Ars Longa
Ars Longa
A tale of academia, magic, trust, and the use and misuse of interpersonal power. Two mighty sorcerers, who were educated together before their lives took very different paths, must decide which of them must go to deal with a threat to their nation -- in the guise of their former teacher.
For two players and an Orchestrator. Lasts sixty minutes.
Once, long ago as the mind measures time, the greatest sorcerer at the Royal Academy took a student.
Sorcery is a solitary art, and its practitioners have little patience for anything that smacks of cooperation and conciliation. It shall then be no surprise that the Academy should have been a nest of fractiousness and misrule, full of traps and indignities for the untried scholar, and that its greatest artist should have proven to be a difficult teacher. And so...
...the young sorcerer, being both determined and devoted, labored many years at the feet of wisdom, heedless of suffering and travail, and being thus graced with the finest instruction the land could offer, grew swiftly in power and enchantment.
...the young sorcerer, having suffered much at the hands of the wise, at length abandoned the Academy, and endured all manner of hardship and travail, and made a teacher of the high wild places and the deserted wastes, and grew swiftly in power and enchantment.
These stories both happened. It is only that they happened to different people, and very long ago, as the mind measures time.
**********
The Academy lies in flames. Zeric Adaros, once its greatest scholar, has been revealed as a practitioner of dark sorcery - as the architect of the disaster. He has retreated to his mountain fastness, from which he has declared himself the enemy of the land, and the enemy of all who would oppose his rule.
Renn Etrova and Sherial Misrae, both former students of Zeric himself, are the only practitioners remaining whose strength and skill might be sufficient to oppose him. But sorcery is a solitary art, and two allied sorcerers would interfere with each other catastrophically in combat – and even were this not so, they dare not leave the capitol undefended, lest it suffer the same fate as the Academy. And so they have agreed to meet for the first time in many years, that they might determine which of them will go to face their teacher.
Ars Longa is the story of two people trying to face up to their history and choices in a moment of crisis. The conclusion of that tale is up to you.
Two participants are required, as well as an out-of character Orchestrator to manage and oversee the experience. The game lasts for sixty minutes, which are sure to be packed with sorcery, grief, revelation, and hard choices that will determine the fate of a nation.
Written by Kristen Hendricks. Contains some mature content.