October in Retrospect: Dread Forms and Immersive Storytelling

By Chloe Rickards

(Chloe Rickards in their Form of Dread)

October is my favorite month of the year. Halloween and the bigger ‘spooky season’ give a chance for everyone, whatever their interests the rest of the year, to celebrate creating things, getting into characters, and taking part in immersive scary experiences. These are three of my favorite things all year round, so it’s fun to have October as an excuse to let my ideas run wild and share them with lots of excited people.

I’ve been doing cosplay – the art of creating costumes – for a couple of years. Cosplay is time-consuming, so much so that I limit myself to one costume per year. That way, costumes don’t crowd out my other favorite art forms, like watercolor, nature journaling, and immersive storytelling. This October, I decided to go all out and make my most involved costume yet: my version of Laudna’s Form of Dread from Campaign 3 of the Dungeons & Dragons podcast Critical Role. 

The funny thing about cosplaying a character from a podcast is that, in the original medium, most details of physical appearance are left to the imagination. I wanted my interpretation of Laudna’s Form of Dread to be creepy, inhuman, and unsettling. In the podcast, she is typically described as a banshee-like creature with elongated features, a mourning veil over its face, and tree branches growing from its body. I wanted to incorporate these features into my costume, but to make it my own, I decided to make my version of Laudna’s Form of Dread walk hunched-over on all fours using stilts and crutches. I hoped that this unnatural movement would help create the off-putting atmosphere I wanted. It also sounded really fun and I was very excited to parade it through downtown Santa Cruz on Halloween.

The costume-making process involved a lot of shaping foam, practicing stilt-walking, and filming myself to nail down mannerisms, not to mention spending a long time in the pushup position. I enjoyed the physical challenge and the character study along with the artistic challenge of getting the costume just right.

(First stilt practice)

Character-centered, choice-driven storytelling is my favorite form of art. This type of storytelling can take many forms, including Dungeons & Dragons, interactive theater, choose-your-own adventure books, and even video games. It centers the player-character, invites them into the world, and makes them a collaborator in the story. In my opinion, it lends itself to richer characters and stronger feelings than can otherwise be found in a story.

In October, I was also lucky enough to begin to tell immersive stories with Liminal Space. On October 14th and 28th, at Creative Commons, I told a “Liminal Horror” story that involved a missing child, a floating mirror gateway to a strange world, a witch in the woods, an imp named Smirk, and a cast of fun and unique player-characters. On November 1st, I brought my Form of Dread to Liminal Space’s Halloween party and First Friday gallery.

(Liminal Horror gathering - photo by Weston Mossman)

I’m grateful that I shared my passions of immersive storytelling with Santa Cruz - through getting into character as Laudna’s Form of Dread, by telling a story to the wonderful humans of Liminal Space, and by creating an atmosphere of thrilling creativity.

I can’t wait for next October. Stay tuned for more stories before then.