The Divine Fleet

RPG system: LARP
Participants: 1 GM, 10 players

By

✏️	July Pilowsky
	July Pilowsky

Description

In a society where spaceships are gods and their pilots are oracles, the broken gods and visionary oracles of the Divine Fleet work together to unpack the traumas of the past and decide the direction of the future. This is an intimate game of dances and decisions.

About sixty years ago, the people of the Divine Fleet lived on a planet they called Home. By then, it wasn’t much of a home to them. The peoples of the Fleet lived in places beset by climate disasters that a cruel and indifferent ruling class remorselessly left them to suffer. Moved by their plight, the gods of the suffering people made themselves into spaceships and evacuated them to wander a nomadic route through space.

Today, the gods suffer from the trauma they experienced while evacuating their people from Home. The chosen oracles of the gods make difficult decisions about the future of the Divine Fleet, while also trying to help their gods emotionally process what happened to them on a planet the oracles have never seen.

The Divine Fleet consists of a few workshops to establish backstories and to practice dancing safely with one partner blindfolded, followed by gameplay that alternates between intimate partnered dances, and scenes of hard decisions that the gods made in the past and the oracles make in the present. Sometimes in these scenes players will play characters other than their main character.

Players of The Divine Fleet must be comfortable with partnered dancing, reading some material in game, religious themes, being partially mute (if they play a god), and being blindfolded (if they play an oracle.) Because the partnered dances involve one blindfolded partner and a lot of trust between the players of the god and the oracle, I recommend that you sign up with a partner (but if you don’t, I will help you find a partner in game.) There is no particular dance style required, nor any skill or experience in dancing needed. The point of the dance is as a form of emotional expression.

The aesthetic of this game is space fantasy, and you are encouraged to manifest your Jupiter Ascending persona.

Participant communications
There will be a casting form. Both the casting form and character sheets/bluesheets will be short (character sheet and bluesheet will each be two pages at the most.) There will be some reading to do in game, as a set up for playing scenes where you might play a character besides your own for a short while.
Content warnings
Content depicted in the game includes religious themes, natural disasters, climate grief, climate refugees, death, racism, sexism, and ableism. None of the main characters of the game perpetrate the racism, sexism, or ableism.

The game requires players to be blindfolded (if playing an oracle) or mute (if playing a god) in selected scenes.

Played at