With Friends Like These - Masquerade Event Review

[Lark]

I had a lovely time. It was super fun to get to play Ralinwood as Lark. Very, very different. Some of my personal highlights:

- Having my fortune told by Kym!
- Singing for Muninn - that necklace is the dopest thing ever. Thank you!
- Playing poker, as usual - Jade's orc was hysterical
- Teaching Kyle and Alex to dance
- Perhaps the only time I have used Song of Aversion in a semi-useful fashion, and it was very amusing to me
- Making friends with Orokgrim and getting saved by him <3 That was such a good save
- Being Lifed by Coleamir. I like him more and more
- Kyle and Justin's wild elves
- Watching Mother learn
- Having a Light church meeting with more than four people
- "Axe time?" "No, please don't." "Axe time?" "No not now." "Axe time?" "No please never ever."
- Seeing Dorian again, and his trickery with skulls
- Getting to hang out with Miahla, and having her Dim away from my love
- "Did I see you get decapitated one time?" "Nope."
- Being a ghoul for all of twenty seconds without a weapon
- I am very impressed with Adam's RP, being an excellent Citadel person
- Having the Citadel around and not just murdering everyone was also quite neat
- I love Emilio so much
- Also enjoyed Emilio and Sir Wren's very reasonable reactions to things like seeing necromancy used publicly
- Turning around to talk to Ursel and finding her lying on the floor dying
- I have never been paid so much to heal anybody as I have been healing Orokgrim one time. ;.;

My cons are similar to the above. I liked the event a ton up until the last hour. For a 'combat optional' event, wherein I was wearing the mask of nondetection because I didn't want to combat, I didn't expect to have a horde of undead told to kill me despite my not sensing as alive. That was irksome. I also felt that nothing we did really had any impact on Mother's thing expect possibly to make it worse. I don't like it when the goal seems to be "do as little as possible, you fuck up PCs". Spending a really long time trying to explain everything to Mother, keep her from being evil, etc., sure didn't stop her from murdering me. The end also seemed very disorganised and I don't really know what happened. Where are we now? Can we Skein home?

I was also super sad that I didn't learn there was a puzzle room until the ride home. I would've loved to do puzzles. I love puzzles.

Overall, though, still great.

[Cora]

Pros:
- So much food for the potluck! I felt bad I wasn't able to try everything, but it all looked so good!
- Heated areas!
-Keeping combat outside the buildings and awnings, thought that was a nice touch for those that couldn't/did not wnt to engage. And props to everyone adhering, pcs and npcs!
-NPCs, though not much, fit in well with the pcs and the event in general

Cons:
- Kiiiiiind of wished the npcs were just a teeny-tiny-itty-bitty bit more engaging to pcs to dance and stuff.
-Also felt that there was no point to the mask mechanic with what happened in the end.
-Had no idea what the heck was going on near the end.
-Felt the ending was muddled and thought it wasn't really the best to end it soft. Was expecting some sort of final battle and then end the night off with music and dance. I just thought ending an originally jovial night with panic and stress from pcs wasn't really the best.

Moments:
-So many people dressed up! Everyone looked so nice- and thank you to all that said they liked Cora's look u//.//u
-Seeing new characters and familiar ones all dolled up was nice~
- Wren: "What are you doing to my sister, old man?"
- Hugs for Demmie and Uncle Gnar (also seeing the orcs fight yay)
- HUGS FOR MY SQUISHY WIZ GRAMPA
- Saving gramps from losing this mask (I GOT U FAM)
- "CORA SIT UR ASS DOWN HERE'S A CHAIR."
-10/10 will fight and firebreathe in a dress again

All in all, this event wasn't perfect, but still had a nice time.