And the Gold Medal in Plot Finals in the Madrigal Division goes to...
I went into this event much less prepared than I should have been. It had little to do with the short gap between this event and the previous and more to do with my own poor time management. Once again I waited until the last week to get some stuff ready, and then new emergencies came up which took more time than I expected. I was also involved in working out some last minute travel details for some other people which got me off schedule.
As a result I came into the event having slept only a few hours the night before. I had completely missed the info skills deadline for the first time ever. A couple of prop and costume projects I had planned never got done. I had more people in the car coming up this time which meant I brought less thing (but this probably saved my life on the drive home after staying up the previous night). I had hoped to read up on some stuff to remind me of plot points before going in and that didn't happen. So going in to the event I was rather anxious that my lack of preparedness was going to come back and bite me.
Luckily this did not turn out to be the case. I managed to be pretty well prepared for nearly all the things that I ran into. Many of the scenes in which I took part were ones where new information was presented as opposed to ones where old information was needed. Several times during the event I found myself participating in question and answer sessions which allowed me and others to piece together existing knowledge, and this sort of group review both served as an on the spot refresher as well as a springboard for figuring out what to do next. I was particularly happy late Saturday night to get a briefing from an NPC which greatly helped me to sort out a long running small scale plot that I had allowed to become almost hopelessly tangled.
There were two things that I did manage to get prepared for the event, and both ended up paying off hugely. The biggest one was probably the two documents that I helped create along with bakeneko and others which outlined what we know about the Crimson Gate and the Nexus. Both of these paid dividends several times during the weekend. The other was that I got my recorder part sufficiently practiced and prepared for the Vampire Slaying Tea Party.
In terms of mods and scenes things were fairly hit and miss for me. I was able to take part in two of the large marquee events (Kraken, Gold Man) and missed two others (Arden Party, Kath). That is an acceptable ratio, though it was kind of unfortunate that the Arden Party and the Kath mod ran back to back and both essentially shut down all other plot. This resulted in a gap that stretched between 5:00PM to 9:30PM Saturday night for me and some other. Dinner was in the middle there, so that did help break it up a bit. As I read other people event summaries I almost find tons of things mentioned that I missed or didn't know happened. But overall I think I managed to get in my fair share of mods and plot this time.
Dinner was a strange affair for me this time. The Arden Party drew heavily from the ranks of people that normally eat in the dining hall. There were very few people eating there when I arrived. When Midnight came in it suddenly occurred to me that the folks that normally spend dinner talking to Midnight weren't going to be there, and for once I had a subject to speak to him about. So for the first time I got to be that guy that ate dinner with Midnight and squeezed Rob like a sponge for info while he desperately tried to shovel food in his mouth.
The Alternate Midnight (or Midday, as some wags took to calling him) scenes were tons of fun and goldmines of information. I missed the initial introduction of the character but stumbled into him while he was over at the White Court talking with people. The Black Court Spy mod that he created was one of my most satisfactory moments in the event despite the fact I took almost no part in the mod.
After a long session of questions and answers Alternate Midnight proposed a spy mission mod. It would require three people to impersonate bad guys and they would be in grave danger while attending an Alternate World Black Court meeting. These people would ideally be initiates because the Switcheroo magic he would need to use works best on initiates.
The problem we faced was that we had a very small window of time to get organized, and very few people were available due to the fact the Arden Party was just about to start. My contribution to this mission was to run down my memorized roster of Shadowfane characters and use it to chase down and gather up three appropriate initiates. I came up with Penelope, Otomai and Ophelia. Keep in mind this was Ophelia's first event and here we were throwing her in the lion's den.
Given the haste at which we threw this together and the high degree of danger, this mod had every reason in the world to blow up in our face. Instead it became one of our biggest successes during the event. The documents I mentioned earlier were used to give those three a crash course in Other World background. And once they were on the mod all three of them performed like consummate veterans. Each was completely relaxed and came back with the perfect response each time one of the NPC's would challenge them. Otomai's performance in particular was impressive to behold. I would like to think I could be as smooth and expressive as he was if Alternate FireEye was to tell me to give him my opinion.
The Vampire Slaying Party also succeeded beyond what I expected, at least in the part I had any control over. I barely managed to make it to the morning practice, and as a result I played through the entire piece with others just twice. So going in to the party I was pretty shaky about playing in the flute ensemble. There was also a serious miscalculation in terms of what would happen. I had gotten the impression the mod was going to be almost entirely roleplay. When Alkeric arrived he made it very plain there would be fighting, and this forced me to make several mad dashes back and forth between the party setup and my cabin to bring weapons and packets for myself and others. All the undead running around outside at the time didn't help.
The flute performance part of the scene went off flawlessly and I think it exceeded pretty much everyone's expectations. What came next was a bit more problematic. Since I spent the entire first part of the mod sitting in front of a lit music stand I couldn't see anything in the room beyond. So when the music stopped and the violence started I was surprised to discover there was another bad guy in the room besides the main vampire. Oh well, no big deal. There are eleven of us, we should be able to handle it.
And of course we nearly wiped. In terms of the music and the dancing and the displays of art and refinement we were all completely prepared. We had done absolutely nothing to prepare for the fight, and it showed. Given what we faced and how poorly we fought we were damn lucky to get out of there with only a single death.
The scene that followed and all the panic it caused was completely lost on me. At the time I had pretty much no background on Vampire politics and culture to draw on so all the horrible revelations meant nothing. It was clear that terrible things were happening, and that Zephyr and others were horribly upset. I briefly considered try to contribute to either the panicked discussion or to the comforting and reassuring of Zephyr. However, I have a very poor skill set to perform either task, and both were being handled expertly by others, so my best play was to keep quiet and stay out of the way.
The long Saturday night fight through the Wonders was enjoyed by me probably a bit more than most. For many people it seems that most of the long fight was just something to suffer through in order to get to the prize at the end. I was much better equipped to deal with the slog through the woods though and I managed to enjoy most of it. There was a lot of down time, but I am pretty patient and quite happy to sit in the woods in the dark watching things. The fighting was brutal, but I like hard fights. Trudging through the woods at night is awful, but I love running around in the woods at night.
I had a number of good moments during the fight itself. I cast my full allotment of Life spells during the trek. I had several fun fighitng exchanges with various NPC's. I got to use my newly purchased Speak to Plant skill at a crucial moment when I had figured it might take me years before I would find a chance to use it. I was also quite blessed to be part of a very well built group of fellow Seekers which performed extremely well through the trials. Much of the credit for this goes to our great fortune at having Jack in our group since his Herald skills synergized immensely well with the Magic Resting Banner.
Several people have spoken eloquently about the scene of the Ascension of the Gold Man. Like everyone else I felt privileged to be part of it. Again, a much of what was said made little sense to me and needed to be explained to me afterwards, but it was fairly easy to get the gist of what was happening.
A number of people have also mentioned Martin's secret path out of the Deep Gloaming. Perhaps it was a bit of a cheat to not leave the Deep Gloaming or The Pale by the same patch we came in. But the trail we used to get back to town was far easier to walk and far far more scenic. Given the exhaustion everyone was feeling I decided the small cheat was worth it.
I missed pretty much everything that happened Sunday morning due to my attendance in a meeting with Mother Lily. I was afraid I was going to regret that, but after speaking to others afterwards I was a bit relieved to learned I didn't miss too much. I had no hope of winning anything in the auction. The Unseelie/Seelie influence meeting appears to have not been all that involved and didn't require my participation at all. Even so, had all those scenes and the other I missed been great I probably would have been content to miss them in favor of the Naveril meeting.
The Naveril folks all tend to be fairly varied in terms of our makeup and interests. We also unsurprisingly have more than our fair share of cutups and hams. But most importantly I think we don't have any one person or group that has such a huge personality or presence that it drowns out or overshadows the rest. It makes for a pretty low stress nonjudgmental noncompetitive (mostly) group that is comfortable to be with. And Mother Lily's goofy personality both plays off and encourages this sort of behavior nicely. That meeting left me very encouraged about my future Naveril interactions.
In general the event was a great mix of big flashy effects, plot progression, information revelations, and good hard fights. There were a number of examples of each in both the large and small scale. There were times to save the world through note taking such as during the Black Court meeting and the Crimson Gate trip. There were times to fight for my life such as during the Alternate Father Wyndam Show that played on the path to the Wonders. And there were times to play my role as healer such as when I backpacked dogbone literally from one side of Shadowfane to the other while he beat the mess out of vampires using my sword when his broke. So what's not to love?