Event Horizon: Summit
YMCA Camp Hi-Rock, Mt. Washington, MA • 11/01/-11/04/19 

From the deepest Miasma to the shimmering Veil, everything is in its place. 

Summit is a collaborative sci-fi larp about social order—why it is upheld, and how it is broken. With toxic fog on the surface of the planet, and clean air only atop mountains, Zé has developed a hierarchical society where fresh air is the greatest currency. The Sunken class must dive into the dangerous miasma to scavenge resources upon which society depends, while the Peakborn rule atop the mountains. The Unmoored merchant class floats between the two on airborn raft-towns.
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When the classes gather at the mountain's plateau for a yearly ceremony, it’s supposed to reinforce everyone’s place in society. This year is different. This year, they find something new in the fog. When you’re born into your role in life, what does it mean to change your future?

REad the game overview

Planet Zé
The Miasma. The Haze. The Clear. The Veil.

Zé society is as divided as its atmosphere, split into three castes—the Peakborn, the Sunken, and the Unmoored—each with a radically different way of life. The three are symbiotic, each relying on the other two for survival, but nonetheless each caste resents the others, and has for as long as anyone can remember.

Read about the setting

Characters

The Peakborn
The Peakborn live in cities atop Zé’s mountains. They are the ruling class, providing structure for Ze’s culture, economics, and politics. The Peakborn make up almost half of Zé’s population, though they are distributed very unevenly from mountain to mountain. Up in the clear air, culture and humanity can flourish. The Peakborn are organized primarily by large families, and families have distinct domains such as martial power, academic disciplines, or luxury goods. Since power is so monopolized, the main form of political structure is agreements between families, and agreements between mountains.

Peakborn families similarly have agreements with the Unmoored guilds, who provide transportation for people and goods. It’s not uncommon for young Peakborn to spend a year aboard a raft-city, working and seeing the world. There are also agreements with Sunken families, which is the backbone of the economy. The Sunken grow almost all of the food for a mountain, as the richest soil is in the Haze. They also harvest natural energy resources from the Miasma. A strong Peakborn family is one who lives in harmony with the Sunken, providing health and happiness to the Sunken while creating the most out of the resources in the Clear.

Play this for an experience that features:

• High status, high tech, high glam
• Regency-ish socio-political play
• Glamorous and luxurious
• Direct political decision making
• Juicy drama
• Ceremony and ritual

The Unmoored
The Unmoored (often colloquially called Drifters) originated as the transportation guild of the Peakborn. They harnessed native blimp-like creatures called zeppelids and rode them, bringing people from peak to peak. As time went on, they learned how to harvest the gas that the zeppelids produce and trap it, using it to create giant floating raft-cities. The cities are mostly migratory, following the cycles of wind and moving between the various mountain ranges.

Unmoored raft-cities are very independent from one another, each one tending to operate as a large family or guild. There have been a few occasions of raft-cities going to war against one another, but those tended to be brief. The Unmoored’s one export (besides transportation) is entertainment, as raft cities have a thriving culture of storytelling and performance.

Unmoored guilds have trade and transportation agreements with Peakborn families of multiple mountains. There are no such agreements between Unmoored and Sunken. The most time a typical Unmoored spends with the Sunken is when packing up food and resources to be shipped to the Peakborn.

Play this for an experience that features:

• Malleable status, code switching, social manipulation
• Roguishness and piracy
• Performance and theatrics
• Eccentricity and ingenuity
• Negotiating and indirect political decision making

The Sunken
The Sunken are a subordinate caste, living in the Haze below Peakborn cities. They wear specially-designed environment suits called fogsuits that allow them to survive the deeper Miasma. Their towns are built with various filtration systems to keep the indoor air as clear as possible, and when working outdoors the Sunken wear fogsuits or simpler masks. Oxygen tanks and fresh air are luxuries reserved for emergencies, children and pregnant people, and those who are sick—but not too sick.

The first Sunken fogsuits were made from pieces of exoskeleton hunted from creatures that dwell in the Miasma. Artificial fogsuits now exist, as do air-filtering evolutions, but their role in Sunken society is complicated. Regardless, even the best fogsuits are imperfect, and all Sunken develop symptoms due to lifelong low-level exposure to their toxic environment. These symptoms manifest in different ways, from respiratory issues to memory loss to cracking skin.

The Sunken exist in uncomfortable symbiosis with the Peakborn. Many resources necessary to Peakborn life can only be found down on the surface, so the Sunken serve as harvesters and miners, journeying down to the foothills and flatlands in the toxic fog on regular expeditions. The majority of agriculture also needs to be grown near the Haze, where there is more topsoil. Peakborn families have long standing agreements with Sunken families, which govern the exchange of resources for medicines and other necessities. These familial bonds can last generations.

Play this for an experience that features:

• Low status, low tech
• Scavenging, diving into the fog
• Making the most out of desperate situations
• Tight family bonds
• Sad drama
• Unexpected allies
• Discovery

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Sub-Groups

Peakborn Divine Voices
The Elements created this world, and it is to the Elements that we turn for guidance. For generations your family has been servants to the Zénese faith. Each year at the Summit Festival, you guide the people in ritual and ceremony that reifies values and seals the promises of contracts. But your duties go beyond upholding tradition—with more contact with the lower castes than other Peakborn, Divine Voices shape the story of the mountain. If the Divine Voices represent the story of Zé, then the Sunken Idols represent the natural Elements. Both sects of the religion work in harmony, though often separately, interpreting the signs and guiding the communities towards a better future.


Peakborn Noble Families
As the Peakborn gentry, you sit at the pinnacle of society both literally and figuratively. The noble families of Ze have existed for generations, consolidating power and ruling from the heights. Some of you are military leaders or politicians, and some spend your days in rounds of concerts, balls, and garden parties. But don’t think that means your lives are simple--Zenese high society is a delicate dance of alliances, betrayals, and generational discord. Most noble houses have ties to Sunken families through patronage, and have forged contracts with Unmoored merchants to facilitate trade. The lower rungs of society are just as important to your survival as you are to theirs, although you probably wouldn’t admit it in polite company.

Unmoored Performing Troupe
Life on the floating cities of Ze’s skies is a battle against the winds, but on calm nights when the lanterns have been lit and the raft has been set to coast, things slow down. That’s where you come in. You are poets and storytellers, dancers and acrobats. You stage elaborate shadowplays using the skies as a backdrop, trading tales for a room and hot meals. Most performers are the member of a permanent troupe that travel from raft to raft. As such, your transitory nature makes it easy to blend in, and your captive audiences make it simple to spread new ideas. After all, they say art can change the world.

Unmoored Merchants
On a world where cities are separated by countless miles of thin air, you connect the Zenese mountaintops to one another in trade. Emerging hundreds of years ago from a transportation guild, prominent families emerged, cornering the market on various goods. Most merchant clans have ties to one or more Peakborn families, existing in a symbiosis that is based on business rather than love or loyalty. A single raft city may play host to more than one merchant clan, as there is safety in numbers. Pirates roam the skies, and are a regular and severe threat to the wellbeing of these floating cities, and to respectable commerce.  

Sunken Fog Divers
Growing up in the Haze comes with its fair share of difficulties--respiratory problems, mineral deficiencies, and general griminess. However, there are many in the Sunken caste who decide to make their living diving even further down into the atmosphere, down to the Miasma. You are known as Fog Divers, and yours is a highly-respected, highly-dangerous, and highly-necessary job. A large amount of food resources are found in the Miasma, as well as valuable technology left behind by older civilizations, which are harvested and sold to Peakborn families. Fog Divers survive the toxic atmosphere with Fog Suits, which are adapted from Ancient tech.

Sunken Artificers
On a world where natural resources are scarce and clean air is a priceless luxury, you are the grease on the wheels of Zenese society. Utilizing parts scavenged from dives into the Miasma, Artificers use a complex blend of engineering, artistry, and wilderness survival to create new devices to make life on Ze more comfortable, including Fog Suits. Many Artificers have business relationships with specific Divers; they bring the Artificers scavenged tech, and and the Artificers use it to improve their tech. The very best and most successful Artificers might be raised up out of the Haze to live among the Peakborn in a private contract with a noble family, but this is a pipe dream for most of you.

Sunken Idols and Attendants
The Elements created this world, and it is to the Elements that we turn for guidance. Fog Idols and Air Idols are special Sunken chosen at birth, and through them the community prays for safe diving and cleaner weather. Fog Idols are exposed to the Miasma, but through their divine ability they survive and are marked. Air Idols, on the other hand, are kept as clean as possible. Idols are supported in their faith work by Attendants, who are sources of knowledge both esoteric and practical. The Idols and Attendants work in harmony with the Peakborn Divine Voices to uphold the values of the Mountain; and each year during the Summit ceremonies, the Idols give visions from the Elements themselves.