkle salt round the camp to prevent undead entering. Without second thoughts we believed him.

Putting the amulet in salt didn't seem to help anything. The queen still acted strange but suddenly seemed to be herself again and wanted to be cut loose, which we refused. On an unguarded moment she charmed the war leader and ordered him to free her, which he did. The queen disappeared. So now we didn't have the queen or the princess.

A horde of undead attacked the camp, we didn't sprinkle the salt yet, and while Maddox ran that edge of the camp to sprinkle salt around he was suddenly out of nowhere attacked by a wolfman. They struggled but the beast wouldn't let go, not even after he had been hit several times. The fear spell that Gobáused on it only seemed to work half but it was enough to get him off of my husband. While Una was healing Maddox, he gave me the bag of salt to finish what he had set out to do, and with worry in my heart for the man I love most, I did as I was asked. It did not seem to have any effect but I don't know it that was because of the undead already being in the camp or the Grey who had lied to us.

Even though the Grey had told us that the wolfmen could pass their shape-changing curse by biting you, Maddox didn't change. I thanked Danu for that.

It was dark and late, we had wounded men and damaged armour and the world outside of the camp was clearly hostile. We postponed searching for the princess and our queen till the next morning.

Saturday

After we all finished breakfast the man of the Grey walked into our camp again and explained that our queen was possessed by Kyrin. He told us we needed to find the Tear of Innocence so they could help us perform a ritual with it to free our queen. After that they wanted to keep the Tear.

After the Grey left, we followed the Red Branch scouts into the forest to a tree where they had found tracks of a child. The rain, however, had washed a lot of the tracks away so we couldn't see where they went. We searched the vicinity of the tree but didn't find anything and thus returned to camp in separate groups. One of the groups encountered two men of the Greg who were mourning the death of a woman. They said they would bury her and then come to our camp to talk to us, as we requested.

Later an old man with a cap decorated with antlers came into our camp to answer our questions. He told us that more gadjin (non-Greg, outsiders) had come into this realm but they all had quickly died. None had ever left. He promised us to help us find a way out if we would assist in a ritual to cleanse the lands. For that they needed the Tear of Innocence. We told him we needed the Tear to save our queen and asked him if he could show us where it was. He went away to his people to ask permission to show us the way and returned to guide us to it.

On our way criss cross through the forest we encountered a weird blue-purple skinned creature that called itself Mogul and chased us away from the place saying that it was dangerous there. Maddox, stubborn as always, made a circling move and passed the creature while it was busy chasing others away to see what was in the copse of trees. He found there the queen and princess Boudicea at a pick nick. Quickly Mogul turned and chased Maddox away from the place, saying that his mistress wanted to be left alone. Meanwhile the old Greg had turned around again, following his magic imbued staff, and Maddox ordered me and a Red Branch warrior to stay put near the copse to make sure that the princess and queen didn't go anywhere. Then he went off after the others to tell them that he had found the princess and help them get the Tear of Innocence.

It took a long time before the Tear was obtained. Some undead creatures guarded the thing and had to be defeated first. When the warriors returned we surrounded the little pick nick, to great distress of the Mogul creature. Some of the men tried to attack the queen in order to capture the princess, but the queen - wearing Dummnoni woads but in red instead of green - used powerful Wyrd to protect herself and her child. There was no way we could get close to them. So most of our group went back to the camp. I however - under protection of a Red Branch - stayed to talk to Mogul, trying to get him to tell me anything that could be of use.

He told me that he had found his new mistress the evening before after the old one had vanished and that he had also found the girl in a hollow tree. He had taken the child with him and brought her to his mistress, who seemed very please with that. I asked him what his mistress wanted and he answered that she wanted to be left alone with the child to enjoy their pick nick. Of course I wanted to know what they would do, or where they would go, after that and Mogul, saying that he liked me, went to ask them. However, after he asked the question the queen threw her cloak around herself and the child and all three of them disappeared. Not much wiser I returned to camp.

Back in camp all of the Arkeesh and some Usipeti went a bit away from the camp to open the box they had obtained, which was said to hold the Tear of Innocence. When they opened the box they were thrown back and fell vast asleep. They couldn't be awoken by slapping them (with a fish), throwing water over them, feeding them chocolate, singing a sad or happy song, nothing. Inside the box was a sphere in which the reflection of a crying child was visible. The Usipeti hid the Tear inside their tent.

Not long afterwards Mogul brought princess Boudicea to our camp. He said it was the wish of the mistress, so it had to have been the queen who was herself again. Boudicea told us that she had received a gift from her mother and her mother had been normal at that time. The gift was a ball with puzzle pieces all over it, but they didn't make sense. I called upon the goddess Danu and the powers of the earth to help me detect whether the ball was magical, but it wasn't. All I noticed was some magical residue on the ball and the child, a sign that they had been near some vile magic.

With a group of people that were picked by the princess we tried to solve the puzzle, but it turned out that one piece was missing. Meanwhile some Greg entered our camp trying to trade stuff. Then some Grey entered our camp as well and both groups started insulting each other. Lore came with the idea to do a gambling game to settle the matter, and they did. After that an egg-catching contest followed and then it was time for dinner.

After the meal we sat around the fire, cleared the camp a bit and protected stuff from the rain. We also sang a song* until the Greg came to take us to the Blood ritual to cleanse the land. So we followed them into the forest where they had made a circle of light and asked one person of every clan to give blood to the land, only a little. They were cut in their hand while the ritual leader chanted something and then they all took up the chanting "Blood, Lust, Love" while walking around the circle. Then a man was sacrificed, his heart and intestines ripped out. It was really horrible as blood flew around, spattering on all of us.

After the ritual finished queen Athea, or should I say Kyrin, appeared with a different servant asking to give her the orb (the puzzle orb). She mentioned she was locked up here by Oberon and Puck and she needed the orb to get out. We told her that the orb was useless because there was a piece missing. Then someone mentioned that perhaps the missing piece was in the egg that we had gotten from one of the Greg and of course then Kyrin wanted the egg. When we said we didn't have it she got very angry and made all the metal we were wearing, in my case an amulet and my belt buckle, heat up. Then she sent undead after us so we fled back to camp.

One of the Red Branch was bitten by Kyrin and his kinsmen used the Horn of Turning on him. That horn, when blown, made shape-changers turn back to their real form. The man that was bitten started lashing around wildly and screaming, he even threw Kinnead out of the tent. Then all of a sudden Kyrin was inside the tent with him and she sent her servant out to fetch her someone. Fate chose me. I was taken into the tent and shown the power of Kyrin, she made the Red Branche writhe with pain. She told me that I had two minutes to return to her with or without the orb and the Tear of Innocence. If I didn't bring those things back with me, she would do to all of us what she had already done to the Red Branch man.

Fortunately the Usipeti didn't give me the asked artifacts and my loving husband held me back from returning to the tent. But then Gobáwas drawn into the tent and Gwynneth as well. When Gwynneth came out she directly got the orb and the Tear and went straight back into the tent with it. But the queen didn't let us go. The people who had been inside the tent, including me, were drawn towards a place in the forest. Though it took me a long while to escape the grasp of my husband. Then we were given badly formulated commands by our Red Branch leader. We were turned into Leannan Sidhe, life force stealing creatures. We couldn't be harmed by anything but blessed weapons and holy water and we had a great dislike of garlic.

After a lot of chaos and trying to get the people one by one out of the camp to our master, Lore passed me and pressed wax into my ears so I would no longer hear the commands. I slowly became myself again.

Sunday

In the morning we were visited by a fae called Boromo, the Dreammaster. He offered to take us into the world of dreams where we could find Kyrins dream and kill her to free queen Athea. We all gathered around the central fireplace and chanted "Fire, fire, burn it higher it's the dreamwalkers desire" to get into our collective dream. Princess Boudicea went with us.

In the dream we encountered Kyrin in the body of our queen. When Boudicea ran into the arms of her mother to get a hug she very quickly turned around again screaming "Kill her, she's not my mother". Kyrin was protected by an undead creature and a hairy stinking monster. A lot of men were charmed to fight their kinsmen and thus had to be knocked out, which decimated our group. When finally the monsters were slain we had the chance to put Athea's crown on her head, which made her appear herself again. However, we knew that the Kyrin was still inside of her so we took away the crown again and with the Bone Dagger tried to kill her when she turned again.

When Kyrin was slain and her body disappeared the Dream Guide told us that it was now our dream, but however much we wanted to find a way home, we couldn't leave via a dream and leave our bodies behind. So we chose to wake up again.

When we were awake we saw queen Athea approach the camp, but she was walking as if asleep or undead. She didn't respond to our calls. Then Boudicea mentioned that the necklace she was wearing belonged to her mother. Upon asking she told us that her grandmother had worn the necklace as well, so it was clearly a family heirloom. Maddox took the necklace and put it around the neck of queen Athea, who bent double and shivered. She seemed to become alive again. Boudicea hugged her mother and then queen Athea started crying. She was clearly herself again, so we took her into our camp and filled her in on what had befallen her. She in turn healed a lot of our wounded.

Queen Athea brought us the silver puzzle ball again. Since we still had not found the last piece of the puzzle and we had no idea where to look, Maddox tried to melt some steel and bloodstones to fill in the gap. When the last drop fitted into the gap Maddox disappeared. Clearly it had worked. When I noticed his disappearance I quickly threw all our belongings into baskets, chests and bags and asked Lore, who held the ball in a piece of cloth, to send it after me. Then I touched the ball and was sent home again.

When we were all in our own realm again suddenly the queen started screaming and stepped away from her daughter, who had suddenly sprouted fangs.... And thus ended this adventure.

OC

There were only 30 participants (crew and monsters included), mainly due to the fact that this event was only announced two months ahead, it was the Easter weekend and it fell together with Omen. That in itself was a shame, and I was really glad to see some familiar faces (the Usipeti, Max (Gobá, Lorenzo (Kinnead). I suggested the crew that more promo couldn't do any harm, since they are only to be found on their own site. They aren't even on the larp calendar. A lot of people still think that Dummnoni is on invitation only and that it is really hard to get into the game, even though that was only the first two events. But no-one will ever learn better if they don't visit the site, and why would you visit the site of a game you can't join anyway? There was little information beforehand, we had to mail the organization on Thursday evening to ask when we were welcome at the site and we heard only our starting point at the time in briefing, which was late because of a missing player (who was at the wrong site and finally went home when nobody showed up....).

Next to that the plot was very slow this time and very linear. There were not many ways to solve the problems (find Boudicea or the queen, find the puzzle piece, find a way to get out, wake up the box-openers) without help from an npc. We had lots of time for cooking, that was good, but next to that we still had to wait a lot. It did give me ample opportunity to repair the armors that people brought me and do some sewing for myself. I earned quite some money.

We did a lot of cooking: made porridge of oat meal, water and raisins on Saturday and pancakes and baked apple on Sunday for breakfast. Soup on Saturday evening. We had subscribed for the barbecue but when we heard that no other players were attending, we unsubscribed again and chose to cook our own food, of which we had way too much so we shared with the Red Branch players. Even though I'm quite proud of our equipment (baskets, chests, tripod and cooking pot etc.) it was a bit 'basic' compared to what the Usipeti players brought. They even made pie twice for desert! They used a Dutch oven, and now we are considering buying one too. They also told about Dumnonni England (yes, different spelling), how cool and different it is there. With blood and gore and no "don't use fake blood on my costume" like we have here. I'm curious, perhaps I'll go there some time, but it is rather expensive to participate and you have to go there and back again too.

* The song went like this:
And a <nice cup of tea/ warm leather vest/ dark bloody ritual /fill in anything> wouldn't do us any harm
And a <whatever you though of> wouldn't do us any harm
And a <whatever you though of> wouldn't do us any harm
And we all hang on behind
And we row the old longboat along
We row the old longboat along
We row the old longboat along
And we all hang on behind
Repeat with new lyrics.