Smells like LARP characters

    Character creation is my absolute favourite part of any LARP and TTRPG. I love it so much I always write a huge background about each and every single character I create, I always think about little stuff that are rarely of any use and that I even usually never mention in-game because there's just no room for those little details, which include random things like: what motivates a character to get up every morning? What are their hobbies? If they were an animal, which one would they be? What memories makes them blush? What's their best achievement? What music do they like? Do they have any kind of bad habits? Why can someone fall in love with them, or on the contrary, hate them? Do they have any allergies? And many more. I ask myself a thousand of random, useless questions for each and every single character I create, because I just love to breathe life into things and making them tangible.

My favourite thing to wonder about when building a character is what do they smell like? I'm obsessed with scents. I'm fucking blind, but I do have the nose of a dog and scents play a major role in my everyday life, not just perfumes, any scent! They can easily alter my mood, make me feel super confident or nauseous, bring a smile to my face or piss me off. I own about 25 different perfumes to fit each mood, each day of the week, each season and of course, each LARP character. The only thing preventing me from buying perfumes to match my TTRPG characters is my bank account. Perfumes are like stories that you can wear, olfactory paintings to carry everywhere with you, it's like magic in a bottle. And what are LARPs and TTRPGs if not magic and stories waiting to be told? So follow me and I'll show you how a few of my characters smell like.

Odetta from The Witcher School

 Odetta Aakster, my Viper Witcher from Witcher School used to be a wealthy merchant. She certainly had an other scent in her previous life in the mountains of Kovir, but because I play her as her new Witcher self I chose her perfume according to her new life, running in the woods looking for herbs, brewing potions and studying the mutagenes. Odetta is a witty, calm, soft-spoken person, I had to pick something that doesn't smell too strong that could carry both a smoky and green scent, reminiscent of the fire of the blacksmith's forge, the torches that constantly light up the dark and cold Polish nights and the woods all around the castle where Odetta spends a lot of time. That's why I picked one of my all-time favourite perfumes, Breath of God, from Lush. It combines woody essential oils of vetiver and sandalwood with the foresty scents of cedar and juniper, as well as hint of rose and neroli. It's a beautiful and complex olfactive signature that unfolds a fascinating painting throughout the day and more than Odetta's scent, I've associated it with the scent of my favourite LARP game.

Brie from College of Wizardry 22

 Ah Brie Coeur-de-Lion! One could expect this favourite character of mine to smell like cheese because, you know, she's a French cheesemancer. First of all, playing a character that smells like cheese for a whole three days would be unbearable to me and all the people around me, and reducing this whole character to the fact that hey, she's French, she likes cheese, honhonhon baguette, is very reductive and unrealistic. Real people always have multiple interests and hobbies, nobody is ever two dimensional. During CoW22, Brie was labelled as the "cheese girl" only and people seemed to be happy with that, absolutely no one tried to dig a little bit deeper to find out more about her than this obvious part of her personality. That's okay, as I mentioned earlier, I always think way too much about my characters and nobody ever gives a damn about the things that aren't obvious during LARPs, mostly because we don't have the time for that. If people did have the time however to get interested in her, Brie would have loved to share her love for the 70s and 80s. She loves the fashion of these glorious decades, which showed in her prom outfit with big, chunky heels and satin jumpsuit (and also in her dance moves, groovy and all). But it showed at every single time in her wake, this delightful ode to the 70s with her patchouli, orange and pine perfume! I must confess I hate the scent of the perfume I wore as Brie so having it constantly stuck in my nose for three whole days was pretty challenging, but you gotta do what you gotta do when you're crazy about giving a shit tone of useless details to your characters like I do. Her perfume is Karma, from Lush as well. I even pushed it as far as using the body lotion with the same ostentatious scent. Still better than smelling like Camembert.

Seltas Atin from the MMCC

  ♪ Watch out boy she'll chew you up, she's a maneater, maneateeeer ! ♫ She's a maneater but she's also an assassin, so this Mandalorian babe can't afford to bathe in perfume, otherwise she'd be too easy to spot. I have a fun story to tell before telling you about her perfume, because before the perfume there was a scent. I made this costume in three days, I rushed it over a sunny weekend with the help of my Mandalorian mum Vi and we used mayonnaise on the armour plates as a masking product for the battle damages. It was a very sunny weekend and the mayonnaise stayed on the plates for a very long time, cooking under the sun. Boy I can tell you that this costume smelled of mayonnaise for ages. That's not at all how I had pictured my femme fatale assassin to smell like. Not at all. Fortunately, after washing the plates over and over again, the mayonnaise whiff eventually faded and Seltas could finally get her signature aura. I like the idea of an assassin that is like, if you are able to smell them, you know it's already too late. To me, nothing screams "sexy" more than jasmine. Lush (yes, I really do love their perfumes) makes a beautiful fragrance called Lust that is all about being powerful, confident and sexy, but it's a very overpowering scent, way too strong for someone who's supposed to be discreet. Instead, I chose another jasmine perfume that has been gifted to me aeons ago, Splendida Jasmin Noir by Bvlgari. It's not the kind of perfume I'm normally attracted to, but to me it does smell like the feeling you have when you have a stroll at 4AM in a sleeping city, when the night is cold and you feel like you're the predator. I can't explain why, but that's really the feeling I get from it. A vampire could wear it. That's one reason why I love perfumes, the stories they tell differ a lot from a person to another. Seltas isn't a vampire, but she is a creature of the night and a predator for sure.

Filamir Endilas from Warhammer

  Filamir is one of these TTRPG characters I enjoyed playing so much I just had to embody them even more. I faced the same problematic with Filamir as I did with Seltas: they both have to be discreet, unseen and unsmelled. You see, Filamir is a thief, but they aren't your average pickpocket; They mingle with high society, wear fancy clothes and are (somewhat) educated, a bit in the manner of Arsène Lupin. Charismatic, witty, nobody could suspect such a lavish person to be a crook, that's how people would describe them. Filamir also often disguise themselves, scent included, so the fragrance I imagined for them is the one they wear while blending with aristocrats unaware of the danger their riches incur. For Strange Women makes absolutely bewitching fragrances and their limited edition perfume oil called Clairvoyant perfectly fits Filamir's personality. This spell in a bottle smells of sage, frankincense, sandalwood, eucalyptus and jasmine, it's fascinating and subtle, and smells of magic and adventure.

Aunt Gina

 Auntie Gina is a one-time character who was born out of a weekly challenge we had with my friends during lockdown, she's not a LARP character, just a character I became attached to. I dressed up as her a single time only so I didn't bother with buying a perfume that matches her. To be honest, I would not like to smell like her; Gina smells like cheap wine, delusion and bad decisions. This wealthy murderous widow spends her time delivering her best advices to you, her favourite niece/nephew, while getting wasted on cheap spirits and smoking cigarettes. Oh she does wear perfume, a rose-scented one that smells like a decaying bouquet, and you can never be really sure if the sour alcohol stench comes from her perfume or her beverage. Tobacco is a common ingredient in fragrances, it brings a rich and warm herbaceous scent. Well, Aunt Gina also smells like a cold ashtray more than fine tobacco. I sincerely hope there's no perfume that embodies all of Gina.