Bonds UnbROken

A paired larp about the ties that bind us
21-24 August 2025, Ingestre Hall, UK

For centuries since the magic of the Lightspinners brought the world out of the Cataclysm, the Hall of Light has been their home and sanctuary. From there they broker peace and turn the tide of wars, heal the sick and injured, study and learn, and keep the world safe from an ancient, inescapable curse: that any man who tries to wield magic will cause untold harm.

But though their work is perilous, they do not face it alone. A Lightspinner is always accompanied by a Warden, a mighty warrior who is their ever-vigilant guard and companion, and the pair are bolstered by the fabled bond between them that lets each feel what the other feels.

Now the Hall of Light is in great danger and they will need to muster all their strength. Magic is acting unpredictably, erupting into the world causing chaos and disaster, and an empire that blames the Lightspinners is marching on their gates with terrifying new weapons to subjugate or eradicate them.

Can the Lightspinners uncover the source of the disturbance before it causes a second Cataclysm? Can the Wardens keep the empire from destroying what they are sworn to guard? Will their bonds keep them together as everything they hold dear is threatened and their world crumbles around them?

Practical

21-24 August 2025
(2pm arrival, 11am departure)

Ingestre Hall, Stafford, UK
(bus from Heathrow available)

60-65 players

55 X Full contribution: £300

5 X Discounted contribution: £75

5 X Understudies: £75

Includes dormitory accommodation
(Limited smaller rooms and accessible spaces available)

Includes meals from Thursday dinner to Sunday breakfast

Sign up starts on October 14th and will be open for 3 weeks until November 4th. You can sign up solo or in a pair with someone you want to play bond partners alongside. The sign up form will ask your character preferences, and players will be chosen through a combination of role allocation and lottery to ensure that everyone who gets a spot will be playing something that matches what they’ve asked for.

The Experience

Bonds Unbroken blends the heroic and the emotive, letting you steer the fate of the world while putting your character’s individual drama front and centre. The story is traditional epic fantasy with modern values at its core, and you can expect trials, tragedy and triumph along the way.

You’ll play the inhabitants of the Hall of Light at a time of danger and uncertainty, using powerful magic, deft politics, astute investigations and clever tactics to shape the future. With no chosen ones coming to save the day, Lightspinners and Initiates, Wardens and Squires must all play their parts in setting the course of history.

Against this backdrop, each character will have their own story to tell. The close partner play of a magical bond that lets you feel another person’s emotions will be at the heart of your personal arc, but that will be deeply interwoven with other characters and navigating those relationships is a huge part of the larp.

Want to get a feel for things? Watch the Wheel of Time TV series, especially the Aes Sedai episodes, and read the Locked Tomb series and the Broken Earth trilogy.

Themes

Epic Fantasy

Impossible magic, mighty warriors, politics, war, and a world in peril – Bonds Unbroken has all the staples of epic fantasy. What it doesn’t have is absolute Good or Evil, just the consequences of people’s choices playing out across the ages.

The Bond

As an intense but not necessarily romantic connection, the bond lets players explore types of relationships that don’t always have the time to flourish in larp, like becoming ride or die friends in the time it normally takes to declare your love.

Non-traditional gender roles

The curse on male magic users means that all the Lightspinners are characters of traditionally marginalised genders, flipping the script on who holds concrete authority within the Hall of Light while the outside world is still firmly patriarchal.*

War, conquest and control

The threat of subjugation by a hostile force and some exposure to some of the horror of war is present from the start of the story for everyone. Throughout the larp characters will face choices about whether they will use their own power to control others to keep themselves safe – or for personal gain.

*A note on gender: The character’s gender as far as the curse goes is based on self identification – any character who considers himself a man at the time would be unwise to attempt to use magic, but everyone else is safe to do so, even if they were assigned male at birth.

Wardens can be any gender, and any player can play a character of any gender.

Larp Style

This is an international style larp that focuses on the interconnected relationships between pre-written characters and NPCs. The majority of your time will be spent interacting with others – perhaps confiding, politicking, collaborating, arguing, manipulating, interrogating, declaring your love, or whatever else suits your story.

You might take part in rituals, lessons, tactics, combat and so on, but there are no numbers or game skills dictating how those activities go. Any action scenes will be played in theatrical slow motion, usually with pre-negotiated outcomes.

Your closest play will be with your bond partner, and even the characters who aren’t bonded at the start will get to experience it during the larp. There are metatechniques to raise your awareness of each other and represent feeling what the other feels.

There will be workshops to go through everything you need to know to play and there is no mandatory preparation before the event except for reading the provided materials, though talking to your bond partner is highly recommended.

Play Bonds Unbroken if you want:

Epic fantasy with both triumph and tragedy, conflict and community
Intense emotional play with your bond partner
Pre-written characters with entangled relationships
Explorations of flipped gender roles and non-traditional relationships
A mix of transparency and mysteries to uncover
A collaborative, play to lift ethos
To help foster a safe and inclusive event

The larp isn’t for you if you want:

Lots of action or combat
Numeric systems to determine how interactions turn out
To compete with other players for particular outcomes
Exact reproductions of any of the larp’s inspirations
A focus on sex or physical intimacy
To avoid topics of fantasy war, violence, colonialism, control, sexism or unwitting complicity
Inescapable misery OR untarnished happy endings

Safety

Safety is always a top priority and it is our aim to build a welcoming and inclusive play community.

The larp will use a shared set of metatechniques to help communication and boundary setting, and a dedicated safety team will be available during play hours if you need to talk or decompress.

However, we can’t control everything that happens, and we aren’t mental health professionals. We ask players to be proactive in taking care of their own needs and supporting each other.

Accessibility

The venue is mostly accessible and has a small dorm that can be reached by lift.

Lightspinner and Initiate characters are playable by anyone regardless of mobility needs. Wardens and Squires need to be able to climb two flights of stairs to reach an upstairs play space, and should be able to jog gently across a room and swing a larp weapon with enough control to fully pull the blow.

The team includes people with physical, sensory, and processing disabilities and we’re happy to discuss how we can accommodate player needs.

The Team

We’re a team of designers, writers and producers mostly based in the UK, who have larped extensively both at home and internationally and have been running larps at different sizes and formats for decades.

Most of us were involved in the playtests for Bonds Unbroken and we’re very excited to bring the experience to you now.

Have any questions? Get in touch at bondsunbrokenlarp@gmail.com