I blame Master Nicodemus Novello for that -- he attended a class I was giving on persona development via paperwork ie amassing letters, bills, wills and the like and made a chance remark, and it all grew from that Quest for the Foundling : Canterbury Faire I gave a class at Festival in regarding how you could use documents to build up a persona and inspire other projects.
A day later, when Hugh de Calais was invited to join the Laurels and opted to do so at Canterbury Faire the following year, the Quest for the Foundling was born. With luck, Hugh would play without twigging to his central role in the Quest; that is, he had no idea what was being planned. The main concern seemed to be could they do justice to whatever item they volunteered to make, to meet the sort of standards that Hugh was worthy of! So I then had the fun of matching the items offered to appropriate documentation and building up the story of the life and times of one Henry de Calvile, a soldier-merchant residing in Calais until his death in That time and place was chosen to match the chronology of the Company of the Staple Inc.
All this without making it too obvious that the Quest was based in Calais or pointing too obviously to Hugh as the foundling. The reading of the will was scheduled for the opening day of Faire Monday , with the instructions noting that the quest would run through the following four days.
The document coffer made by Master Edward Braythwayte with all its documents made by me was turned over for the questers to examine, and copies of the inventory and quest rules provided. I had to make a nasty nylon cover for the coffer as Ed had carved the leather with symbols referencing Hugh. To keep the Quest running, and to string out the various clues, some of the inventory and a couple of major clue-providers were scheduled to appear on Wednesday Magister Bartholomeaus as horoscope caster and Thursday Nicodemus as Cardinal Simon Langham , with the identity-based material released last.
The final denouement was scheduled for Half-Circle Theatre on Thursday evening. The run-sheet with timeline, notices, interactions, props list etc ran to around 20 pages. I acknowledge that is it an act of immense hubris to develop a completely novel persona background for someone without their knowledge or consent even more so when appearing to make him illegitimate, albeit acknowledged at the end!
