One Dance, One End (September 2025)
tl;dr: angsty cavaliers and necromancers dance a bunch of waltzes to find their OTPs
Helsinki
You receive a letter. Written on real paper. It reads:
"The Emperor, the King Undying, Necromancer Divine, King of the Nine Renewals, His Celestial Kindness, the Necrolord Prime, has determined a need for new Lyctors. He, in his great wisdom, has foreseen that the next set of Lyctors must combine Necromancers and Cavaliers from different Houses. He has called forth one Necromancer and one Cavalier from each House to attend a formal dance, at the end of which each Necromancer will select the Cavalier that they believe to be their divinely chosen Ordained Thanergic Partner.
You have been selected to represent your House. The coordinates of the Midnight Ball are attached. Find your Ordained Thanergic Partner and thereby prove yourself worthy to become a Lyctor."
One Dance, One End (1D1E) is a LARP about dancing waltzes, fighting duels (if you're a cavalier), and finding that one perfect person who accepts your flaws and complements your strengths.
This game is not about overthrowing the Emperor, discovering the secrets of Lyctorhood, making breakthroughs in necromantic research, unraveling political mysteries, or anything except finding your divinely chosen Ordained Thanergic Partner. Unlike the original Dance and the Dawn, this is not a romance game! Most pairings are platonic.
Though no significant spoilers for the books (or the Dance games) are written into the text of the game materials players receive, it is a near certainty that spoilers will come up in play, especially during the construction of epilogues after pairs are chosen. It is possible to avoid these spoilers, but the group playing should decide beforehand whether they will take care to or not.
This game involves a lot of waltzing! Each person will dance approximately 22 short waltzes. You don't have to be good at waltzing, and players with physical mobiliy issues can sit in a chair while someone waltzes around them, but you do have to be willing to do your best to waltz if physically able because if no one is waltzing, it's not much of a dance game.