Hell Hath No Fury
Ladies Who LRP review
'School Reunion' (also known by its secret title 'Hell Hath No Fury') was a 24-hr time-in, high production value Cthulhu LRP run in Battisborough House in Devon with beautiful accommodation and lavish catering for ten players.
The game was set in 1936 at a reunion of the Old Girls of Battisborough School and had an all-women player base and crew. In the pre-game the Girls were introduced to other players whose characters were at school at the same time as them and were encouraged to share 'school stories' as well as being given detailed info on the school including a School Song, copies of the school magazine, photos etc. The plot team tailored challenges and set-pieces around the backgrounds and skills of the characters. Players knew the school had closed briefly in 1915 after 3 girls had drowned in the sea in a terrible accident.
On arrival players were treated to a cocktail reception and then a 3 course meal before retiring to the drawing room. Their old teacher Miss Blake talked to them about her recent work and they ended up reading a section of a Greek Tragedy in which the chorus summon the Furies. At this point the lights went out, A/V effects kicked in, the wind machine started up and 3 Furies advanced down the hall towards the frozen players and proceeded to murder Miss Blake. When the Furies left the players tried to leave only to discover the storm was too fierce and the operator on the telephone could not hear them.
After trying and failing to revive Miss Blake, dealing with players who had gone insane with fear and searching the house for any clue as to what had happened (and finding a wealth of paperwork, herbs, mysterious artefacts and letters) the Girls decided to go to bed at about 1am.
At 3am they were awoken by three figures in long white nightdresses, dripping salt water and holding candles, long wet hair hanging down over their drowned faces who entered their rooms to the sound of weeping and the roar of the sea. When players tried to speak to them the ghosts came towards them, pointing a finger and the more psychic of the players began to feel as though they were drowning (and sustaining actual damage). The drowned girls left, leaving the players to treat the injured and they were so scared by this point they dragged their mattresses into one room to sleep for the rest of the night.
Suffice to say that with a lot of investigation, pluck, craft skills, seances, music and full-on combat our Girls did eventually get out of Battisborough alive on Sunday. They fought the Furies several times, eventually all learning how to use the school rifles and melting down their jewellery to make gold and silver bullets and gold-tipped spears. They wove a wicker woman as they sang songs of the sea and then set it on fire to summon and deal with the ghosts. They held a seance where they heard the sounds of the Battisborough tragedy as a sea-mist filled the room, found diaries hidden in the back of a painting of the beach and lead curse tablets sealed inside a jar that revealed the horrible tale of what went wrong all those years ago and why the Furies had come for them. They held rituals, cooked a feast, used hedge magic to protect themselves, turned one of their number into an oracle who was horribly blinded in the process, dealt with invisible policemen, went insane and shot the local vicar, had a showdown on the landing with every weapon in the house, dealt with poisons and finally through an epic piece of translation, puzzle solving and craft skills were able to put on a Greek play of their own on the clifftop where they embodied Athena and the Furies and put them once and for all to rest.
