Character Profile 1: Lunatic Larry, aka, The Preacher

This is a first in a series of posts that will look at histories of recurring (or not) characters in my writing and games. The first one takes a look at one of my favorite characters to mess with. He's also had the most versions over the years.

Lunatic Larry started off as a character in a text only, society simulation called Cantr II, way back in about 2003ish. The game is still up and running but I've not played since maybe 2005. The original version was a crazy hermit that lived in the mountains and toiled to dig stone to build his 'Church of the Insane'. He would shout craziness to travelers who had the misfortune of ending up in his mountain enclave and some would join. The Church of the Insane grew to nearly a dozen members and started kidnapping and killing travelers who were dragged into the maze that was the church. Eventually, a team sent by a nearby town caught Larry by surprise, killed him and many church members, and scattered the survivors.

The second version of Lunatic Larry, this time called The Preacher, led a doomsday cult in my 2006 virus outbreak book Plague and both followup stories. He was just as crazy and brutal and Larry, but more charismatic, starting off as a doom preaching street walker that gathered a crowd motivated by fear of the unknown. With law enforcement on the ropes and most of Tampa fleeing airborne Ebola, the Preacher first takes over an apartment complex and then executes a plan to burn the city down around them, leaving them a sterile oasis in the rubble. The eventual fate of the Preacher is unknown, but it's assumed that him and his cult burnt up in the fires they started that burnt Tampa to the ground.

The third version of Lunatic Larry was back in a computer game. He and his cult were the center of two 2013 Neverwinter MMO Foundries that formed a campaign called Lunatic Larry and the Church of the Insane. The first was centered around locating someone that had run off to join the cult. The second was centered on confronting Larry at a new mountain top sanctuary where he'd retreated to eat mushrooms in peace.

The fourth version of Lunatic Larry appeared in the 2014 Lunatic Larry and the Church of the Insane adventure module for the 1st edition of my Disturbance Timeline RPG. In this world, he is in charge of the cult that lives within a walled community built on top of an old housing development. They grow mushrooms to sell and trip off and produce fuel from sawgrass for trade. This version of Larry and the Church of the Insane are a major faction in the Vicksburg area of the RPG.

The character Master Vax who is in charge of a suicide cult in my 2021 short story Dr. Lovedeath is highly based on Larry/Preacher, but isn't a direct version of him.

Lunatic Larry and the Church's fifth appearance are as main antagonists in the RPG's 2022 card game cousin, Post-apocalyptic Escapades. In that story, Larry's cult has produced kiloliters of mushroom tea, causing chaos in the Vicksburg area that must be stopped. Larry appears, briefly, in the associated short story (Post-apocalyptic Escapades of Heroes & Scrubs: The Night Time is the Right Time) in which he dies.

Lunatic Larry and the Church of the Insane will remain a major faction in the Vicksburg region of DTR and their next appearance will be in the 2nd edition Vicksburg Region supplement in 2024.

Visit my website to read past the first.

Link to the first Character Profile:

https://www.jeremiahdonaldson.com/blog/post/2216770/character-profile-1-lunatic-larry-aka-the-preacher