01 May, 2006

The Hard Life

Happy Beltane everyone! It hasn't been particularly good weather to leap over a bonfire atop a hill but so it goes.

My friend Pam sent me some pictures of the Latino marchers in Milwaukee.





Organizers said that more than 30,000 attended the rally. Milwaukee police said they would not provide a crowd estimate.

Christine Neumann-Ortiz, director of Voces de la Frontera, the leading organizer of the march, said the crowd ignored what she described as intimidation by anti-immigration groups, as well as bad weather and, in many cases, the loss of a day’s wages, to participate in the event.

Some of the signs at the march said "Stop HR 4437," referring to the bill that would criminalize undocumented immigrants and tighten border security. The bill, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Menomonee Falls), has been passed by the House of Representatives.


Here in Madison, we had our own march.

By noon, more than 1,000 people had gathered at the State Street steps of the Capitol to participate in a rally supporting a change in immigration policies.

Bearing U.S. flags and signs with messages such as "Where did your ancestors come from?" and "No human is illegal," some came individually and others marched as a group to the beat of drums.

The National Day of Action rally was one of many today across the country, which included some plans to boycott work, school and shopping to show the importance of immigrants to the national economy.


My big project for the day is now done. I was anxious all morning and feel much better now that it is squared away. Yes, registration for events at GenCon began today! My brother had to take my mom to the doctor this afternoon so I was charged with the task of registering him. In return, he promised me a reward: "I will buy you some Old Style and 'sliders' for your effort." He's such a loving brother. The server was bogged down before 2 when registration began and it was slow going and filled with timeouts. But I got 'er done.

I begin my GenCon 2006 experience by building myself a foam weapon. I hope to hit at couple seminars too. One that I know I'll be attending is "Real Feasts: Menus and Entertainment from Medieval Cookbooks". I shall learn all about:

What were feasts like in the Middle Ages? Did they serve gruel? Turkey legs? How about whole roasted oxen? This seminar provides detailed descriptions of feasts taken directly from northern Europe in the 13th, 14th and 15th century. Subjects covered are foods served, table settings, manners, and the entertainment during the feast.

Saturday morning starts early with "Hickman's Killer Breakfast" which will involve me being a red shirt in a musical, no less.

A rampaging gamemaster, 300 first-level characters facing certain death...and show-stopping musical numbers! Tracy Hickman, Laura Curtis and the usual crew take on all comers in their classic, wacky, no-holds-barred role playing game for one hundred plus players. First one hundred and fifty tickets sold now GUARANTEED to play onstage or just come without a ticket and join in the audience participation.

After a couple hours to get my act together, I'm off to do some role-playing in the form of Call of Cthulhu. In this instance, it's "The Poetics of Violent Death".

Several murders and grave desecrations have the Medical Examiner's office in Polk County, Iowa, extremely worried, not to mention overworked. In addition, the shocking, unusual and grisly nature of these crimes has staff members nervous, even frightened. As if that isn't bad enough, the Polk County Sheriff has insisted the Medical Examiner's office accept help from outside consultants. Just who are these people?

Yee doggy! After that I'll probably head across the street to check out the costume contest.

As I said, I registered my sibling for some events. In addition to getting him a slot in the Cthulhu Masters Tournament, he'll be playing Memories of Madness, a story with ties to Wisconsin:

October 30, 1999: the Wisconsin Paranormal Research Society has received permission to conduct an overnight investigation of a long-abandoned VA hospital located in a remote corner of an inactive Army ammunition plant in rural Wisconsin. The facility has been locked-down for almost 40 years and remains untouched by vandals. Will the WPRS hit the "jackpot" and provide conclusive evidence of the paranormal?

It should be fiendish. According to a post by the gamekeeper in a Cthulhu forum, the eldritch events of the adventure are "based loosely on some of my experiences as the former science advisor (and investigator) for the Virginia Ghosts and Hauntings Research Society (now Center for Paranormal Research and Investigation)." That's just rich. You'll have a real crazy person running the game!

The NOVUS ORDO SECOLURUM folks are running what sounds like a really neat tournament this year. There are two perspectives on the story. "Foule is Faire" features "A bold band of British adventurers takes a trip to the colonies for the Columbian Exhibition of 1893 in Chicago." while "Faire is Foule" sees the gender bit turned around: "You, the stalwart women of the National American Woman Suffrage Association take a trip to the Columbian Exhibition of 1893 in Chicago." I aam assuming that the adventure was inspired by Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City since I seem to recall one of the NOS boys talking about it last year at his housewarming party.

And I see that Harry Potter has gone Cthulhu too:

The school year is over and all of Hogwarts is going home for the summer. Giving in to temptation, Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle conspire to stall Harry, Ron and Hermione's departure and strand them alone in Hogwarts for the summer. But something goes wrong and all six of them get stranded with no hope of getting home. If that wasn't the worst of it, strange sounds have started coming from the Slytherin dorms a sense of utter dread has permeated the entire school. Together, facing unknown horrors and fighting a maddening urge to flee in terror, Harry and the other students must find out what's in House Slytherin.

Charles is looking to get a few of us into a late Friday night session of True Dungeon. True Dungeon is a game where you and your friends enter a life-sized dungeon and wander around solving puzzles, battling baddies, and generally living out your dorkiest D&D fantasies. For a peek, check out their trailer:




And like all good D&D adventures, you start off at the tavern - the Fantasy Tavern. It's a mock up of a medieval drinking establishment. Nice pictures of bugbears on the walls, I thought.

As a precursor to GenCon, my buddy Ted throws AzogCon in the spring and this year's was held last weekend. Charles and I drove down on Saturday to experience the madness. But before we headed out to Lombard, we stopped in Little Inida for some lunch. I parked the car and then we walked a block to Devon and began wandering around in search of an eating establishment. We walked by several before settling on a small joint. Both of us were keen on the vindaloo but made the fatal mistake of not actually looking the buffet over before going that route. We were disappointed that there was no vindaloo to be had. However, I found this yellow stuff with which I fell in love. It's a yellow sauce that has all these tasty dumplings floating in it and it had lots of cilantro too. It was stupendous! I raved and raved about it while Charles satiated himself with lots of lamb curry. And one nice thing about the joint was that they brought out the tandoori chicken to you on a sizzling platter! Mmmm…After we had made gluttons of ourselves, we headed back to the car and out to Lombard.

It was a rainy, gloomy day – perfect for gaming! When we got to Ted's house, Terry was setting up a miniatures table in the garage so we proceeded to unpack all the New Glarus beer that my friends had ordered since it's no longer available in Illinois. It was just before 2 and there were only a few stragglers around. Oddly enough, Ted's wife, Letha, was home. I thought for sure that she'd be gone all weekend rather than suffer the presence of several scruffy gamers ranting on about the wonders of the Age of Renaissance and the horrors of Cthulhu. Plus there's and all the drunken yelling that miniatures ensues. I mean, just look at these guys:



Even I was hesitant to spend the weekend amongst these people.

While waiting for folks to show up, I popped open my first of many Capital beers – an amber. Glenn and Andrew showed up soon enough. A game of Age of Renaissance started up but I spent the afternoon in the garage drinking beer and hanging out with Greg, Terry, and my brother shooting the shit. And drinking more beer. Soon enough evening rolled around and the Age of Renaissance game ended. Everyone came up from the basement and Ted started dinner – grilled Polish sausage. After dinner we turned on Ted's funky big flat screen monster television. Charles displayed some fancy fingerwork and found Stoogapalooza! Yes, hours of The Three Stooges! I hadn't seen them in years so I laughed. In fact, I probably laughed way more than I should have. There were a few good belly laughs to be had.

A couple episodes in, Don and Jeff, half of NOVUS ORDO SECOLURUM, showed up. Don was at the Cubs game at which the Brewers slaughtered them. He was going to run a Call of Cthulhu adventure, No Man's Land.



He began by getting the cramped room all decked-up.



He put some camouflaged netting up against one wall, scattered a couple colored lights about the place, and put an old lamp on the table with a Bible from 1903 next to it. The five of us were U.S. soldiers in World War I pushing through the Argonne forest. I was Emmett Ryan, a young farm boy from Massachusetts who was very religious and not particularly smart. Don also had a small boom box and he played some very, very creepy music to start things off – a bit like the LOST theme. Charles was sent to find another company and I knew shit was going to hit the fan soon when he returned saying that they weren't where they should have been. Then, as our lieutenant lit a match to look at his compass, a bullet went through his head and splattered his brains on us. Then the music turned to gunfire. We had moved right into a position held by the Germans and there was a machine gun in a pillbox tearing us apart. Somehow we made it to the trenches. Greg had a new-fangled Browning so he could do some killin'. However, the rest of us had single action rifles so we did a lot of hacking and slashing with our bayonets. Suddenly we all heard this weird humming sound in our heads – the Germans too. It pulsed and throbbed as it became louder. It didn't take long before we just couldn't handle it any longer and everyone passed out.

The whole thing was just creepy. The ambience with the dim lights, the sound effects, and music really got my imagination going. I kind of imagined myself scared thinking about the bullets whizzing by, the corpses, the stink, and of course the zombies too.

When we awoke, it was daylight. Everyone was dead excepting us. Some of us were sunburned and the scene was just creepy. The barrel of the machine gun had melted and drooped to the ground; belt buckles, badges – anything metallic – on the dead soldiers had melted off leaving the cloth unharmed. There were bodies everywhere and they had this horrid grimace on their faces and their skin was like leather. Andy discovered that the 5 of us were at the center of a spiral pattern. Going out from where we laid, trees were split like toothpicks but split out away from the trench.

I braved the bodies and their stench to wander down the trench. After about 200 feet, I came to a bunker. Inside there was a table covered with a tarpaulin. Pulling it back revealed a couple dead German soldiers with looks of horror frozen on their faces. Their skin was gray – almost ashen. I threw the tarp back over them and continued searching – searching for survivors to take prisoner, a field telephone – just anything. But, taking a step towards one wall, the ground gave way and I fell into a dark room underneath.

Being a smoker, I pulled out my matches and managed to light one. There was a slight breeze coming from one direction and I discovered that there was a large stone archway which lead into another room. Approaching the threshold, I could vaguely see into the room. I saw…I saw a figure. It was kneeling before one of the walls…

Luckily my comrades showed up in due time. Jeff started yelling down the hole at me to NOT go into the other room and to get the hell out of there. The fact that he yelled in real life and that I was sitting next to him added to the effect. The unlucky part of my rescue was that we left the area only to find a town that was deserted except for the priest. We also ran into zombies and cultists and I failed many a sanity check. Before the priest was impaled by a crucifix that moved of its own accord, he gave Jeff a funky crystal and a couple pages from the Necronomicon. Unbeknownst to me, holding the crystal while reciting a passage from the Necronomicon will ward off the big major evil that was preparing to unfold before us. Since Don loves me so much, my character was chosen to be possessed by the evil. This resulted in me being shot by my fellow doughboys. And good. My chest was splayed wide open. But before I was killed, I got in a good demonic laugh and soliloquy about how we had waited for aeons and we were going to rise again – you know the drill.

When our session was over, we came out to find that the Arkham Horror games was ongoing. Charles joined in while the rest of us lounged, drank beer, and watched some bad pr0n on cable. Andy had drunk a whole bottle of New Glarus Raspberry Tart during CoC so he took up residency on one of the couches. Around 2, some of the rest of us began passing out too. I have no recollection of actually moving to a nice plush chair to sleep but I did. I do, however, have recollection of the unholy chorus of snoring. Holy fecal matter! I also recall Ted coming into the room and putting on a Marillion DVD. It must have been about 3:30 when I woke up to see a figure scurrying about the room. Next thing I know, "Grendel" is blaring out of the speakers and on the TV.

Letha, the angel she is, made us breakfast the next morning. We cleaned up a bit, watched the latest Doctor Who episodes, and recovered. The gaming life is a hard one.

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