Back to the Stars: Odysseus Awaits

Join us for the next chapter of Odysseus!

In the summer of 2024, we took 312 players from around the world on an epic journey on board the ESS Odysseus. With almost 1000 signups and over 650 people left on the waiting list, Odysseus 2024 might have been one of the most oversubscribed larps ever organized.

Ever since these numbers were published we have received a lot of questions. When will it run again? Will there be another set of runs? Why don’t we do it professionally, as the interest is clearly there?

For the past 14 months we have been pondering these questions. When we packed up the spaceship after the 2019 runs we were determined that there would not be another time. We were exhausted beyond belief and could not see ourselves doing all that again. But a couple of years was enough to slowly change our minds. In May of 2022, Odysseus 2024 was announced.

It was a different experience for us in many ways. On one hand, we had a lot of things ready; characters were written, the software already existed, and we had all the plans and lessons learned from the first set of runs. Unlike the first time, this time we also knew exactly what we were signing up for. We knew how much work it would take. The space ship would still need to be built again from scratch. We knew exactly what we wanted to accomplish and what everyone was expecting from us. It was stressful and exhausting in a different way, but we knew we could do it, as we had already done it once.

Thanks to everyone involved, we did succeed. Odysseus 2024 managed to be every bit as magical and mind-blowing an experience as its predecessor in 2019 had been. Expectations were astronomical, yet based on feedback we received we managed to meet them - and in many cases, exceed them.

But all of it came with a cost. Over 200 volunteers were part of making Odysseus 2024 happen, over 30,000 hours went on preparing and running the larp, 6 weeks were spent on location with most of the key organizers spending their entire summer holiday to build and run it.

It’s not fair for the crew to expect that kind of commitment again and again, and it isn’t fair for the community either. We tripled the number of signups from 2019 to 2024 with practically zero advertising. When we made the announcement of the 2024 runs we knew we would be over-subscribed by a large margin and that we would be disappointing many, including close friends and family members of our crew. With the reputation Odysseus had gained, this would most likely continue to get worse with every iteration. Creating something really cool that only a few people get to experience is disheartening.

Picture: Luka Pajukanta

Being part of Odysseus has been the single coolest experience to many of us and we would love to be able to continue this story in a way that does not both burn us organizers out and disappoint the vast majority of our community. Unfortunately, it’s an undeniable fact that it isn’t possible to do it the way the two previous iterations have been done.

The only way forward we can see is making this a recurring event. To build a permanent space ship and make this a full-time job for the core crew and a part-time job for the run-time crew. However, it isn’t an easy task to convert something created by over 200 people as volunteer work to something that would need to be company-based to be viable.

Yet, we have decided to accept this challenge. During the past months we’ve had many conversations with our crew and made calculations and plans regarding what it would take to make this real. And now is the time to announce it to our community.

Picture: Sirian Holappa

Ellarion Tales presents: Odysseus – First Light

This isn’t quite a typical larp announcement, with dates and planned runs. If we’re able to do this, everyone will be able to participate and there will be runs as long as there are larpers interested in playing them.

However, that is a huge if. We want to keep running Odysseus as unchanged as possible experience-wise and keep improving everything around it, most prominently our beloved spaceship. Even though our crew would be paid going forward, Odysseus will never be a “commercial larp”. Our aim is not to make a profit, nor is it an experience where anyone can participate as a customer. Every larp is co-created, and while Odysseus is partly a story players can simply experience, it’s also a story created together with everyone on board.

This isn’t an ideal setup for gathering outside funding - nor do we want to. For us, the most important aspect of moving forward is that we can do this on our own terms. That we can uphold our artistic vision and keep providing experiences without compromising in order to make them more profitable. Should we move forward with major outside investors, we can’t confidently guarantee that we could do that.

But doing something the size of Odysseus without relying on volunteer work costs a lot of money, much of it before we can do a single run. So the only viable option for us is to ask for that money upfront from our players. The reliable way to do that is through crowdfunding. In order for it to be viable, we would need to sell tickets to approximately 10 runs in advance. Ideally, even more than that, but ten full runs would give us enough confidence to build the ship and get the ball rolling. With that amount of initial funding we would also be a serious candidate for grants and state funding as well as small individual supporters - without the need to change the way we want to operate.

Picture: Luka Pajukanta

We are currently in the process of founding our company, Ellarion Tales. All the work leading up to the crowdfunding will still be done as volunteer work. Only if we reach our crowdfunding goals do we get to the point where we start paying moderate wages to ourselves in order for our key members to resign or cut back hours from their current day jobs to fully focus on this project. For many of us, it will be a significant paycut, but we are committed to bringing this vision to life. Our flagship project will be Odysseus – First Light. For all intents and purposes, it will be the same larp that was run in 2019 and 2024, but we will keep improving the experience both visually and narratively.

We don’t have all the details yet, but we will be publishing them during the upcoming months as we lock down more pieces of this puzzle. What we can announce at this point is that the crowdfunding will take place in early spring of 2026, and if we reach our target, the first runs of Odysseus – First Light will kick off in autumn of 2026 in Finland. The price for standard tickets will be somewhere around 850 €. All major details will be confirmed before the start of the crowdfunding. Unfortunately, it most likely won't be possible to pay in installments during the crowdfunding phase. We are definitely looking into options for offering some discount tickets as well as options to pay in installments for future ticket purchases. However to get to that point, we need a lot of people to purchase the full ticket during crowdfunding.

Picture: Laura Kröger

Beyond the horizon: Odysseus – Way Home

While everything is still up in the air, we are already looking further into the future. While being able to keep telling the original story of Odysseus is one of our key motivations, the permanent spaceship will also open up opportunities we haven’t dared to truly consider until now. The story of Odysseus is very obviously only the beginning of a journey. There is a natural continuation to that story. And we are truly excited for the possibility to also tell that story. If the interest is there and we are able to build this ship and start running Odysseus again, we won’t leave it at that. We already have plans to start writing the second part of that story in parallel. Taking place half a century later, featuring the children and grandchildren of some of the original characters, the story will focus on the aftermath of the events of Odysseus - First Light and the new conflicts arising as the characters approach the Earth - and the legacy their ancestors left behind. Odysseus – Way Home will continue to raise the questions and themes of the original story with a slightly more optimistic tone.

Continuing the story of Odysseus is not the only plan for the future we have. With a permanent ship and plenty of days in a year, we would look into telling other stories as well, mostly taking place in the narrative universe we have created for Odysseus. Stories like a combat mission during the first machine war, exploration and science missions during the peace time, or being on board the Genesis journey. Many of these stories would undoubtedly be larps designed for larpers, the same way Odysseus is, but we might also expand to lighter and easier stories for non-larpers to provide additional funding for us to keep this dream alive and allow us to keep running the bigger and more expensive larps.

If we manage to make Odysseus fly in the long term, our clear goal is also to be able to give back to the community both by offering funding to smaller projects as well as opening our spaceship to other larps. We would love to rent our spaceship for other teams, for them to run their larps there and expand to countless other stories as well.

Picture: Sirian Holappa

Your Part in the Journey Begins Now

Thank you all for being part of this incredible journey so far, but this is only the beginning. To make this happen, we need over 1000 larpers to believe in us and be willing to buy a ticket through crowdfunding when they become available next spring. That is a lot of larpers. That is also the number of larpers that expressed interest to play this larp a couple of years ago. It’s not an impossible goal, but it is a tough one. And to be able to reach it we need all of you who want to see Odysseus fly again.

The first thing you can do is to join our mailing list to receive all the latest news and to be sure not to miss it when the crowdfunding begins. Joining the mailing list also helps us understand how many larpers we have already managed to reach and it helps us with the conversations with the crowdfunding platform and other third parties to give a clear indication of an existing interest.

The second thing you can do is to spread the word. Share this blog post or our mailing list or our new website and let everyone know what we are doing. Once we start sharing more news, engage with our social media with whatever platform you use! We try to be visible on several platforms as the community is far more scattered now than it was before. This time around you are not lowering your own chances of getting in by letting all of your friends know about this. On the contrary, we need everyone and then some on board to make this happen. So the further we can spread this message, the more likely it is that you and your friends have a chance to experience this.

Picture: Luka Pajukanta

If you would like to go the extra mile to help us and you have played Odysseus before in any of the previous iterations, you can send us a recommendation to be used in our communication going forward. It can be just text with your name attached. It can be text and a picture (if the picture is from one of our photographers, just let us know which one and we can ask permission. If it’s taken by a friend, ask permission for it to be used first). For extra support you can also make a short video with your testimonial. These can be very casual and phone filmed. Small videos can have a huge impact! All these can be sent to our email info@ellariontales.com. Add clear permission for us to use them in the email or state if you want to limit the use e.g. for some specific social media platforms.

And lastly and most importantly, support us once the crowdfunding goes live. In addition to tickets, we have some smaller perks as well, but the amount of sold tickets is what determines the future of Odysseus.

To quickly recap all the relevant info: crowdfunding will take place in early spring of 2026, the first runs of Odysseus – First Light will kick off in autumn of 2026 in Finland. The price for standard tickets will be somewhere around 850€. In the next blog posts we will cover a lot of practical matters both around the larp itself and the crowdfunding.

For everyone who’s asked about this project over the years. For everyone who had an incredible experience onboard ESS Odysseus. For everyone who would have loved to participate, but was unlucky in the lottery. For everyone who would love to return and experience this story again, or see it to continue. This is the time to act. This is the chance for Odysseus to live on and grow. We are committed to doing everything in our power to make this happen, but ultimately, it’s in your hands now.

With all our love,

the Ellarion Tales team

Header picture: Linn Meander

Picture: Luka Pajukanta