| Lorien Trust/Merlinroute ltd. | |
| Abbreviation: | The LT |
| Founded: | 1992 |
| Type: | National business |
| Field: | High Fantasy |
| Methods: | Proprietary (foam weapons) |
| Services: | Weekend fest events, historically with up to 3000 participants |
Lorien Trust (sometimes abbreviated to LT) is the trading name of Merlinroute ltd., a Live Action Role-Play organisation that runs LARP events at Locko Park, Derby, UK. It runs some of Britain's largest Live Roleplay events,[1] historically claiming to attract around 1,200 to 1,500 to its first three events each year and around 2,500 to 3,000 people to The Gathering.[2] More recent figures are lower, but not in the public domain. It was formed in 1992, originally as a charitable organisation (hence "Trust" in the name). In 1995 it became Merlinroute ltd trading as Lorien Trust. The Lorien Trust has a well established game world, and uses its own set of LARP rules, known simply as the "Lorien Trust rules system". In addition to the four events held per year, the Lorien Trust also sanctions many smaller events to use the same system and game world.
The Lorien Trust's flagship event is The Gathering. It is held over the August bank holiday weekend. The final battle of The Gathering once drew around 1200 players on each side, but recent figures are not in the public domain.[3] These were some of the largest Live Action battles in Europe.[3]
The setting for these events is the fictional world of Erdreja which is described as "high fantasy/medieval".
Erdreja is a relatively free-form fantasy world which imports its concepts from numerous sources including Dungeons & Dragons and fantasy novels. The LT's campaign focuses around a continental region of Erdreja, known as the Heartlands. This region is divided into ten separate kingdoms, each governed by one of the Factions of Erdreja. Each Faction takes its name from an animal associated with that kingdom. Every player character belongs to one of the ten Factions. Characters may also be members of none/any/all of the Guilds.
The ten factions and their main inspirations are:
The fifteen guilds are:
Within the Factions, players organise themselves into semi-independent groups (e.g. The Chaos Guild). Each group usually has some kind of common purpose (a military unit, for example, or a trading company), and many players will put great effort into giving their group a strong identity.
In addition to the Factions, there are also a number of international Guilds, whose In Character role is to provide training and support for members of different professions. Out of Character, the Guilds also help to administer the LT system - the Armourers Guild, for example, handles the creation of player-crafted weapons and armour.
In the early years of the LT, Erdreja was conceived as an open gameworld: players were allowed to play any kind of character they wished. Over time, the problems of maintaining continuity in such a free-flowing system, coupled with the growing prevalence of LARPs with closed gameworlds, led the LT to exert some control over the types of character permitted in the system. That said, there is still a wide variety of races and character roles available to players. The races, like much of the rest of the gameworld, are drawn from fantasy literature:
Erdreja is saturated with magic of various kinds, and spell-casting characters are common. In-character rituals are often carried out by players to create magical items or to further an ongoing plot. In character faith is universally based around ancestor worship.
In June 2011 the Lorien Trust gameworld (more specifically the bears faction forums) was found to be the 385th most visited website by the UK's Department of Transport. This was picked up by various newspapers[4] and the BBC.[5] In October 2012 the Huffington Post[6] posted an in depth article exploring a first-time roleplayer's view of the Live Roleplay scene from the point of view of someone attending the Gathering for the first time and interviewing a number of attendees, charting The Lorien Trust and other systems in the UK.