The Story
Let go of all your preconceptions
Release everything that holds you back
Connect to the very core of your soul
Express your deepest passions
Find your voice, and never let it go
In June 1986 students departed from St. Theodora’s to celebrate an early summer holidays with their close ones. Just a few days later, this year’s class of Modern Freshmen made their way to an old villa in the Nordic countryside to spend five days doing all of the above. They sought to get away, to devote these days to this exploration. Will you play a part in this story?
Fragment of a Novel is a larp that could be very different from what you are used to. This larp in itself is about searching for inspiration while we embody characters that act as an alibi to start from scratch within an artform.
We are aiming for living our characters, not playing them. What this means in practice is that we will have very few meta techniques, and that the goal is to not go off game until the end of the larp. Instead conflicts, boundaries and wishes (both the character’s and the player’s) will be handled in character, just as they would be in the real world. Of course, if something that needs to be handled off game occurs, we will break the larp.
About
Have you ever wanted to step into a novel
Spend a week in a secluded manor, free to create
Deepen connection, explore each others’ minds
Dedicate all of yourselves to the moment
Find your passion, in yourself or in others
Fragment of a Novel is a story about friendship, belonging, and the search for artistic passion. It is a slow larp played continuously over several days, with time for resting, decadent parties, and exploration. There will be no big planned events, and no interference from the outside world. What we create together is what will happen.
The larp is set in the Forbidden History universe, but it is a standalone project with its own characters. You do not need to previously have played a student or professor at St. Theodora’s to participate, but we expect you to read the short information text about St. Theodora’s that we send you.
Everything in this larp is diegetic. Characters will be cooking food so that we do not go hungry while we search for and explore our desire to express ourselves, create art and relate to others. Your real body will be your larp body with all the limitations you already have. What happens, happens. If you need to take a nap, your character also needs to take a nap. If you weren’t there for an important event, your character also missed it. Any art you create will be your real art, and your real allergies will also be your character’s. There will be minimal meta techniques.
The larp will have no time skips, no blackbox scenes, or modern technology. We will not be going off game for the duration of the larp (Wednesday-Saturday), unless we need to break the game.
Is this larp for me?
This larp is for you if:
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- You enjoy long, slow larps and don’t usually feel a need to go off game.
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- You enjoy spending time with parts of, or all, of Atropos and are confident in being able to larp with us without thinking of us as organizers, but as players just like you.
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- You want to pursue artistic creation in some form. Writing, sketching, embroidery, poetry, music, drama, painting, pottery. Failing is also pursuing. Being a muse to someone else is also pursuing.
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- You want to fully immerse in a character, and feel confident that you will then be able to extract yourself from the character once the larp is over.
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Practical
Practical
Dates: May 27th to June 1st, 2025
Language: English, as well as your own native language(sIf ) if you wish to use it/them.
Age: 18 years and older
Number of participants: 16, including organizers.
Location: A villa outside Vänersborg, Sweden. We can organize pickups from a nearby train station for those who need it.
Price: 300 euros minimum. If you wish to pay a higher sum to help support Atropos in creating more art, then we deeply appreciate it.
Schedule:
Workshops start at 12 PM on the 27th of May and go on throughout the day
We will go in-game in the evening of 27th of May and continue into the late evening of the 31st of May
There will be de-roling exercises and an after-party after this, and we clean together on the Sunday. You are free leave whenever you wish after 1 pm on the 1nd, if the cleaning is done.
Alcohol, intimacy, and violence
There will be real alcohol at this larp, but not a great deal of it (and we will not buy more if it runs out). We will not shame anyone who does not drink. However, people are allowed to be drunk at this larp and we will be playing on real levels of alcohol.
Intimacy: This is a larp where there will be real kissing and cuddling. However, this should always be clearly signalled, and/or verbally in-game consented to.
This is not a larp where in-game non consensual sex scenes should happen. Sex will be played out using theatrical sex while nude, with some adaptations to make it comfortable and safe. This was tested by both organizers before hand and in the first run and was met with excellent reviews.
This is also not a larp where in-game non-consensual violence should happen either. If characters wish to wrestle, we will use a grappling technique that we will also workshop.
Please note that we are not using “off-game” or tap-out as meta techniques at this larp. Instead we will be practicing using verbal in-game communication, more similar to real life.
This is a larp where the Atropos team can remove you if you do not respect the rules and boundaries set by your co-players. Participants can tell us if this occurs during the larp. In the case where we decide to remove you, we will have a conversations with you and then drive you to the train station.
On Art
The goal of this experience is to co-create a space where you are allowed to delve into your own creativity as deeply as you yourself feel comfortable. We wish you to select artforms that you wish to explore in character, rather than what you think others might expect from you. Though our hope is that people will create things at the larp, this is not a demand from our side. We wish to create an air of inspiration and creativity, and a sense of friendship and belonging. We do not want gatekeeping or a demand of a particular skill level in order to indulge in art. Instead we want to create an alibi for you to explore your own creativity, and to help others to explore their artistic endeavours.
Sleeping
Will be in-game. Some rooms have double beds, some have single and they are all shared with at least one other person. There will also be four camp beds spread out in the house. The house has thin walls, so it will not be possible to get a completely quiet, isolated room.
Accessibility
The house is an old building with stairs leading up to it, and the larp will be played on two floors of the house. The bathrooms and the upper floor of the house are sadly not wheelchair accessible.
Organizers
This larp is organized by Atropos: Carl Nordblom, Petra Lindve, Simon Svensson, and Siri Sandquist.
The Characters
All of the characters are Modern Freshmen at St. Theodora’s. They are young people aged 19–22 who are coming of age and realizing who they are. They aren’t necessarily great geniuses, or worldly explorers. But they are passionate, and they wish to evolve, and to get to know themselves and others.
When signing up we will ask if there’s a particular type of art you are interested in exploring with your character. This does not mean that you cannot pursue other avenues of art, but simply that the character itself will contain motivations, dreams, and descriptions of your chosen artforms. You do not have to be skilled at the artform you select, but we expect people to have a curiosity when it comes to attempting to explore these artforms.
The characters also belong to smaller friend groups, and will have some joint memories from their time at St. Theodora’s.
Here are the preliminary Friend Groups, but they might change a bit depending on the balance among our sign-ups:
The Tortured Poets
I’m trying to find the words to convey my soul. To make sense of the deepest, darkest parts of me by finding the perfect words to describe them. To make the world understand me, as I come to understand myself.
This group became fast friends over their shared love of poetry, even if they had different favourite wordsmiths. During the past few months at St. Theodora’s, they have spent many late nights reading poetry under the bridge by candlelight, arguing about which eras produced the best poets, and which forms of poetry create the most beautiful flow. During this Christmas break they are taking things one step further, by starting to explore their own voices and experimenting with different formats. By becoming poets, and realising who they truly are.
Breaking Free
My whole life, I have been taught. How to play instruments, what techniques to use when painting, what the right steps are in a dance. I have been told what to do, but I have never created anything of my own.
These friends are all over-achievers. From an early age their parents have filled their days with artistic activities and academic pursuits. They are used to always meeting the harsh demands put on them, and making everyone around them proud. Coming to St. Theodora’s they have been faced with the question of who they actually are, when all of those expectations are stripped away. And now they wonder if it is possible to break free from the moulds they have been steeped in, and to finally find themselves as artists.
Exploring Physicality
Words. Always so many words. It’s as if the world is filled with just talking. Treating a mouth as the only thing that matters. Telling our bodies to be quiet, reserved, stiff. Never experiencing anything that completely takes over us, never losing control.
These students push their bodies to the extreme because that’s how they feel completely present. In the zone. And they know it’s easy to look down on them, to say they aren’t true artists or scholars. Luckily, at St. Theodora’s they have found a place that thinks that genius comes in many forms. That being connected to your body is a thing of marvel, and that the directions it can push you in are things your brain would never think of. That there is something deep within the fibres of your being that will challenge you to go further, deeper, and to become better.
A Final Note on Characters
Whether it comes to artform, friend groups, or even joint Secret Societies, your characters are not locked in those constellations. This is an intimate larp where new friendships and relationships can easily form and where we expect everyone to be comfortable playing with the rest of the group. We wish the creation of art to be collaborative, just like the interactions between people are collaborative.
Atropos (Carl Nordblom, Petra Lindve, Simon Svensson, and Siri Sandquist) is the organizer of this larp, but all organizers present on-site will be fully playing characters for the duration of the larp, and we expect you to treat us as you would if we were regular players.
Sign Up
After you have signed up we will send you a flagging form. There you can tell us if there are any people on there that you would consider dangerous to have at the larp (red flag), if there’s someone you would not be able to attend at the same time (in that case we will see who gets selected in the lottery/casting), and if there’s someone you would not be able to play a very close relation with but are fine with having at the larp (yellow flag). We might reach out to you for clarification if needed.
We cannot guarantee that you will be cast with certain people.
Sign-up will be open until the 1st of January at 23.59, so that everyone who forgot to sign up before New Years have a time to do so…
