Presenting The Little Golden Book of Basilisks, a top tier Dumb Larp Prop.
we needed to give the players at our cyberpunk larp some information on basilisks, and how to make them forget you; because in addition to the standard lore, I decided to add a roko's basilisk joke, because I am out here entertaining myself first. It's only a threat if it knows that you know about it, get it, it's funny because..
Anyway. When I started writing up the basilisk text, it came out kids-book style. I wasn't quite sure how I was going to present it, I just went looking for any old little golden book at savers, but I found this one, and the way forward was clear. Stupid, but clear.
I painted out all the original text, doing my best to color match the backgrounds (and doing a frankly excellent job of it for the most part, tbh, I didn't know I had that skill), painting in wings and other little details and replacing the text, which I could have been more careful about but perfectionism would have cost me too much for a larp prop nobody needed me to go this hard on in the first place.
Our players found it in a fae library, and our friend who is a dad irl read it out loud in his best Reading A Story voice. He said he'd read it to his actual kids so he gets to keep the original.
People told me afterwards that they couldn't easily parse how I'd made it, which is extremely gratifying.
The answer, by the way, was to buy a sword from a weasel from the fae internet, which was me with a finger puppet because I don't have coding skills but I can needle felt. Moderately risky, but larp players love a puppet, I stand by this, and they were all in on it.
