Foreword

These are tales from the spring Swordcraft Quest in 2019. The events really happened as described, and the dialogue actually was as written, to the best of my memory. Credit goes to a man who played Barbarossa in the following tales for the suggestion to take memoirs of the events. Every word and action was improvised. The other characters will have their own memories and perspectives. Some names may be wrong or absent because my memory is imperfect, and there are hundreds of people at Quest, each with at least two names. Please send emails to steve@elysianforge.com to correct or add details.

Flynn is a name given to me by a member of the Canberra LARP groups, a man who played Linden at Quest. Apparently I have a "Flynnishy" sword fighting style, and the name has been a source of many puns ("Flynn it to win it") for years, but he has never been a character until Quest. The first Tale of Flynn describes the very first time I have played Flynn, and Quest is the very first time I have even attempted to role play a character in any meaningful sense.

I also play Sayeed bin Faqim, who runs the tea shop/underground arms dealership with his business partner Izkander ibn Bashir, played by Anthony Jurd. Together we run the Elysian Forge.

During the day, for most of the event, Anthony and I had the tea shop closed to complete orders for our crowdfunding backers so that they could receive and hopefully make use of them at Quest. I work full time at the Elysian Forge, and right up until the day we left for Quest, I had spent nearly 3 weeks straight working at least 12 hours per day including weekends to prepare the crowdfunding orders.

Flynn wears a floomfy white shirt, a knee length burgundy velvet coat with the collar popped, tight black leather pants, gumboots (they'd be real leather boots if I had time or money), a shark tooth fossil on a leather thong around his neck, a crocodile skin sword belt, and a black eyepatch on his right eye. He speaks with a rather terrible and inconsistent American accent.