Welcome to Five Oaths, and the land of Tirneach! By joining our game, your character will be a Gallóglach, essentially a Very Special kind of mercenary who fight as part of a Band, sworn to serve the ruler, the deity, and the realm!
As part of creating your character, you’ll need to answer a number of questions on their background – some of these are multiple choice (species, realm of origin), some are more free-form (family life, greatest fears). But one of them is a little bit of both:
“Why did they choose to join the Gallóglaigh and how did they qualify?”
Since we’ve noticed that this question is a bit harder to answer than others, we wanted to write this guide going through the options, along with some examples of answers to that question, and what levels of setting knowledge/experience they might be suitable for.
Who can become a Gallóglach
The Tiarnaí
This is the “official”, hard power structure in Tirneach – 1 Réig, 4 Iarlas (one for each realm besides Uasa) who answer to them, then many Riders who each answer to an Iarla.
In Crusader Kings terms, think King > Duke > Count. We’ll obviously have a lot of questions for you if you want to be related to one of the Iarlas (let alone the Réig!), but being the child of a Rider is a totally valid character option.
One important thing about Tiarnaí titles is they’re very rarely inherited, so the children of the Tiarnaí must seek to make their own name – often as a Gallóglach! This also means that it’s easy and common to have Riders from all Species, even those newer to Tirneach.
The High Families
These mostly represent the vestiges of the power systems that existed before the first Réig arrived in Tirneach – they’ll overlap in some way with the Tiarnaí, and maybe even each other, but are much larger in scope and represent a softer kind of power.
For detail on the individual options, take a look at this post, however the short version is that these represent the “high society” of Highland Baol, Siabhal & Uasa, along with nearly all members of the Drakeblooded species.
An important thing to consider is that while cross species breeding is impossible in this setting, adoption is extremely common and acceptable – adopted children are no different, legally or socially, from natural born ones. So there’s nothing stopping a species less common in a region from being a part of the High Families, i.e. a Krieger being “descended” from an Uasan Chieftain
Fostered as part of a treaty
Common in Tirneach is the practice of enforcing a treaty or agreement by fostering children from the other party – either as an exchange to bring the sides closer, a hostage to keep everyone honest, or both, or neither. A couple of examples are:
- Theon Greyjoy in Game of Thrones
- Liam in a Crown of Candy (Dimension 20)
- Lugh from Irish Mythology
- Vlad the Impaler from History
Fostered children would thus be raised among the other families. Whether their loyalty in later life followed nature, nurture, both or neither is entirely up to you and the story you want to tell! Regardless of the status of the families, children raised this way can all become Gallóglaigh if they so wish.
The Leasair Species
All Leasair can be Gallóglaigh. While this is ostensibly in order to accommodate “candled” leasair who do not know their own history and so may qualify under one or more other categories, it applies to all members of the species.
The Weeping
All Weeping can be Gallóglaigh, due to an ancient decree from the first Réig, called the Atosu edict (Atosu being the in-game term for when a corpse starts bleeding from the eyes and sits up).
Recommended by a Gallóglach
Finally, any Gallóglach, be they active or retired, can recommend that an otherwise unqualified candidate be allowed to become a Gallóglach. This doesn’t necessarily have to mean joining their band, though the sponsoring Gallóglach might want to keep a close eye on the candidate, as their actions will no doubt reflect on them, for better or worse.
Ok, but what should I pick?
So it’s possible that by now one of the options above is speaking to your soul, and a backstory is already unwinding in your hindbrain. But if it’s not, or you just want to feed it some more, or you’re nervous about whether the idea works, then read on!
So one of the things that seems to drive people’s decisions here is the amount of setting knowledge they have, how much they feel is expected, and how much they want to learn in play. That makes a load of sense – the world of Five Oaths can be kind of overwhelming, especially if you’re new to LARP. To that end, here’s a few ideas pitched at various levels
I don’t really know the setting
Maybe you’re totally lost, or maybe you just want to learn things as your character. If you want a character concept that gives you a lot of leeway to be unfamiliar, there’s some options available.
Be warned, though, with these options there will still be an expectation of some setting knowledge – as it says above, there are oaths you swore to join the band, and it’s expected that your character knows enough to have made those with informed consent.
Newly Candled Leasair
Our longest lived species, the Leasair, have a magical ritual they use to make their life span more tolerable, called “The Path of Many Candles”. You can read more about it here, but the short version is that, in order to deal with the pains of a long life, Leasair can choose to lose their memory and begin anew.
On top of that, any member of the leasair species can become a Gallóglach with no other qualifications needed. So playing someone who has recently candled is a great option for someone who wants to learn the setting afresh with the band. Not to mention, the essential phys-rep requirements for leasair are quite simple (wearing pointed ear tips)
Sheltered Upbringing
On the other hand, you don’t have to have amnesia to not know the setting! Most Gallóglaigh are drawn from the upper echelons of society, as detailed above, and it’s perfectly reasonable to play, for example:
- The child of a rider who was a helicopter parent, now becoming a Gallóglach to escape
- Someone raised as a hostage/foster, who had limited freedoms to stop them running off
- Someone from Bruid, for whom the outside world was just too dangerous
- A member of a Drakeblooded house who lived a simple life despite their “proud heritage”
Remember, in the Gaelic/Early Medieval setting of Tirneach, having status or a title doesn’t always mean that you’re swanning around in court, it can also be something more down to earth and practical (especially in Bruid).
Just a lil guy
If neither of the above is your speed, it’s also possible to become a Gallóglach by referral from another Gallóglach, instead of how you grew up. This can be another player, or an NPC – The Gallóglach referral isn’t specific to the band they belong to, it’s a blank cheque to join the band of your choosing.
So you can just as easily play Aoife the farmhand who saved the life of a Gallóglaich by clobbering a wild animal with a pitchfork, and was offered a chance at a greater life outside her village!
Weeping
(Not recommended for beginner LARPers)
Lastly, a similar, but also very different, option to a candled Leasair is to play a Weeping. Weeping are not a species, but are instead members of one of the other species who (despite definitely not being Undead) appear to have died and then risen again, with no memories of their former lives, and with skills and abilities that they did not have before death.
While playing a weeping gives more flexibility than the above option, they have other complexities – for one thing, a more onerous physrep requirement, of blood seeping constantly from their eyes. Perhaps more challenging though is the social position – the Weeping are very much outsiders in Tirneach society – not everyone accepts or trusts them, and they can find themselves drifting away from – or even being forced out of – the communities they, or their body, had belonged to. As such, we don’t recommend this for players who are new to LARP.
Ok, I want to know more than that, but still not much
If all of the above options seem like they’re a little too restrictive, but you still don’t feel comfortable with your level of OOC knowledge, that’s a-ok – there are some great ways to give yourself familiarity with a portion you can go deep on, while still building in blind spots to discover!
I know one of the Realms really well
This is definitely the easiest option, and can be done well as an expanded form of “Sheltered Upbringing.” Most of the riders and high families in a given realm are probably more invested in intra-realm things than inter-realm things, so that can easily be what you care about.
I know one particular area (politics/magic/combat) well
Again, this is super easy to make work – we all know someone who can recite pi to 100 digits but can’t rewire a plug or name the 32 counties. It’s totally ok for your character to be hyper focused on courtly intrigue, military tactics and strategy, the nature of how magic works, etc.
In fact, this is probably something that’s relatively easy to justify as a member of the upper crust who’s had the opportunity to be super focused, because they had people for other things!
I’m not from round these parts
(Not currently available for Orohogar)*
There are two neighbouring countries it is possible to have come from, although they are reachable only by an extended and dangerous sea voyage:
- The Scandi-Germanic Schlachtfeld to the west, ancestral home of the Krieger,
- The Spanish-inspired Orohogar to the East, where the Firetouched first came from.
While most of the Krieger & Firetouched in Tirneach would have been born here or come here long ago, it is possible to play someone who’s quite new to these shores – this would mean having a fairly deep knowledge of what that nation is like (we’ll provide some additional information to help with that), but only shallow knowledge of Tirneach.
Importantly, though, we expect this type of character to have been in Tirneach for a while, in order to make their oaths “properly”. This is why we consider this more of a “less knowledge” path than a “no knowledge path – you need to learn both settings to a higher level than some of the options above.
We do also want to reiterate that if you just like the species and cultural notes, many Firetouched and Krieger are born in Tirneach, sometimes to parents who are newly settled, some to families that have been established in Tirneach for many generations, but like all immigrant cultures, keep some traditions alive.
Additionally, the voyage from there to here is a major undertaking in the setting of Five Oaths, and you should not anticipate ever travelling (in uptime or downtime) back to your homeland. If your character ever decided they needed to return, facilitating this would probably be a matter of retiring the character.
*Wait, why isn’t being from Orohogar currently available? Recently we’ve received a significant number of character submissions with this background. While this isn’t at all a problem, we want to pump the brakes on it a little, so those characters feel as special and interesting as they should feel within Tirneach. Sort of like how if everyone is Drizzt, no one is Drizzt.
Wait, nevermind, I want to know even less
Some players want to play a character who knows little to nothing of the setting, and learn about the setting in play. Unfortunately, that’s not something we’re comfortable supporting for player characters in Five Oaths. Building a meaningful, real feeling setting means having everyone on the same page, at least a little bit – otherwise it can have a negative impact on everyone’s roleplay.
That said, we’re not going to turn anyone away, so if you’re totally uncomfortable with any type of setting knowledge, but still want to play in our world:
Monstering
Five Oaths, like most field LARPs, only works because of a dedicated team of what we call Monsters, and what might elsewhere be called crew, skirmish team, or NPCs. If you come along to play the game this way, we’ll be sending you out to play Everyone Else who isn’t the player party, and we’ll be providing you with a brief before you go out every time. We’re not going to give you a brief you aren’t comfortable with, and there will always be options that don’t rely on setting knowledge.
Additionally, monstering isn’t a forever commitment – maybe you’ll try it for your first game, and then have enough grounding to go for one of the above, or some other kind of character. Or maybe you’ll have caught the bug and go read everything we’ve written. Or maybe you’ll keep on monstering – some of our monster team have been here since Day 1 and are still having too much fun to switch to playing!
Whatever you decide you want to do, you’re always welcome to reach out at info@fiveoaths.com with any questions or concerns – we look forward to hearing from you.