Birdsong and Spintriae
This was a post originally posted by Lottie, over on the Weather Factory Blog.
What you’ll do
The mysterious man who’s running the Locksmith’s Dream is selfishly on holiday with his children (tch) so it really is Lottie talking at you this time. I wanted to share a bunch more information about our live events coming up in Monmouthshire, UK later on this year. So HOPE YOU’RE SITTING COMFORTABLY!
We’ve talked about the Locksmith’s Dream as ‘a series of live, invitation-only overnight events’, but what do you actually do during your esoteric weekend in Wales? The experience triangulates somewhere between a high-end murder mystery (but nobody dies and you don’t have to act), D&D in a Castle (but we’re not LARP) and occult Downton Abbey (without, sadly, Maggie Smith). It’s a cross between a luxury weekend holiday and a scavenger hunt.
You’ll arrive to find your welcome pack in your chosen room, providing you with instructions, backstory, a badge and a mask, a personal journal and possibly some hidden things to find… Then you’ll make your way downstairs to (probably) the Wheel and Flint Pub to meet your fellow seekers, the genial Bartender and his excellent refreshments, and the Inspector from the Suppression Bureau, who’ll give you the lay of the land. It’s up to you how you spend your time from here: seeking out snippets of Birdsong, outwitting a puzzle-box discovered in the Oak Chamber, braving the fading light outside to find secret things on the edge of the wood, or piecing together scraps of triptychs with your fellows, figuring out the location of a secret piece of lore.
Our Mysterious Man is quite a gourmet, so dinner will be opulent and excellent, prepared specially by the unflappable Cook. And when night falls and the open fires crackle in the halls, you’ll wear your masks, become part of the Locksmith’s pageant, and find the deepest secrets buried in the darkest places of the house…
Where you’ll stay
Treowen is a 17th-century Grade I‑listed manor house in the bosky hinterlands between England and Wales. It’s four storeys of oak panelling, ancient staircases and one secret priest’s hole that’s really hard to find. The Locksmith’s Dream takes place in all of it (as well as, almost certainly, the extensive grounds around the house — including fields, lakes, forests and — sometimes — lil fluffy sheep). But the bit that matters most to people buying tickets are the individual, unique rooms across three floors, all of which come with their own character for you to roleplay as much or as little as you like during the event. So here they are!
(Please note: all prices are for the whole weekend experience and include your room, food, drink and welcome packs etc. Details below may change over the next six months as the project progresses — we reserve the right to take backsies.)
Let me know if anything isn’t clear in the comments! It’s difficult to show such a meandering, beautiful house as Treowen in floor plans alone, but it’ll make sense once you’ve visited.
How much it costs
You can see the usual ticket prices included in the floor plans above: this is how much tickets for the Locksmith’s Dream will cost in December 2022, when we run our first full live event. But we’re also running a beta in October 2022, to make sure everything works in real life as we hope it does on paper (narrator: it won’t). As such, we’re able to offer a low, flat rate for all beta tickets, as you’re helping us make the Locksmith’s Dream excellent. (The beta will be as much like the real thing as we can make it, it might just be a little rough around the edges.)
For the first year, the Locksmith’s Dream is a loss-making experiment. If it works, we’ll run a much larger number of events next year — but for now we’ll have to see how it goes.
