Leaving Mundania: Inside the Transformative World of Live Action Role-Playing Games
Exposing a subculture often dismissed as “geeky” by mainstream America, Leaving Mundania is the story of live action role-playing (LARP). A hybrid of games—such as Dungeons & Dragons, historical reenactment, fandom, and good old-fashioned pretend—larp is thriving, and this book explores its multifaceted communities and related phenomena, including the Society for Creative Anachronism, a medieval reenactment group that boasts more than 32,000 members. Author Lizzie Stark looks at the hobby from a variety of angles, from its history in the pageantry of Tudor England to its present use as a training tool for the US military. Along the way, she duels foes with foam-padded weapons, lets the great elder god Cthulhu destroy her parents’ beach house, and endures an existential awakening in the high-art larp scene of Scandinavia.
For a bored, young princess of Xanth, there's nothing more exciting than a Quest. Especially when all you do is sit around Castle Roogna. But when Ivy uses the Heaven Cent, it takes her not to the top of Mount Rushmost, where the winged monsters gather, not to the sea where the merfolk swim--but to Mundania, a world much like out own (that is, boring). It is here that she meets a young college student so dull that he doesn't even believe in magic, or princesses, or Xanth!
Does he have a lot to learn.
The thrilling climax to the trilogy started in Vale of the Vole and continued in Heaven Cent.
When all hell breaks loose in Chicago, Eva Dantanian, top agent for the Demonic Management Agency, is the first one called to help. The 700 year old daughter of a fallen angel enjoys working out her frustrations kicking demon ass ... until her mission puts her in a race to save a missing child.
When family becomes foe and foe becomes ally, deep secrets and betrayals rip her family apart. As the pieces fall into place, Eva is faced with the horrible truth. To save the innocents under her protection, she must kill one of her own kind.