Lorien Trust 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, attracting around 1,200 to 1,500 to its first three events each year and around 2,500 to 3,000 people to The Gathering. It was formed in 1992, originally as a charitable organisation. 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 normally draws around 1200 players on each side. These are some of the largest Live Action battles in Europe. The setting for these events is the fictional world of Erdreja which is described as "high fantasy/medieval".
The Great Erdrejan Fayre - A sports championship themed event, previously known as the Heartland Games - Held on the Spring Bank Holiday.
Summer Moot - Usually held around the first or second weekend of the Summer Holidays
The Gathering - Lorien Trust's flagship event held on the Summer Bank Holiday.
Erdreja
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 ten Guilds. The ten factions and their main inspirations are:
Within the Factions, players organise themselves into semi-independent groups. Each group usually has some kind of common purpose, 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 Mages' Guild, for example, handles the distribution of spell-cards. 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:
Other (Which encompasses anything else a player can make an acceptable costume for, including; Golems, Genies or Garthim. Though only in very special cases are the related attributes of these races applied to the character. Along with the races there are many skills that can be chosen from to personalise a character, such as healing or spell casting.
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.
Media references
In June 2011 the Lorien Trust gameworld was found to be the 385th most visited website by the UK's Department of Transport. This was picked up by various newspapers and the BBC. In October 2012 the Huffington Post 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.
