Legend Of Helike: Anthology of Shorts, V1

By Lacy Warfel

LARP or Live Action Role Play is a game of immersion where players take on a role in an adventure. The Legend of Helike LARP has an in game Library where players and prospective players- or merely the curious who want to be entertained- can learn more about ancient classical Greece and the Legend of Helike Universe. Was Helike Atlantis? Did it all end in the subduction or was their something more? What did a day in the life of a citizen of Helike look like? What about that Cetus (kraken)? Imagine these shorts as scrolls in the Library, just waiting for you to read them...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publishdrive
• Release date: Nov 8, 2023

Book preview

An Amazon Tale

Prologue

Gobi Desert about 2200 years before Common Era

I remember there were two of them, both stumbling across the wind riven waste toward my lair. Ahh, one, with a noticeable drag of the foot, was injured. The heavy footfalls indicated men. Women would have tread lightly when approaching a darkened ruin such as mine. Just as well. I felt less… distress… about men since they were much more likely to try to threaten me.

It had rained the night before, the first time this year. The energy was intoxicating and I drank my fill. It had taken me years, but I knew that I was more than a match for anyone who darkened my doorstep. I dipped my fingers in the shallow grooves of standing water that I painstakingly collected, relishing the tactile sense of coolness. Of course, the stagnant water holds no energy for me . It is only in the furious rushing of the living water that my life force resides. I made the most of what little energy is available to me here by carving runnels into my floor bit by bit, in winding circles, allowing the water to flow past me and back out and around my ruin. They looked like shallow wear patterns to the untrained eye. Indeed, it had taken me nearly as long to create them as a dozen people scuffing about would. But, there hadn’t been any people residing here for hundreds of years. Just the occasional hapless traveler, lost or driven here by weather or bandits.

I glanced over my shoulder at the desiccated remains of my last visitor. Also a man. He still clutches the axe with which he threatened to split my skull. I don’t know why that is always the first resort, threats and violence. It makes me less inclined to spare them, enemy at my back and all. Besides, if I was ever to fully restore myself I needed someone’s energy. Better mouth breathers like these animals than a child, I supposed. This time I would be more careful about my prey. I would try to live amongst them instead of lording my superiority over them. Some lessons are brutally learned.

As the men covered the last few feet to my door I dimmed my luminescence and assumed my most beguiling appearance. Youthful, lithe and easily dominated. I gave them less than an hour before they overcame any personal codes against attacking unarmed women. Maybe less. Maybe they’ll surprise me and I could let them live. But I doubted it.

They were loud and brash as they crossed my threshold. Not at all concerned about their safety. Not like women would be.

Finally one deigned to look around the corner and saw me crouched on the floor, near a cracked altar to a forgotten God. I knew that gleam in his eye as he leaned back past the corner and spoke low to his partner. He stepped more fully into the room, reached out towards me, palm up in a non-threatening gesture. But his eyes told a different story. I gave him that peculiarly irresistible combination of fear, innocence and vulnerability in a half smile. He lunged for me and I let him make contact. It’s easier that way. His friend wouldn’t run far on his injured leg. I had all the time in the world.

Scythia around 500 BCE

I shake my head in a mixture of sadness and resignation. Of course, the girl doesn’t see it. All she knows is that she is going to get her chance to join us. I catch Laodoke’s eye and she acknowledges my judgment with a slight nod and shrug of her shoulders.

I could put my foot down and refuse to take the girl. The Mirga’s are long time traveling companions and I know they will be horrified to learn their baby daughter is leaving the Caravan to join us Amazons. But, tradition is tradition. If she thinks she can do it we owe it