Bloody Autumn

WINNER of the 2023 PORTAL LARP SCENARIO CONTEST

We’re all together, for the first time in ages, and Ečka, our little Serbian village, has changed. It isn’t the carefree place where we grew up. It isn’t even the haunted place where we each said our goodbyes to one another a few years ago. Some of us went off to war then, and they have come marching home, and they are welcome. But dear Ečka isn’t what it was. It’s something new, something worse.

Today is Friday, 13 October, 1944. Three years ago our country was invaded and parceled out like meat from a deer. Until a week ago the village of Ečka was under the administration of the local German minority. Although they reported to the Nazi military Governor, the locals had a free hand to run things as they saw fit. Whether or not they did a good job largely depends on how you feel about murder.

50,000 people have been killed in our Vojvodina province, mostly Jews, Roma, and Serbs. The Jews and Roma of Ečka were taken into the forest and shot in 1941. Everybody knows where the mass grave is.

Last week the Russians roared through on their way to Belgrade and swept the fascists aside. With them were women from Ečka, Yugoslav partisans, who have come home to set the village in order.

A youth council, under the auspices of the Supreme People’s Liberation Board of Vojvodina, has been called. Together we will decide some important issues. There will be a handful of delegates—some who fought and some who didn’t—and all of us are women, and all of us grew up together. The old people are shell-shocked and tired. The young men of Ečka are dead or missing. Without them, we’ll decide everything tonight