Sometime early in 2001 a bunch of us from CAWS and the Fight School decided to try fantasy LRP (aka bashing people with rubber swords). For some of us it was a return after many years, while for others it was a whole new experience.
For this great step into the unknown we decided, after much discussion, to go to Curious Pastimes' Renewal event over the August 2001 bank holiday weekend. A chaotic frenzy of buying and making ensued as we tried to kit everyone out in some sort of acceptable style (with various levels of success).
As a group we formed a new mercenary company - the Lion Azure, based on the mercenary company from Mary Gentle's magnificent science fantasy novel ASH: A Secret History (with Mary's full permission). It seemed better to go as mercenaries rather than joining one of the established factions as this would give us some independence from the faction politics. This was especially important as we didn't know much about any of the factions involved (even after weeks of searching through all the web sites we could find, for some reason the factions didn't seem to think it necessary to publicise their world views and what made them different from the others) and even if we did want to join a faction we probably wouldn't agree between us about which faction to join anyway.
The event itself was absolute chaos at first as we trickled in over a couple of days. Highlights included pitching tents in the dark in the rain on the Thursday night; the realisation that a couple of candle lanterns just doesn't produce enough light to work or cook by; and the traditional realisations that we'd forgotten the tin opener and hadn't brought anywhere near enough mead. Most of us were completely lost at first - we knew nobody there and had no idea what we were getting ourselves in to - though there were a couple who had been to these (or similar) large events in the past. It didn't matter that we were new, people went out of their way to make us feel comfortable and even the overworked organisers in the GOD tent managed to put up with our occasional inanity without exploding. Unfortunately Mary (Speaker to Boss) couldn't make it, but hopefully she'll be able to join us at some future event.
Given the group's general enjoyment of the event we decided to go to more Curious Pastimes events and this website is the result of that decision.