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So, here's Friday:
Despite having informed me at one point (or me thinking that she'd informed me) that we were definately going in the afternoon,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
naath told me the day before that she was turning up at 9am. So my grandparents turned up at 7am to 'help me pack', which consisted of making copious cups of tea, making sure the doors were all closed, and taking all of the perishable food I'd left. Oh, and doing the dishes I'd left from the day before, which was quite helpful really. Packing was pretty easy given I had a big list, and I didn't miss anything essential this time :-). At about 9:15am (I'd been ready since 8:20am in the end) the phone rang - this was Naath's mother telling us that Naath and her dad were lost in Braintree on account of the new roads, although mainly on account of Naath's dad following signs to Braintree rather than to Black Notley. It only took them about five more minutes to actually arrive, however, so then we were off.
The first part of the trip was slightly eventful as we had to navigate The Maze Of Cones which the roads around us have become since they started building the big Braintree-Stanstead road, with Naath's dad yelling at the road for being stupid. (I now know where Naath gets her loudness from.) We ended up heading towards Chelmsford, and going around several dozen more roundabouts than strictly necessary. Somewhere near Huntingdon we stopped at a service station to get some chocolate, and discovered that this particular service station actually had nice, clean toilets, which was very suprising indeed. The only other highlight of the trip was the M69, the significance of which Naath was *increadibly* slow to get. (No, I'm not explaining.)
We arrived at the hotel at about 11:30am, and proceeded to turn the wrong way from the entrance and have to turn around when I pointed out that the signs pointing towards Reception were pointing the opposite direction from the one we were travelling in. Naath's dad wanted to help us take the cases in, but we pointed out that if he left his car unoccupied in the dropping-off / taxi area Bad Things would probably happen to it. We dumped our cases with the concierge (ooh, posh word) and got into a remarkably short line for signing for our hotel rooms. Naath asked if I knew where Registration was, at which point I just gestured towards the fairly obvious sign saying 'Registration This Way' with a pic of a big hand pointing in the correct direction (which was quite obvious anyway, as the only other way out we hadn't come in by was the way to the restaurant). Unfortunately, just as it stopped being obvious which way we should go (at a crossroads of four fairly main-looking corridors) the signs also ran out.
We were saved from our confusion by someone holding a 'Registration This Way' sign, who pointed the right direction out with it and walked beside us directing us with the sign the sign all the way to where we were meant to be registered. On presenting our membership-reciept thingamies we got the obligitory piles of paperstuff in a carrier bag, plus pwetty convention badges with turtles on. We left a message on the Voodoo Board (if you have a message for someone, you write it on a card and file it, and then you stick a pin in the person's name...) for Katl'c (who was easy to file a card for, because all three of her names start with the letter K!) to meet us in various places we might be. Then we hung around in the Hub for a while reading our paperstuff, and decided to get the Hotel Orientation thing done before the Troll's Guide to Conventions (the talk for convention newbies). We did quite a bit of it (find a room with a DW-related clue on, find the DW-related-titled room the clue refers to), but found that two rooms had the same clue attached to them, and one of them led to a circular set of clues, which didn't particularly work, so we gave up and went to see if our room was ready yet, even though it was only 1:30pm and they'd said to come back at 2pm.
The people at hotel reception handed over our keys, and so we got into our room and claimed the two double beds for us (although Naath got the real bed and I got the sofa bed). We then went back out to try and finish off the hotel orientation thingamy, and walked past two rather scary goths, one of whom had rather brightly coloured hair for a goth - bleach-blonde with bright red and blue streaks. We walked straight past them, then they turned round and spotted Naath (in her rather impressive black cape thing that everyone kept treading on and strangling her with), and introduced themselves - Katl'c and Delirium. Katl'c appeared to just be a regular kindof goth, but Delirium was definately a scaryGoth with lots of scars. (The hair is from Delirium in Sandman.) We sat around in the Hub and Naath tried to transcribe our answers to the Hotel Orientation (which I'd done in incomprehensible writing as we were walking along) onto her sheet, but it didn't all fit together, and she got the columns wrong (someone had told us we'd got them wrong as we were walking around, but she hadn't got them corrected), so we gave up, and went to the Troll's Guide thing. I'd somehow got the impression that the Troll's Guide was meant to introduce the newbies to each other and to people, but it was just a boring security/health-and-safety kind of presentation.
Then we went and got lunch from the 'Harga's House of Ribs' (sign tacked up on the door of the hotel restaurant). We had a look at the hot food on the carvery but it didn't seem overly appetising (fat greasy chips, sausages, beans, mash, that kind of stuff) so we went back to the baguettes. I had a turkey and cranberry one, which was delicious, and Naath had a horrible-looking Chicken Tikka one. There was the option of putting stuff on our room bill but I decided to pay by cash so I'd know how much I had left.
I then headed over to the War Room (which I've somehow got into my head as the Games Room, which may have been because we played games there) for the AD&D session. I was handed a female Barbarian (honstly, how do you play a female Barbarian! it just doesn't work.) with practically perfect stats - 18 STR, 17 DEX and CON, and even 14 CHR (which is so Wrong for a Barbarian) (12 INT which is pretty high for a Barbarian, and 9 WIS which was helpful).
Tashina the Female Human Barbarian started her rather less than illustrious adventuring career by tipping a pint of ale over the head of a particularly annoying Bard. As the Bard persisted in being annoying, the Elven Paladin decided to knock him out with an ale mug, for the good of peace and the sanity of everyone in the inn. Meanwhile, the Fighter decided to ask the barkeep about rooms for the night, and was informed that despite the tiny size of the inn (before the Bard was unconscious, he was informed by the DM that juggling would be impossible in the room due to the ceiling being less than an inch from his head if he stood up) and the location of the inn in the middle of nowhere, the only rooms left were luxury rooms costing 25gp, which was significantly more than the party had. The barkeep then charged us 1gp each for sleeping in the stable, so Tashina declared loudly that she didn't need any stinking stable and proceeded to sleep just outside the door of the stable to make a point.
Tashina was awoken by a large quantity of rather bright light and a not inconsiderable amount of heat. The inn was on fire - all of the inn (although not the stable). After yelling 'Fire!' in a suitibly loud voice, Tashina decided to sprint off down the road after the three small retreating figures, leaving the rest of the party to wake up and realise that the inn was on fire. The Fighter chased after Tashina, and the Rogue chased after the Fighter, but the Paladin and the Bard decided to go look for the barkeep - the Paladin because he wanted to rescue him, the Bard because he didn't particularly want to get into another fight. They managed to prop the door open (when the Bard found a long plank) and get inside, but as the walls were burning they didn't stay long, as they could see neither the barkeep nor anything of value. Then they decided to follow us.
Meanwhile Tashina had caught up with the three pathetic goblins, rolled a critical faliure and buried her massive battleaxe about 3ft into the ground. While she was cursing loudly and trying to retrieve it, the fighter arrived, followed swiftly by a crossbow bolt from the rogue, which impaled one of the goblins, killing it instantly. The fighter then rolled a critical success and sliced another goblin neatly in half. The remaining goblin took two bolts to kill (fighter swinging uselessly at it), and Tashina finally managed to dig her axe out of the ground. Finally the bard and paladin catch up, to see Tashina wiping her axe on the grass as if she'd been responsible for the kills. The rogue swiftly loots the bodies, finding a flask of strange-smelling liquid, a tinderbox, some lamp oil, and a few gp. We conclude that the goblins set the inn on fire, and continue down the path that they were running away down. We didn't get far - fairly soon we noticed that there were two trolls and four dwarves in front of us. The rogue hid in the trees, the fighter climbed a tree, and the paladin decided a stealthy approach from the forest was the better part of valour. The bard took out his violin and began to play - a 10 on his Perform roll meant that the sound was not unlike a cat in extreme agony making sure everyone else in the region was also in extreme agony. Tashina, naturally, just stood there throwing and catching her axe between her hands, with a massive smile on her face, greeting the monsters cheerily.
From his vantage point in the tree, the fighter spotted that there were six trolls now in position on the path behind us. The paladin was about to decide that cowardice was the very best part of valour indeed, to much jeering by Tashina - the trolls and goblins appeared to be utterly confused by the terrible music and the uncannily happy barbarian - when a man in long purple robes suddenly appeared in a small flash of lightening, and bawled "Shut up!" at us. The paladin came out of the trees to apologise for the noise, but the bard continued to play his violin, so the mage pointed at it and it mysteriously vanished (to cheers from the entire party - the person playing the bard was being pretty annoying generally). The paladin patiently explained that less noise would be caused if there weren't so many trolls and goblins around that would have to be fought or avoided by crashing through the forest, so the mage zapped the forward group of trolls and goblins with a few dozen well-placed magic missiles, issued a second warning to be quiet, and disappeared again.
We continued along the road, and eventually we found a clearing off to one side with a tower in it. Naturally, whilst the others wandered around the tower, debating on whether to attempt to climb it or just creep away silently, Tashina went and hammered on the door. This tower happened to be the home of the quiet-loving mage, who yelled 'Shut up!' from the top window (there were no ground floor windows) and eventually sent a fireball into the trees as a warning shot as Tashina continued to be cheerful and chatty. We left fairly quickly and continued down the road, although we weren't quite sure why as we'd found the other goblins and had them disappeared.
Making camp for the night, in the third watch an odd squelching noise was investigated and the Paladin and Rogue investigating managed to set off a shrieker. This attracted a rather impressive giant, from whom we proceeded to run away from rather fast, after the fighter attempted to engage him, and came fairly close to getting impressively trampled before we distracted the giant by failing to hit it with all manner of ranged weaponary and convinced him to run away too. Then we found this really boring garden place (big iron fence on top of a stone wall, slightly open gates, strangely shaped stones and well-kept lawns and paths and neat trees, about a mile long). It turned out to be a graveyard (the cleric, who'd been pretty silent up to this point, kept Tashina from hacking limbs off trees in boredom), with a small mausoleum containing a red grate on the floor leading to some steps.
Obviously, Tashina threw this grating open (STR 18 is helpful sometimes!) and we all trooped down, using the torch we made from a fallen branch and that lamp oil, to find the wizard at the bottom of the steps. He informed us that there was an ancient evil vampire locked up down here and the grate was heavily enchanted closed from underneath. He teleported us back to the surface, and disappeared the fighter for talking too much. Tashina then obediently closed the grate and that was it for the adventure. It was kinda mediocre because the party kept arguing too much vaguely-ooc and the littlekids kept trying to do really dumb things or talk over the GMs and not take their turn when declaring actions in combat (not that there was much combat with stuff we could actually kill).
The two girls who were playing the Paladin were going to the gopher briefings, so I decided to as well, mainly because I thought I could help out with the kiddies while they were doing the 'Omnian Religious Worship' event thing on Sunday morning, which I surmised would just annoy me terribly. So at 5pm I went along to the General Gopher Briefing, where I got my Gopher badge, a little form to fill in how much time I'd spent gophering to get a nice t-shirt if I'd done enough, and no answers to my question about how to get involved in the Small Gods (what the room for the littlekiddies was called) stuff. Brian from Ops said he'd find out an answer and have it ready at the Specialist Gopher Briefing. The briefing thing only took about 10mins or so.
At the specialist gopher briefing, there was lots of stuff said about being security and tech crew, and I was told to just turn up if I wanted to help out in Small Gods. I went to talk to the person who mentioned being an Igorette at the Vampyre Ball as a specialised gophering option, and found out where I'd need to be for that. Again, it only took about 10mins.
The game was okay, and there were nice cheesy Doritos being passed around, but most of the players were a bit annoying (not taking turns to speak, the bard insisting on having a violin and playing it badly, the bard in general (always doing random stuff like wandering off to practice with his swordsmanship and generally being really stupid), and there was an awful lot of wandering through boring forest and trying to explore an even more boring garden place.
I'm having trouble remembering chronological order here. Something happened between the end of AD&D and the Opening Ceremony, because I remember that AD&D finished slightly early, despite a section after the Specialised Gopher Briefing where we ran around trying to locate the DMs because they'd both disappeared, even going up to Ops to ask after them, and then having Mike the Moderate return and stall for a while in the forest 'cos he was just playing the mage NPC and didn't know what was meant to happen.
Ah yes - that would be when we met Valerie. (What is it that they do to Americans named Valerie that makes them all so crazy? I only just noticed that coincidence of name...) She was wearing a bright blue swirly t-shirt and carrying a big, smoothed, twisted light-colour-wood staff, which had silver wire wrapped around some of the top part, with various symbols hanging off it (turtle, elephant, ankh are the ones I remember). She had a lot of Discworld-related jewelry that she displayed in a typically American-overconfident-friendly manner, she made Delerium and Naath squeak with her tales about Neil Gaiman, and Delirium took some of her hair to treasure. She was... not exactly *scary*, just very, very, *there*. Loud, but not in an obnoxious or an actually-physically-loud way. She had *presence*.
Anyway, perhapse because of this we were somehow late for the Opening Ceremony (well, on time, or perhaps 5mins early, which equals 'late' in the case of any big event at DWcon), so we ended up in the Cavern, watching on a screen, which wasn't half as much fun, although the jokes were still as amusing, and Valerie said 'Huzzah!' a lot. The bit-with-the-microphone on the stage (it's not precisely a podium, it isn't raised. I can't remember the right word right now. the bit the person who's speaking stands behind.) had a green swamp-dragon in coathanger wire and papier mache clinging to it.
The main event in the Opening Ceremony was the quiz. Apparently we needed a virgin sacrifice, and it was decided that finding one might be difficult at a con, so they instead asked for a fourteen-year-old called Kevin. A girl came up to claim this name, and proceeded to answer a few DW questions right and be rewarded with a cabbage for each right answer, then she answered one wrong and was given some DW merchandise, so answered the rest deliberately wrong, and walked away with piles of stuff. There were also some jokes about the Discworld being all copied of Tolkein or Harry Potter, and far too many LotR movie references.
On the way back to the Hub, I was ambushed by some random guy and his friends. After accepting the rather random-seeming hug, I noticed his name badge - Rand, who used to /query me on irc.lspace.org a lot. So now I'd identified this random person, I agreed to go eat dinner with him and his friends. The hotel dinners were quite expensive - £9.75 - but they were also quite good food. The first night I had cod in a nice white creamy sauce, some gammon (yeah, yeah, it's just ham, but I like it when it's cut off a whole joint in big chunks), some cauliflower in a cheese sauce, new potatoes, and probably some other stuff 'cos my plate was satisfyingly full (I was determined to get my money's worth from the carvery).
Rand and friends turned out to be overly fond of anime, so they had a long discussion that generally hovered a few inches above my head (or below my level of the gutter, depending on your point of view). Thankfully I'd heard of *some* of what they were talking about from Naath and from general sources online (mistings.org, for instance), but mostly I didn't know what they were on about and wasn't particularly interested either. I like anime-style pictures, and hence stills from anime (like the impressive, brightly-coloured one adorning Rand's black t-shirt), but actual anime just sounds increadibly boring. I could talk about fakenAnime like DBZ, and the general curse of the Screaming Fangirl, though.
We eventually retreated to a set of sofas and armchairs in the Hub, where the conversation moved onto ancient computer games, equally ancient computers, favourite programming languages, short-story science fiction, different versions of Elite, and other topics that were much more accessible for me - so much so that I entirely forgot that I was planning to go to 'Terry's Bedtime Stories' and hence find Naath again. (The others whose names I got were... uhm, summat like Emmet... and, well, the ascii character for J in binary (we only conclusively discovered this much later on, but I suspected it when one of them called him J).
When Naath came out of Bedtime Stories, telling me off for not being there because they'd been read large chunks of Night Watch, the next DW book to be published (I tried to explain to her that I'd really rather wait until it was in the library, when I could borrow it and read the whole thing at my leisure, but she didn't appear to understand the concept of being willing to wait for books). Finally we got to meet our roomate, Vicky Cook, who appeared to be exceptionally normal in comparison to, say, Katl'c and Delerium, or all the other scary goths around (although there were actually more people who looked reasonably normal than I'd expected). The double-sofa-bed thing was most uncomfortable (far too hard for me), and so I didn't actually get that much sleep, although I'm not sure how much.
Despite having informed me at one point (or me thinking that she'd informed me) that we were definately going in the afternoon,
naath told me the day before that she was turning up at 9am. So my grandparents turned up at 7am to 'help me pack', which consisted of making copious cups of tea, making sure the doors were all closed, and taking all of the perishable food I'd left. Oh, and doing the dishes I'd left from the day before, which was quite helpful really. Packing was pretty easy given I had a big list, and I didn't miss anything essential this time :-). At about 9:15am (I'd been ready since 8:20am in the end) the phone rang - this was Naath's mother telling us that Naath and her dad were lost in Braintree on account of the new roads, although mainly on account of Naath's dad following signs to Braintree rather than to Black Notley. It only took them about five more minutes to actually arrive, however, so then we were off.The first part of the trip was slightly eventful as we had to navigate The Maze Of Cones which the roads around us have become since they started building the big Braintree-Stanstead road, with Naath's dad yelling at the road for being stupid. (I now know where Naath gets her loudness from.) We ended up heading towards Chelmsford, and going around several dozen more roundabouts than strictly necessary. Somewhere near Huntingdon we stopped at a service station to get some chocolate, and discovered that this particular service station actually had nice, clean toilets, which was very suprising indeed. The only other highlight of the trip was the M69, the significance of which Naath was *increadibly* slow to get. (No, I'm not explaining.)
We arrived at the hotel at about 11:30am, and proceeded to turn the wrong way from the entrance and have to turn around when I pointed out that the signs pointing towards Reception were pointing the opposite direction from the one we were travelling in. Naath's dad wanted to help us take the cases in, but we pointed out that if he left his car unoccupied in the dropping-off / taxi area Bad Things would probably happen to it. We dumped our cases with the concierge (ooh, posh word) and got into a remarkably short line for signing for our hotel rooms. Naath asked if I knew where Registration was, at which point I just gestured towards the fairly obvious sign saying 'Registration This Way' with a pic of a big hand pointing in the correct direction (which was quite obvious anyway, as the only other way out we hadn't come in by was the way to the restaurant). Unfortunately, just as it stopped being obvious which way we should go (at a crossroads of four fairly main-looking corridors) the signs also ran out.
We were saved from our confusion by someone holding a 'Registration This Way' sign, who pointed the right direction out with it and walked beside us directing us with the sign the sign all the way to where we were meant to be registered. On presenting our membership-reciept thingamies we got the obligitory piles of paperstuff in a carrier bag, plus pwetty convention badges with turtles on. We left a message on the Voodoo Board (if you have a message for someone, you write it on a card and file it, and then you stick a pin in the person's name...) for Katl'c (who was easy to file a card for, because all three of her names start with the letter K!) to meet us in various places we might be. Then we hung around in the Hub for a while reading our paperstuff, and decided to get the Hotel Orientation thing done before the Troll's Guide to Conventions (the talk for convention newbies). We did quite a bit of it (find a room with a DW-related clue on, find the DW-related-titled room the clue refers to), but found that two rooms had the same clue attached to them, and one of them led to a circular set of clues, which didn't particularly work, so we gave up and went to see if our room was ready yet, even though it was only 1:30pm and they'd said to come back at 2pm.
The people at hotel reception handed over our keys, and so we got into our room and claimed the two double beds for us (although Naath got the real bed and I got the sofa bed). We then went back out to try and finish off the hotel orientation thingamy, and walked past two rather scary goths, one of whom had rather brightly coloured hair for a goth - bleach-blonde with bright red and blue streaks. We walked straight past them, then they turned round and spotted Naath (in her rather impressive black cape thing that everyone kept treading on and strangling her with), and introduced themselves - Katl'c and Delirium. Katl'c appeared to just be a regular kindof goth, but Delirium was definately a scaryGoth with lots of scars. (The hair is from Delirium in Sandman.) We sat around in the Hub and Naath tried to transcribe our answers to the Hotel Orientation (which I'd done in incomprehensible writing as we were walking along) onto her sheet, but it didn't all fit together, and she got the columns wrong (someone had told us we'd got them wrong as we were walking around, but she hadn't got them corrected), so we gave up, and went to the Troll's Guide thing. I'd somehow got the impression that the Troll's Guide was meant to introduce the newbies to each other and to people, but it was just a boring security/health-and-safety kind of presentation.
Then we went and got lunch from the 'Harga's House of Ribs' (sign tacked up on the door of the hotel restaurant). We had a look at the hot food on the carvery but it didn't seem overly appetising (fat greasy chips, sausages, beans, mash, that kind of stuff) so we went back to the baguettes. I had a turkey and cranberry one, which was delicious, and Naath had a horrible-looking Chicken Tikka one. There was the option of putting stuff on our room bill but I decided to pay by cash so I'd know how much I had left.
I then headed over to the War Room (which I've somehow got into my head as the Games Room, which may have been because we played games there) for the AD&D session. I was handed a female Barbarian (honstly, how do you play a female Barbarian! it just doesn't work.) with practically perfect stats - 18 STR, 17 DEX and CON, and even 14 CHR (which is so Wrong for a Barbarian) (12 INT which is pretty high for a Barbarian, and 9 WIS which was helpful).
Tashina the Female Human Barbarian started her rather less than illustrious adventuring career by tipping a pint of ale over the head of a particularly annoying Bard. As the Bard persisted in being annoying, the Elven Paladin decided to knock him out with an ale mug, for the good of peace and the sanity of everyone in the inn. Meanwhile, the Fighter decided to ask the barkeep about rooms for the night, and was informed that despite the tiny size of the inn (before the Bard was unconscious, he was informed by the DM that juggling would be impossible in the room due to the ceiling being less than an inch from his head if he stood up) and the location of the inn in the middle of nowhere, the only rooms left were luxury rooms costing 25gp, which was significantly more than the party had. The barkeep then charged us 1gp each for sleeping in the stable, so Tashina declared loudly that she didn't need any stinking stable and proceeded to sleep just outside the door of the stable to make a point.
Tashina was awoken by a large quantity of rather bright light and a not inconsiderable amount of heat. The inn was on fire - all of the inn (although not the stable). After yelling 'Fire!' in a suitibly loud voice, Tashina decided to sprint off down the road after the three small retreating figures, leaving the rest of the party to wake up and realise that the inn was on fire. The Fighter chased after Tashina, and the Rogue chased after the Fighter, but the Paladin and the Bard decided to go look for the barkeep - the Paladin because he wanted to rescue him, the Bard because he didn't particularly want to get into another fight. They managed to prop the door open (when the Bard found a long plank) and get inside, but as the walls were burning they didn't stay long, as they could see neither the barkeep nor anything of value. Then they decided to follow us.
Meanwhile Tashina had caught up with the three pathetic goblins, rolled a critical faliure and buried her massive battleaxe about 3ft into the ground. While she was cursing loudly and trying to retrieve it, the fighter arrived, followed swiftly by a crossbow bolt from the rogue, which impaled one of the goblins, killing it instantly. The fighter then rolled a critical success and sliced another goblin neatly in half. The remaining goblin took two bolts to kill (fighter swinging uselessly at it), and Tashina finally managed to dig her axe out of the ground. Finally the bard and paladin catch up, to see Tashina wiping her axe on the grass as if she'd been responsible for the kills. The rogue swiftly loots the bodies, finding a flask of strange-smelling liquid, a tinderbox, some lamp oil, and a few gp. We conclude that the goblins set the inn on fire, and continue down the path that they were running away down. We didn't get far - fairly soon we noticed that there were two trolls and four dwarves in front of us. The rogue hid in the trees, the fighter climbed a tree, and the paladin decided a stealthy approach from the forest was the better part of valour. The bard took out his violin and began to play - a 10 on his Perform roll meant that the sound was not unlike a cat in extreme agony making sure everyone else in the region was also in extreme agony. Tashina, naturally, just stood there throwing and catching her axe between her hands, with a massive smile on her face, greeting the monsters cheerily.
From his vantage point in the tree, the fighter spotted that there were six trolls now in position on the path behind us. The paladin was about to decide that cowardice was the very best part of valour indeed, to much jeering by Tashina - the trolls and goblins appeared to be utterly confused by the terrible music and the uncannily happy barbarian - when a man in long purple robes suddenly appeared in a small flash of lightening, and bawled "Shut up!" at us. The paladin came out of the trees to apologise for the noise, but the bard continued to play his violin, so the mage pointed at it and it mysteriously vanished (to cheers from the entire party - the person playing the bard was being pretty annoying generally). The paladin patiently explained that less noise would be caused if there weren't so many trolls and goblins around that would have to be fought or avoided by crashing through the forest, so the mage zapped the forward group of trolls and goblins with a few dozen well-placed magic missiles, issued a second warning to be quiet, and disappeared again.
We continued along the road, and eventually we found a clearing off to one side with a tower in it. Naturally, whilst the others wandered around the tower, debating on whether to attempt to climb it or just creep away silently, Tashina went and hammered on the door. This tower happened to be the home of the quiet-loving mage, who yelled 'Shut up!' from the top window (there were no ground floor windows) and eventually sent a fireball into the trees as a warning shot as Tashina continued to be cheerful and chatty. We left fairly quickly and continued down the road, although we weren't quite sure why as we'd found the other goblins and had them disappeared.
Making camp for the night, in the third watch an odd squelching noise was investigated and the Paladin and Rogue investigating managed to set off a shrieker. This attracted a rather impressive giant, from whom we proceeded to run away from rather fast, after the fighter attempted to engage him, and came fairly close to getting impressively trampled before we distracted the giant by failing to hit it with all manner of ranged weaponary and convinced him to run away too. Then we found this really boring garden place (big iron fence on top of a stone wall, slightly open gates, strangely shaped stones and well-kept lawns and paths and neat trees, about a mile long). It turned out to be a graveyard (the cleric, who'd been pretty silent up to this point, kept Tashina from hacking limbs off trees in boredom), with a small mausoleum containing a red grate on the floor leading to some steps.
Obviously, Tashina threw this grating open (STR 18 is helpful sometimes!) and we all trooped down, using the torch we made from a fallen branch and that lamp oil, to find the wizard at the bottom of the steps. He informed us that there was an ancient evil vampire locked up down here and the grate was heavily enchanted closed from underneath. He teleported us back to the surface, and disappeared the fighter for talking too much. Tashina then obediently closed the grate and that was it for the adventure. It was kinda mediocre because the party kept arguing too much vaguely-ooc and the littlekids kept trying to do really dumb things or talk over the GMs and not take their turn when declaring actions in combat (not that there was much combat with stuff we could actually kill).
The two girls who were playing the Paladin were going to the gopher briefings, so I decided to as well, mainly because I thought I could help out with the kiddies while they were doing the 'Omnian Religious Worship' event thing on Sunday morning, which I surmised would just annoy me terribly. So at 5pm I went along to the General Gopher Briefing, where I got my Gopher badge, a little form to fill in how much time I'd spent gophering to get a nice t-shirt if I'd done enough, and no answers to my question about how to get involved in the Small Gods (what the room for the littlekiddies was called) stuff. Brian from Ops said he'd find out an answer and have it ready at the Specialist Gopher Briefing. The briefing thing only took about 10mins or so.
At the specialist gopher briefing, there was lots of stuff said about being security and tech crew, and I was told to just turn up if I wanted to help out in Small Gods. I went to talk to the person who mentioned being an Igorette at the Vampyre Ball as a specialised gophering option, and found out where I'd need to be for that. Again, it only took about 10mins.
The game was okay, and there were nice cheesy Doritos being passed around, but most of the players were a bit annoying (not taking turns to speak, the bard insisting on having a violin and playing it badly, the bard in general (always doing random stuff like wandering off to practice with his swordsmanship and generally being really stupid), and there was an awful lot of wandering through boring forest and trying to explore an even more boring garden place.
I'm having trouble remembering chronological order here. Something happened between the end of AD&D and the Opening Ceremony, because I remember that AD&D finished slightly early, despite a section after the Specialised Gopher Briefing where we ran around trying to locate the DMs because they'd both disappeared, even going up to Ops to ask after them, and then having Mike the Moderate return and stall for a while in the forest 'cos he was just playing the mage NPC and didn't know what was meant to happen.
Ah yes - that would be when we met Valerie. (What is it that they do to Americans named Valerie that makes them all so crazy? I only just noticed that coincidence of name...) She was wearing a bright blue swirly t-shirt and carrying a big, smoothed, twisted light-colour-wood staff, which had silver wire wrapped around some of the top part, with various symbols hanging off it (turtle, elephant, ankh are the ones I remember). She had a lot of Discworld-related jewelry that she displayed in a typically American-overconfident-friendly manner, she made Delerium and Naath squeak with her tales about Neil Gaiman, and Delirium took some of her hair to treasure. She was... not exactly *scary*, just very, very, *there*. Loud, but not in an obnoxious or an actually-physically-loud way. She had *presence*.
Anyway, perhapse because of this we were somehow late for the Opening Ceremony (well, on time, or perhaps 5mins early, which equals 'late' in the case of any big event at DWcon), so we ended up in the Cavern, watching on a screen, which wasn't half as much fun, although the jokes were still as amusing, and Valerie said 'Huzzah!' a lot. The bit-with-the-microphone on the stage (it's not precisely a podium, it isn't raised. I can't remember the right word right now. the bit the person who's speaking stands behind.) had a green swamp-dragon in coathanger wire and papier mache clinging to it.
The main event in the Opening Ceremony was the quiz. Apparently we needed a virgin sacrifice, and it was decided that finding one might be difficult at a con, so they instead asked for a fourteen-year-old called Kevin. A girl came up to claim this name, and proceeded to answer a few DW questions right and be rewarded with a cabbage for each right answer, then she answered one wrong and was given some DW merchandise, so answered the rest deliberately wrong, and walked away with piles of stuff. There were also some jokes about the Discworld being all copied of Tolkein or Harry Potter, and far too many LotR movie references.
On the way back to the Hub, I was ambushed by some random guy and his friends. After accepting the rather random-seeming hug, I noticed his name badge - Rand, who used to /query me on irc.lspace.org a lot. So now I'd identified this random person, I agreed to go eat dinner with him and his friends. The hotel dinners were quite expensive - £9.75 - but they were also quite good food. The first night I had cod in a nice white creamy sauce, some gammon (yeah, yeah, it's just ham, but I like it when it's cut off a whole joint in big chunks), some cauliflower in a cheese sauce, new potatoes, and probably some other stuff 'cos my plate was satisfyingly full (I was determined to get my money's worth from the carvery).
Rand and friends turned out to be overly fond of anime, so they had a long discussion that generally hovered a few inches above my head (or below my level of the gutter, depending on your point of view). Thankfully I'd heard of *some* of what they were talking about from Naath and from general sources online (mistings.org, for instance), but mostly I didn't know what they were on about and wasn't particularly interested either. I like anime-style pictures, and hence stills from anime (like the impressive, brightly-coloured one adorning Rand's black t-shirt), but actual anime just sounds increadibly boring. I could talk about fakenAnime like DBZ, and the general curse of the Screaming Fangirl, though.
We eventually retreated to a set of sofas and armchairs in the Hub, where the conversation moved onto ancient computer games, equally ancient computers, favourite programming languages, short-story science fiction, different versions of Elite, and other topics that were much more accessible for me - so much so that I entirely forgot that I was planning to go to 'Terry's Bedtime Stories' and hence find Naath again. (The others whose names I got were... uhm, summat like Emmet... and, well, the ascii character for J in binary (we only conclusively discovered this much later on, but I suspected it when one of them called him J).
When Naath came out of Bedtime Stories, telling me off for not being there because they'd been read large chunks of Night Watch, the next DW book to be published (I tried to explain to her that I'd really rather wait until it was in the library, when I could borrow it and read the whole thing at my leisure, but she didn't appear to understand the concept of being willing to wait for books). Finally we got to meet our roomate, Vicky Cook, who appeared to be exceptionally normal in comparison to, say, Katl'c and Delerium, or all the other scary goths around (although there were actually more people who looked reasonably normal than I'd expected). The double-sofa-bed thing was most uncomfortable (far too hard for me), and so I didn't actually get that much sleep, although I'm not sure how much.
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Date: 2002-08-20 12:53 pm (UTC)From:...and it's only 1/4 of the Con. The second-shortest day, as well. Fear.