Alliance LARP Colorado’s Character Background Submissions and Lore!
Hello, ACO Community! Today’s blog post will cover an important item of business for both new to Alliance players, and those bringing an existing character to our new realm - worldbuilding and backstory submissions! Without any further ado, we’ll get right into it with a talk about the lore we are dropping today, and how we plan to release more in the future. After that, there are lots of details to cover about our new, streamlined background submission process. Let’s get right to it, shall we?
Alliance LARP Colorado’s story will begin in the Luminous Empire within the realm of Chiaroscuria, an ancient kingdom on the cusp of disaster its people have ever seen - but it will soon stretch beyond, into the swirling patchwork of the campaign’s long term setting; The Shattered Lands. Much of the information about the setting will be veiled by design until players uncover it live at ACO games, as discovery and exploration is a major part of the setting’s intrigue, so bear in mind that what we release today is just scratching the surface - there’s still a world to discover!
These are relatively light information packets, designed to give players a chance to get characters started, and get us through season 0, but they do not present the full depth of the planned information we want to provide. Over the winter and spring, we will be working diligently to fill out the various game locations with more locations, details, and flavor. If you want to wait and see what comes from that, we recommend looking into the Fatelost background option. Keep your eyes for updates in the coming months!
As mentioned, 2025 will take players to the Shattered Lands; a mysterious and unique new realm about which precious little is known. Within the Shattered Lands, distinctive locations are called Fragments - the twisted remnants of what used to be entire realms, pulled into a swirling graveyard of dead and dying worlds. Travel, communication, and trade between individual fragments is difficult, and individual fragments tend to be relatively isolated compared to regions in other realms; in game, your characters will have plenty of opportunities to uncover the nature of why this might be.
If you’d like to check out currently released worldbuilding information, head to https://www.alliancelarp.co/lore to check out culture packets for the three Shattered Lands fragments we are offering for starting backgrounds, plus a primer on Chiaroscuria. Just remember - If your character doesn’t come from the new setting, they would have no reason to know any of this exists in-character yet! Future worldbuilding and lore releases will be deposited on the same page as they would become accessible to character in-game; Once the campaign first arrives in the Shattered Lands, this lore database will represent the information that would be generally available to a character via common and public channels of knowledge. The plot team’s goal will be to maintain this webpage as a living database covering everything there is to currently know about the realm as more information is uncovered and unearthed.
Now it’s time to dive into backstories. REMEMBER: YOU DO NOT NEED A SUBMITTED OR APPROVED BACKSTORY TO ATTEND AN ACO EVENT!!!!!! While we firmly believe it will enhance your experience, it will never be required.
At the core of our backstory submission process are two player resources. First, the backstory submission page on our website located here: https://www.alliancelarp.co/backstory-submissions . Next, once you’ve gone through that and the worldbuilding pages linked above and feel prepared to submit a backstory of your own, follow this link to submit a backstory for your character: https://forms.gle/a9e18CovTsP27gRX6
Considering the unique nature of ACO’s setting and campaign, we gave careful consideration to the ways in which players might introduce their characters to the setting, and came up with five distinct options, each catered towards a specific situation and given as much flexibility as possible. While there are nearly limitless options for how to bring your character into the setting, there ARE some limitations to what you can do with an existing character that it’s important to remind people about. The most important of these is that we are strictly unable to change or rewrite an existing character’s backstory; all returning characters must remain the same person, with the same past and identity. Anyone not wishing to carry an existing character forward into ACO’s new campaign is instead welcome to opt for a character retirement, allowing a new character to enter play with 50% build. While new players are allowed to rewrite their character’s card after their first 6 logistics periods as a PC, this similarly does not allow you to change who a character is or what experiences they have had; only their build can change.
As always, anyone with questions or concerns about the character backstory submission progress should reach out on our discord server, or send an email to the appropriate team. For backstory related questions, that will usually be plot@alliancelarp.co . With our first event coming up on August 17, we can’t wait to see what backstories everyone submits for their characters!
See you in Chiaroscuria,
- Katie B
