ACN 2002 Con Report

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!

( Twisted game. I got very long-winded )

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.

( Why is it I talk the most about the most twisted games? )