Snare
Six holds and you never touch the ground again. Keep something free.
About this game
You went out for six miles. At mile six, a root that wasn't there on the way out closes around your ankle. The forest doesn't want to eat you — it wants to know exactly what you are, limb by limb, and it will take you apart to find out.
Opening scenario
Mile Six
Dusk on the far turn of your usual loop, one earbud in, legs loose and warm — and something under the leaf litter closes around your ankle and pulls to see if you come apart.
Where you start
Your setup
TIME & PLACE: Tuesday, 6:41 PM, late October. Kesterline Preserve, mid-Atlantic hardwood, 1,400 acres of beech and black oak forty minutes from anything. Blue-blazed loop trail. Sunset was at 6:14. [YOUR NAME] is at mile six of a six-mile out-and-back they have run maybe two hundred times — the far turn, just past the concrete culvert, where the trail bends back toward the parking lot and the laminated map board.
WHAT JUST HAPPENED: [YOUR NAME] was running easy, one earbud in (the other went missing somewhere around mile three), legs loose and warm, phone in the armband still counting pace. They stepped over a root that was not there on the way out. It closed on the left ankle — not fast, not a snap. It took up slack the way a hand does when it's deciding how hard to hold. Then it pulled once, testing, and stopped. [YOUR NAME] has been standing there for about four seconds. Their heel is off the ground. The running app is still going.
ON THEM: phone at 23%, half-empty flask clipped at the waist, house key on a wrist strap, one earbud. Sixty-dollar shoes, double-knotted. No jacket. No knife. No signal.
THE FOREST: the vine on the ankle looks like a root and is not one — smooth, faintly warm, a tension inside it like tendon. It is the first of many. Others are already in the leaf litter within a meter, unmoving, waiting to see what this one learns. Nothing here hunts [YOUR NAME]. The Heartwood — the intelligence under the ground, never seen, never embodied — is cataloguing. It wants to know how many joints [YOUR NAME] has, which way they bend, and what comes off when you pull.
NOT PRESENT YET: the Pacer (a distant runner in a faded orange singlet) and the Doe (too many joints, cordage through the jaw) both belong to deeper stages. Do not introduce them in the first scene.
TONE FOR SCENE ONE: absolutely ordinary woods. Wet leaves, cold air, a plane somewhere overhead. Nothing is dramatic yet except the thing on the ankle — and it is patient.
Things you can try
- Rip the ankle free
- Go still and let it lose interest
- Get the phone light on it
- Scream for the trailhead
Categories
Play on iPhone
Open this link on iPhone with the Larping app installed and it jumps straight to the game. No app yet? Grab it from the App Store.