ACN 2002 Con Report

[semperfiona]

I arrived in Toronto about noon on Thursday, caught the Airport Rocket to Kipling Station and then the subway in to Yonge and Bloor. When I got out of the subway, I looked around for a moment, decided on a direction (left), and started walking in search of Church St. A street vendor was trying to hang a bungee cord on her cart's umbrella, and I must have had my nice-person hat on, because I stopped and asked her if I could help. Being about six inches taller than she was, I had no trouble. Then I went on. I walked to the corner, which was in fact Church St, looked both ways for about a second, and decided to turn right. Three blocks later, there was the hotel. I was very impressed with myself for having found it so easily.

Checked in, unpacked my suitcase. (Oddly enough, despite being an unmitigated slob and procrastinator in general, I'm really anal about unpacking and putting everything in its place when I travel. I think it's due to the smallness of hotel rooms and the fact that I hate "living out of a suitcase".) Then I went down to the internet center to send a note to neeuqdrazil and curgoth to tell them I'd arrived, and then went swimming and to the grocery store. Zil and cg turned up about four, and we went to dinner, then came back to the consuite to register. "Yes, we know devilmuse's game has been cancelled, we've already made other arrangements, thanks."

Slot 1: The Dying of the Light, by Tymen and Mark

I played Fiona.

Playing off the common cliché of universe-ending games, this time it really was. The universe was going to end in five hours and there was no way to stop it. I spent most of those five hours trying to figure out a way to prevent the catastrophe. Mandor spent most of them trying to get into my pants, not that he hadn't been there before, but didn't actually get there in this game. Flora threw a party, which most of the NPC Elders attended. I insulted her several times with what seemed at the time like really good lines but forgot to write any of them down for posterity.

Dworkin told us from his deathbed that the universe was "tired" and "wanted to grow and evolve." We figured out that this meant this wasn't the first time it had happened, and maybe we could find something that had survived before and could keep us alive through the end this time. I asked Mandor for help and we searched using Pattern and Logrus for something with neither power. He made me promise to give him two of the remaining four hours. I agreed.

Corwin, Mandor, Llewella and I were standing on the edge of the Abyss considering an attempt to find Brand and bring him back for assistance. We realized that the Jewel was the only thing that had ever gotten out of the Abyss so we tried using it to get back in. No sign of Brand though. We trumped Flora back in Amber and instructed her to follow through on some of our other extremely last-ditch ideas for saving the universe: kill Dworkin in the hope that it was his illness that was dragging down the universe. Or have sex with him, in the hopes that it would revive his interest in life. She killed him, about two seconds before the very end of everything.

Llewella managed to get herself inside the Jewel of Judgment, and while she was there Corwin whispered to me that he didn't trust her and shouldn't we try to get her out. He pointed at Mandor and whispered "Distract him." I thought he meant "so we can talk in private," and I gave Mandor a passionate kiss. Corwin ran him through with Grayswandir. Whatever Corwin was going to try to convince me of, it wasn't going to get listened to after that; in fact I psychically attacked him. Then Llewella tried to pull me inside the Jewel with her, but instead just managed to replace herself with me and get her head chopped off by Corwin as she materialized outside it. I stayed in there after that, especially since I had figured out that the Jewel was itself the only thing that had survived from a previous incarnation of the universe and might continue to the next one.

So the game ended with "After a few seconds or a million years--you could never know--you see a small girl looking in at you. You can now get out and take her over."

Slot 2: As the Real World Turns, by Kirt

Yo, Devil! I'm gloating at you! I played Brand! I had boisex!

This had been my second choice anyway, and would have been my first choice had DM not been running a game. When I heard she couldn't come, that the game needed more players, and that only the girls had been taken so far, I wrote to Kirt right away requesting Brand. He wrote back: "Excellent. You don't mind playing a sixteen-year-old pattern ghost, do you?" I didn't.

This game had slightly different mechanics. Standard Amber stats and powers, but two rules from Soap: the RPG. First, each character had a secret which was known only to themselves and the GM. Until or unless the other players guessed the secret, your character was unkillable. Second, you had one token representing a declaration, which could be turned in at any time when your character announced something (such as "I'm carrying your love child"). It was preferred that the declaration not be "I suddenly have X new power." If you played your character such that your secret was hinted at, you got additional tokens. It took me a while to come up with a secret. I thought of one right away, but thought it might be a little too twisted. I voiced this opinion, and was told "Go there! Go there!" So I did.

We started off with the other Elders trying to figure me out. It was post-Patternfall, Brand was supposed to be dead. But here I was, little sweet horny sixteen-year-old me. Was I real, was I an imposter, etc. Fiona wanted to do experiments on me. Llewella wanted to sleep with me. You guess which one was more appealing to me as a sixteen-year-old. "NO! No needles!"

But Deirdre helped Fi, and they dragged me to the pattern room. No, wait. Di threw me over her shoulder and carried me. I watched her butt. We arrive to find Caine and Julian fucking in the middle of the pattern. They vanished right away. The girls managed to force me onto the pattern. I walked it. It didn't hurt me at all, of course, in fact it was amazingly easy. While I'm walking the pattern, Llewella slipped out of the room and got it on with one of the guards. With the pattern enhancing my hearing, I heard the whole thing, and it had the expected effect. I used my teleport to go to Llewella; she tried to trump us to Rebma. But Fiona stopped us, and we had to distract her.

Eventually, though, Llew, Bleys and I escaped to Rebma. Bleys watched and drew pictures while she and I had lots of sex. They got the bright idea of disguising me to hide me from the mad scientist sisters, and painted my body and hair green. Then we realized that the sudden appearance in Amber of a Rebman boy in Llewella's company would be very suspicious, so we found several other young Rebmans and formed a harem. Bleys used a declaration to announce that he knew how to make me real. He told me it required lots of blood--an Amberite's worth!--and sex magic on the Primal Pattern (the sex part wasn't actually true). Llewella volunteered to donate blood, and we also convinced Gerard that he should contribute as well. We head to the Primal Pattern where...

Meanwhile, Fiona and Deirdre have been continuing to investigate my reappearance. They visit Dworkin, and find him in the middle of the Primal Pattern rubbing his hands excitedly. "What are you doing?" "I'm bringing back dead people!" He had brought me back as an experiment, wanted to figure out exactly how to do it so that the person would be completely real and age normally. He chose the first record of Brand that he had on the grounds it would be less insane. Next he was going to try for Eric, but the ultimate goal was Oberon. Fiona knocked Dworkin out by feeding him some of his special cheese. She asked Benedict to guard the Primal Pattern to prevent any further Dworkin-ings, and went back to her lab. By the time we got there, though, she was back.

So here we all were, at the side of the Primal Pattern. Llewella spent a declaration to announce that "Benedict likes me," and he was about to agree to let us do what we wanted to do, when Deirdre, who had been comforting me and rubbing my head (I forget exactly why), suddenly put a dagger in my throat. Kirt was on the point of saying "and you die" when I reminded him that my secret was not yet known, so she had missed the artery. Deirdre used two declarations to announce that it didn't matter if I died because "The real Brand survived and is safe in shadow...and he's not evil!" Bleys turned around and declared that "but I went and found him, and that is the real Brand!" Deirdre became abjectly apologetic. Gerard took me to a room in the castle to treat me. Everyone followed, Di still weeping over her mistake. It was at this point that Kirt told me Llewella's secret: we had been having an affair and she was the one who shot out Corwin's tires for me.

News arrived that Oberon had reappeared in the castle. I shuddered, garnering an additional token--and the others guessed my secret. Di and Fiona and Llewella took off to find out whether he was real, pattern ghost, or brought back by Dworkin. Dworkin denied having done it, and they three amused themselves by watching the sparks when Oberon encountered Random on his throne.

Bleys sat down beside my bed and began stroking my hair. I recovered very quickly from the injury (Ha!) and pulled him down into the bed. He protested on the grounds that Gerard was in the room. I used a declaration to announce that "Gerard likes it!" and we had a boisex threesome. The game ended just as Deirdre and Llewella walked in on us and Deirdre's heart broke with an audible shattering sound.

Oh, and Llewella used her last declaration to announce that she had borne my lovechild. (Presumably from the previous affair.)

Secrets:

Llewella	she and Brand had been having an affair, she had been the one to shoot out Corwin's tires
Bleys	he was a virgin (not anymore! ::more gloating::)
Brand	I had been molested by Oberon as a child. Dworkin was trying to help me escape it. That is why he started teaching me power
Deirdre	she was in love with Brand, despite being a lesbian
Fiona	she had also been molested by Oberon

There, terribleangel, is that twisted enough for you? ;-)

Slot 3: Dude, Where's My Jewel of Judgment? by the Bastard

This game was set up as "returning players only" even though it was a new game, because we wanted friends only. Unsurprisingly, it ended up being more of an excuse for the posse to hang out together and get very silly than an actual game, but it was definitely fun all the same. And there really was a plot, no matter that we ran away from it every chance we got.

There were sheep-ipedes, and gorgeous gold spandex speedo'd men and women. There were ambiguously gay Corwin and aggressively gay Deirdre. There were bisexual Flora and slutty manwhore quarterback Bleys. There were stoner Random and the-rest-of-the-football-team Gerard.

Prudish preppy little Fifi got high for the first time, thanks to Llewella's psychic bong and to Random: "This will give you wisdom. Ask it a question as you inhale." She asked it who would be her first lover. The Bastard didn't know how to answer that so he said "you see a vision of a man you don't know." Quinn piped up, "you see a man with white hair and three steel balls in his hand." Took me a few seconds, but I got it. STB never did, until much later. I think he missed the exchange.

She got the answer to the question herself before the end, though. Bleys was not exactly playing hard to get. Once we both got "Pants!"ed at the same time, and were both wearing Hello Kitty underwear, it wasn't hard to figure where that was going. Flora wasn't pleased, as she was supposed to be his girlfriend, but I don't know what she had to complain about, as she spent 98% of the game having sex with Llewella.

STB to A. G. Corwin, who was trying to walk on water: "Yes. Your warfare is higher than the water. Unfortunately it is not higher than physics."

The Bastard is trying to persuade me to run this game at some other con. I'm running away very fast in another direction. ;-)

Slot 4: Underworld: The Statue at the Gate, by Edwin

Charlie finds out what marvelous fun thermal explosives can be. Need I say more?

Yeah, I suppose I do. Charlie is a pyrokinetic. She's lifted straight out of Steven King's Firestarter, though I haven't read it in nearly twenty years, so it's a pretty sketchy recollection. Anyway, she was found by the Circle several years ago after she burned down her parents' and then her grandparents' house and they have trained her to control her powers pretty well now; in fact this was her second mission for them. But she still gets awfully psychotically bouncy when she has an opportunity to burn stuff, and rather grumpy when she can't. In the meantime she really enjoyed playing with the psi scanner and riding on elephants. But she doesn't like snakes. She really doesn't like snakes. And she really really REALLY doesn't like 200-foot-long seven-headed snakes. Burning up 200-foot-long seven-headed snakes, she likes.

Slot 5: Serpant's Café: An Anita Blake Amber Adventure, by the Bastard

This was fun, although my character did not end up being particularly well-defined or memorable. The game had a lot of the AB flavor, and it had were-giraffe necking and heavy petting, to the great chagrin of the recipient thereof. However I can't find much else to say about it that doesn't give away huge swathes of the plot.

Slot 6: Who Art Thou? by Rae

I art Brand. ::grin::

I didn't know that until the last five minutes of the game, though. We woke up amnesiac in a research center, and spent the game finding our way home and finding things out about ourselves. Rae took massive amounts of notes about the things we did, and based on those, she determined which elder we were. I was convinced for a while that I was going to be Caine or Gerard, since I greatly enjoyed the sailing trip we were on and knew the rigging had been done wrong. Then I thought I was Random because when I had to take clothing I had picked yellow and orange, and also because I was the one to propose playing cards when we were at a bar late at night, and then decided I must be Bleys, because of all those things combined. But I was declared to be Brand because I was the one to make a deal with the One-Eyed Serpent: I'd bring him back his eye someday in exchange for help on the quest.

Slot 7: Playing Favorites, by Quinn

Another posse game, with one added player. He fit in fairly well with our twisted version of insanity, thankfully.

I played Charlie from "Underworld". It was a choice between her and Brand from "As the Real World Turns", and I decided that she was more different, if you see what I mean. Especially since the Bastard played Bleys from "As the...", with an all-new secret. I wanted to see what would happen when you introduce a powerful pyrokinetic into Amber. (The castle gets burned down. Big surprise, eh?) I explained to Quinn her Underworld stats; he charged me 30 pts for them, and I spent the other 70 on psyche and warfare and fireproof underwear with confer warmth (the use of Charlie's power causes severe internal cooling). Quinn gave me immunity to "Pants!" for free, and told me I'd be Bleys' daughter. As I was doing the points calculations, I realized something and wrote Quinn a note. "Charlie loses control of her pyrokinesis upon orgasm." It had never come up in Underworld (and probably never will--I've played that twice now and there's been nary a sign of sex or even romance for anyone at all), but I had a feeling that it might come up here. I was not wrong.

Charlie was called into Circle headquarters and given a mission by someone she'd never seen before but who knew all the passcodes to prove he was her superior officer. He gave her a card and said, "Your mission is in a place called Amber. This man will give you orders, but don't trust him." He told her how to use it and then left her with it. So she did as she was told, and was brought through into Bleys's bedroom. He immediately started trying to seduce her. She moved as far away from him as she could, but was distracted by a buzzing in her head like someone trying to use Control on her. It was a broadcast trump call from Oberon. "Grandchildren, come at once to Amber. I give you two days to prove your worth as members of the family." I tried to get him to explain how I could be his granddaughter but he pretty much ignored me, and during the call, Bleys had managed to remove my bra. "Yes, your warfare is higher than the bra. Back-clasp bras do have pretty high warfare, but you succeed."

Meanwhile the psychic bong has searched out Amaris at a goth club in Shadow Angst, and given her a vision: the castle aflame, and herself standing outside with a finger to her lip saying "Oops!" Since she needed to return to Amber the bong became a skateboard and Amaris hell-skateboarded to Amber. First thing she did, she knocked on Bleys' door to interrupt his groove and walked in. The bong decided I really needed it, and I got a hit too, which gave me an X-rated vision of myself with Amaris. Our eyes met and locked. She gave me a cigarette and I lit it--without use of lighter--and lit hers too. We almost forgot Bleys was there, as he backed away to watch. If he hadn't been an idiot and said something, we might have done it right there on his bed. But Amaris snatched me away to her daddy Brand's room instead for more privacy. Of course, Bleys followed, but this time he hid in the closet and kept schtum and we didn't notice. We start at it hot and heavy.

Kyle was walking the pattern, and asked it to send him where he could do the most to impress Oberon. He was sent to Brand's room, and went incorporeal to watch. If only he'd stopped us, instead. But he didn't, and at my climax--shared with Amaris and redoubled via empathic feedback loop--the room burst into flame around us. I fled, naked and shivering.

Squee's teddy bear Shmee was there. I picked him up. Squee jumped into my head--naming me Burny-head Lady, as all he saw there was flames--and made me go to his room. Shmee told me there were monsters in the closet and I should burn them up. I did. Then he made me burn up the bed for the same reason. At this point Amaris arrived and knocked me out. Bleys picked up my unconscious body and wrapped me in a blanket.

Meanwhile Kyle and Argus put out the various blazes. Bleys took me back to his room and called Gerard to try to get us out of the castle. Gerard came to the castle instead. Amaris tracked me and pounded on the door. Bleys wasn't going to let her in, but Gerard did, holding his hand on her head and saying "If you use mind powers on me, I squeeze." I came to. Bleys again started sitting very very close to me. I slid away and toward Amaris, who tried to console me and calm me down. Shmee is still telling me to make more fires. I am telling him, "No, no, no no no no," because I'd regained some of my control and training while out. Amaris overheard and snatched up Shmee and tore his head off, bringing Squee down to the room to try to attack her. He got into her head but she gave him empathic happiness, which really freaked him out. The bong turned into a bunny rabbit to replace the missing Shmee. Amaris started shouting at Squee, which turned me off and made Gerard angry. Then she shouted at me, for no reason I can remember, and that turned me off even more.

Oberon came in. He sent Gerard away and gave the rest of us a lecture/congratulatory speech. "I thought it would take two days, but it has only taken a few hours. Congratulations." At this point I'm thinking he's going to kill us all for the destruction to the castle. "Amaris, you've exposed a potential threat to Amber. Argus and Kyle, you did well to clean up the messes. Squee, you have been very brave: seeing nothing but nightmares, you keep on coming back. Charlie, you need training. Bleys, you will take responsibility for her. Unless you'd rather train with me?" I asked again. "I still don't know who my parent is." Amaris was quicker on the uptake and interjected. "He's your daddy, dumbass," pointing at Bleys.


I realized later, post-con, that I could have had a hat-trick: three separate characters having sex with Bleys in three separate games. If only he hadn't been quite so skeevy in Playing Favorites, or Charlie hadn't been quite so freaked by "You're my uncle!" Of course, she ran off to have sex with her cousin instead, and Bleys turned out to be her dad.

So all that gaming takes us up to Sunday afternoon. Quinn, Tafkar, and Eponine had to leave immediately after the game, and we all hugged goodbye. Then the Canadians and I made plans for dinner at their house; we found Jill and invited her too. So after a nap Jill and I took a cab to Zil and cg's house. Took a while to get a cab, though; Jill had her taxi-cab invisibility powers turned on.

Dinner was lovely and conversation was beautiful. Got to know Jill a lot better and hang out in a smaller and less raucous group of friends for a while. Very comfortable and happy-making. Then Jill and I returned to town, though not the hotel: we went to a pub where Sol was jamming with other Celtic musicians and drank and talked with Kris and Ray and Anne for a while. Sol looks exactly like a leprechaun when he's wearing green--if leprechauns were about six-four and 250 pounds.

Went back to the hotel. Ice cream and raspberry wine and Jill snuggles, as well as random political conversation in the consuite.

Comments

[terribleangel.livejournal.com]

>There, terribleangel, is that twisted enough for you? ;-)


Yeah, thats about right.

grr. reading other's con reports makes me anxious for AFSS.

[semperfiona]

>There, terribleangel, is that twisted enough for you? ;-)

Yeah, thats about right.

Hehehe. Yay for twisted! I rather squicked Rae by telling her about that game, though. She made a face and requested no more descriptions of incest. Poor her. :-D

grr. reading other's con reports makes me anxious for AFSS.

::petpet console:: It's not really all that far off, now.

Re:

[terribleangel.livejournal.com]

::petpet console:: It's not really all that far off, now.

Yeah, but it might not happen if people don't start REGISTERING (hint, hint, blunt trauma, hint)