Ahoi! - Czequestria 2017 part 2 - The LARP

Friday, August 18th 2017 was the day before the opening of the gates of the actual Czequestria and still this day included many of the highlights of this event. It was the day of the Live Action Role Playing event which was set for the most part in Prague's Obora Hvězda park.
It was the first time for me to participate in an actual larp, but I had made sure to wear selfmade cardboard wings, mostly brownish clothes, a lyre and a helmet to play my pen and paper rpg OC Leafhelm.
The weather played along fine that day and it was a lot of fun to solve the tasks and receive riddles from the various characters of both human world and Equestria who were part of the plot for the LARP. The planers, organizers and non-player characters participating in the larp deserve a lot of thanks and credit for their hard work. It gave many bronies a really awesome day.
We were assembled in groups of six and it was made sure that the groups didn't consist only of people who knew each other already. I think there were about 30 groups of six or so. Ours was "Team Redheart".

I'm not going to go through all of the tasks provided by eleven pony or human characters during the LARP (also not to spoil the fun in case the basic setup of the LARP is used again during another event), but I will refer to some of the particularly creative and enjoyable tasks.

For example we had to cheer up Rainbow Dash by providing an improvised Daring Do theater play for her. We came up with a plot about the "water of harmony" (a bottle of water we had along) which would grant one wish of any kind to whoever drank it, but which was protected by the "helmet of harmony" (provided from my cosplay), which was set on top of the bottle and could only be lifted by somepony of no evil intentions. Daring Do's nemesis Caballeron in this play had an extremely strong henchpony, but one so stupid that he might lack any actual evil intentions and might therefore capable of lifting the helmet to make the water available for Caballeron. Unwilling to take the risk Daring Do lifted the helmet herself, but was then attacked by Caballeron and his cronies and might have lost the water of the extremely dangerous power but for the intervention of Rainbow Dash and Scootaloo. Not willing to allow for any further risks for Equestria and aware that even a well intended wish for greater good might cause unintended harm, Daring Do drank up the water wishing for... a Muffin

A task for Miss Cheerilee gave a bit of an advantage to our group which made a friend of mine who happened to be close by, but in another group joke about the unfairness of it . Miss Cheerilee's task was about gathering some information about the history of the place (based on monuments and history boards nearby). Thing is that there was a lot about the Hussite Wars on which I had done a lot during my history studies. Fanatic historian that I am, I started holding a history lesson untill Miss Cheerilee told me to stop.

Apple Bloom's task was about folding a paper boat and let it race other paper boats on a brooke. Ours (named Curtie Cruises) came in second of three and in a rather submarinish fashion, but the "Cutie Cruises" came with an origami Apple Bloom for a crew.

Zecora had stopped rhyming and struck a rather zynical and negative tone telling that she was going to quit. Our task was to come up with some verses for her. Here is what our group came up with (later on we realized that the cure for Angel Bunny mentioned in our verses was not really our task there, but that he had only eaten up all of Applejack's carrot harvest, so he was in need of diet rather than a more specific cure):

Dear Zecora, what ails you?
For never have we seen you so blue

Is there any help that we can give?
We'd be happy to so so,
this you you can believe.

More ills have befalen this land
and also the world of humans of the fingered hand

We fear that everypony's unhappiness
may cause in both worlds a giant mess

You say you will quit
but that's horse... anyway

We want to help you recover your rhyme
But can you help us, that would be fine

Angel Bunny has fallen ill
not recovering for all Fluttershy's goodwill

To help Fluttershy (not the bunny so much)
We're looking for a cure
can you offer such?

One task for Rarity was about designing three pieces of Pony fashion because she was out of ideas. This is one drawing I came up with poking a little fun at Twilight by placing my OC's helmet onto her head and dubbing it an egg-hat:

In the end the way of the Larp lead us out of to Obora Hvězda park and onto Bílá Hora (White mountain) which I found particularly interesting since that mountain was the site of one battle in the 30 years war. I'm going to do a presentation on the 30 years war next year, so during the stay in Prague I was always looking for references to the war which was triggered there. Anyway, here is a little photo of our group on top of Bílá Hora with the certificates that we passed the larp:

The planers and organizers of the Larp, the players of the NPC characters who gave us the tasks and riddles and the particpants too have given many bronies a really awesome day there to which we will remember fondly for a very long time.
Thank you very much for this
...and the main Czequestria hadn't even started yet!