While it's off-again, I figured I might as well get to recapping or I'd never get around to it. Besides, I've got some really spiffy pictures and everyone should get a chance to see them.
So the day before I left for gencon, I was in a bit of a panic. I had called Richard, my ride, around a dozen times that dya and received no response. After a while the damn phone didn't even ring and went straight to voicemail. You have to sort of know Richard to understand why this is sort of a frightening prospect. Melissa has often referred to him as being a drama queen, but it's not that he wallows in drama exactly, it's that unpleasant events always seem to find him and then set up shop in his spare bedroom. If Richard missed some event, you would always wonder if it was because he was dead in the street somewhere. I can't even begin to recount the number of times he seems to run headlong into god awful events like accidents or ex-wife hijinx or crap with his kids etc. So the fact that I couldn't reach him was _not_ a good sign as far as I was concerned.
I ended up getting a phone call from a quite inebriated richard around 1am the night before we were supposed to leave. It turns out that his brother was dying of liver failure due to hep C and alcoholism. He apparently had no interest in quitting his drinking and was on the express train to no good end and the family had more or less given up on the idea. Richard had been out at his place tying one on with him and his wife and had thus been indisposed. It took a while to sort out that he would try to pick me up the next morning on his way back south toward his house, we would stop at his place while he threw some clothes into a bag and picked up the cutout, and we would be off from there to gencon. I kept my fingers crossed and after a bit of worrying, went to bed.
The next morning I woke up early, packed up my things and went to the airport to return the mustang. I gave Richard his wakeup call and despite some delays, we actually managed to make it out of chicago by around 11:00am. Not as early as I might have liked, but given the circumstances, infinitely better than what I had been dreading. The whole lot of us had golden tickets for True Dungeon, meaning we had to arrive early enough for the VIP run that night.
The drive was pretty obnoxious with all the construction going on. It's always a wonder to me that there are always construction crews working but the roads never seem to get any better. Richard and I spent a good chunk of time chatting about various things and we found that we had actually beat Melissa and
After Richard dropped me off at the Embassy I checked into the room (a mess in and of itself since


So here's me with the cutout right after I managed to get it to The Ram and took a look at it for the first time. It freaked out a few members of the waitstaff as they mistook it for a patron a couple of times and, as you might imagine, I got quite a few strange looks from people in the resturant. I felt sorta bad for


Here's the cutout with

Here's a shot of the cutout with MikeB who stuck around for a few extra minutes before clearing out. I think he had been running a RPG of some sort which had just ended. It would have been nice to have gotten in on some of the early gaming, but things just didn't work out that way this year. You can't expect complete control over your schedule when you're asking other people for a favor and in the end, I was just happy that we got down there with plenty of time for the TD run.
After not see

When

So here's a picture of me and the indomitable

Since we were heading out to True Dungeon in a bit, I decided to put the token box on the cutout and see how he would look in all his TD finery. I would only be able to leave the thing there for part of that night and then saturday after KB because no one there could be expected to guarentee its safety. Can you believe that? Actually having to worry about threats of violence and damage against a cardboard cutout. Sheesh...crazy fucking nutjobs.

Psst, hey nutjobs.
After a time,
We got to true dungeon with relatively little time to spare and after I had set up the cutout with his token box, it was time for the group huddle.

Here's a picture of the training room. You can see the bookshelf of titles in the background and of course there's the bardic symbol whozit up against it. You can also just make out the wizard's planes of existance chart and the cleric's prayer beads. This was obviously the study section of the room.

Here was our lovely bar owner/token trader who not only fed us the initial plot of the adventure but handled any trades we had to make. Since I had left all of my trade tokens back in the hotel room, I decided to pass figuring there was more than enough time for that later. Our group was told that we would be payed 80 gold if we went down into the basement of the bar and cleaned out the nest of rats that were below and eating all the provisions. My cries of 'Save vs cliched plot, DC 25!' went unheeded I'm afraid. We missed our saving throws and ventured deep into the dark pits below.
Overall, I had a great time in the dungeon. I thought everything was much improved over last year and if I end up going to socal, I would want to run through it yet again. Such enthusiasm however did not increase our odds of survival as we died in the final room. We also has a small amount of intra-party conflict along with some petulance. I had never run through with any of these guys before so I wasn't sure if that sort of back and forth was the norm for their group.
Afterwards we ventured out to divide the loot (which as I recall, I never did end up getting a split of the gold that the armor was supposed to be sold for....hmmm) and talk about what might have beens. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to see Curt from Smirk and Dagger before the run, and I could only assume that he was in the dungeon by the time I got out of it. I had offered him up my spare golden ticket instead of selling it, and Lori had found one for his son so they could go through together. I found out latter that while his son had to bail, a friend jumped in and those two had managed to actually win the event. AHHHH. They ended up getting, from what I hear, a really nice plaque to immortalize their fame.
So after all the death, our little group gathered back up and decided to head over to the ram for dinner. This ended up being a poor idea since the wait at that point was out the door and spanned at least a hour. We chatted with some people outside before Richard, starving, dragged us all across the street to St. Elmo's a steakhouse where he treated us all to a gigantic meal. That steak sat in the pit of my stomach all night like a stone.
After dinner,

I snagged a seat with

Here's

Here's

And here's the cutout with Lord Ackbar, the calamari commando. I would see him later during the BYOV harry potter larp. I also caught site of a lot of other people and otherwise received greetings and salutations, but frankly, I can't remember who's who in general. I usually just try to fake it until I can try to puzzle things out. When it comes to most forum members, I'm just completely in the dark because I've never associated their names online with pictures.
By that point it was getting pretty late and so
Anyway, tommorrow was a new day and would be chock full of excitement. Who knew what the future would hold for our brave explorers and their 2-D companion. Be sure to tune in for the next installment of gencon recaps to find out.