Sometimes I write things

It’s getting dark at the Lauro house, although it was sunny-bright before the commercial break and it’ll be early evening when the audience returns to FenCon. Don’t ask embarrassing questions. Alice Lauro — Virginia Silver — appears to be in a borderline stupor, and mutters something about not feeling well.

Cassie offers to help her into bed, and Alice drunkenly murmurs that she’d appreciate that dear, thank you.

CUT to somewhere on the Ball State campus, Dale and Cassie at a party. The music’s loud and not very good, the refreshments are all alcoholic, and there’s a bit of grime all over everything. The kids are having fun, though: the swim team has orchestrated another breath-holding party, and Wade is winning.

Dale seems happy to see Cassie, and offers her… well, there’s warm beer, vodka&gatorade, and Jell-O shots…

“Ooh!” says Cassie. “I like Jell-O!”

Well, okay then, Dale says, and gives her a glass of something purple. Cassie looks at it, then asks for a spoon.

A spoon?

For the Jell-O.

Oh. Okay then. Dale will have to go hunt a spoon down. Wait here. He will return with a spoon. Dale (and the camera) leave Cassie standing by a tray of a dozen or so Jell-O shots, and he wanders through the party in a Scorsese/”Goodfellas” tribute tracking shot. Past some guys arguing about whether Mace Windu could defeat Spider-Man to a buffet of corn chips and dip and no spoon (though he does find a box of five hundred plastic knives), past a mixed-gender group arguing about whether Eat Your Babies would be a good name for an Eric MacAlester tribute band, into the kitchen where he roots around, successfully this time, for a spoon, past some people watching a movie the size of a blurry index card on a computer monitor, across the dance floor (pausing to dance for about five seconds) and finally back to Cassie. Now the tray of Jell-O shots next to her is half empty and she has a very wide smile on her face.

“These are good!” Cassie says. She seems very, very happy to be there.

CUT to them on a sofa some brief time later.

Dale asks how things are going, and Cassie explodes with “my father is a pirate!”

“Really?”

“Yeah! He has a boat and VHS and software and DVDs!”

Cassie goes on, about how he came back but the federales nearly got him and he left again, and how the Owlbear saved him, and it turns out Alice used to be a pirate, too, and Oliver is all… She talks for a while about her crazy family, and how weird it’s all gotten, and Dale seems charmed by this. It’s a different side of Cassie, and… and… arrr.

And then just when things are going so well, Chip appears between them. I mean, literally between them: he comes out of nowhere and sits down on the sofa between Cassie and Dale and asks how things are going?

Cassie, everything cool? You having a good time, Cassie? You think it’s fun to come to this college party and drink? You all fun time party, Cassie?

Chip isn’t entirely coherent — he appears to have had a few too many. But the upshot of it is, Cassie shouldn’t be here: she shouldn’t be at this party, she shouldn’t be here with Dale.

Dale sighs. “So,” he says to Cassie, already knowing the answer, “you know this guy?”

“Yes!” Chip explodes. “She knows me. She knows me from Mr. Wanmeir’s English class! She knows me from the Too Hot to Study dance! She knows me from Bennie Summerfield’s ninth birthday party! She knows me from seeing Phantom Menace three times back to back on opening day! She knows me from, she knows me! How does she know you, huh? How does she know you?”

Or words to that effect. It gets a little hard to understand him towards the end, but the subtext of his remarks is made clear when he leaps to his feet, starts to throw a punch at Dale, loses his balance (this is the most he’s had to drink in his life) and falls into a snack table, knocking it down and getting bean dip all over Evan Sullivan.

This makes Evan Sullivan mad, and he does what he always does when he’s mad: he kicks Mike Soster in the back. Mike doesn’t take this lying down, and the party basically falls apart. Cassie and Dale escape injury.

Cutting away from this violent scene we find ourselves back at FenCon, in a snack bar. It must be 11:45, because Datur’s shown up, and she’s looking doubtfully at Ferdinand, who we join in mid-plea.

“…and I had this other idea for a scheme, or, not a scheme exactly, that implies deceit, and that’s not what I’m going for here, so not a scheme, more a gesture. A big grandiose gesture, but to do it I needed a helicopter, and I couldn’t get one, so I had to put the kibosh on that one. And I had another idea, but it would involve setting fire to Mike’s car, and that just wouldn’t fly… Mike’s in my bad books right now, you know?”

Ferdinand pauses, in case Datur wants to get a word in edgewise, but she doesn’t say anything.

“So, okay, the thing is, I screwed up. And this whole thing just, it really isn’t working for me. I mean, I tried being intense, like, ugh, really in-your-face, since you weren’t there to… I’m just not very good at it. I’ve been doing really badly, honestly. So, yeah, I screwed up, and I want to make it right. I think the whole coming to Muncie, that was a bad idea, and –”

“What are you talking about? It was fantastic! If I hadn’t gone to Muncie, I would never have — I’ve made so many friends!” Datur gestures grandly. “I would never have even started playing Vaempyre! Or — you know I’m selling dead-flower bouquets? They’re selling! People buy them!”

Ferdinand is a bit taken aback. “Okay, yeah, I’m not knocking that, that’s good. But people play Vaempyre in other places, I’ve looked into it –”

“Last week,” Datur interrupts, “last week I got a call from this guy in Los Angeles, this producer? They’re making a music video and they wanted so many bouquets, they’d seen my designs, they were just so nice, and then they wanted me to do the production design, and now — now I’m going to direct it! Me! Directing a music video! Can you imagine?” She’s gushing, is what she’s doing.

He doesn’t seem to know how to respond. “So, uh, that’s great! That’s — really, wow! A music video? Congratulations! Who’s — is there an Earle involved? But that’s really great news, uh, yeah.”

“I think there was an Earle,” Datur says dismissively, “but not any more.”

“Okay, so, yeah, there’s…” Ferdinand struggles to collect his thoughts. “There’s good things, sure, but there’s also, you know, bad things.”

“Name one,” Datur says, challenge in her tone.

“Well… my life has completely fallen apart without you.”

Datur sniffs. “That’s your own fault.” She turns her head away, but looks at him sidelong.

Again, this wasn’t what Ferdinand was hoping for. “I know,” he says carefully. “You’re right. That is my fault. And what I’m saying…”

“Ferdinand, where are you going with this?”

“I want you back,” Ferdinand croaks. “I want to win you back. I want you on my side. And I’m still working on the grandiose gesture thing — I want to get that right — so, what I’m looking for from you is, like, some acknowledgement of… so I don’t feel it’s all in vain, I mean…” He trails off, and waves vaguely towards the middle distance.

Datur sighs, theatrically. “This is so like you,” she snaps. “You never carry anything out, you never finish a… God!” She shakes her head, exasperated. “You never finish anything. You’re always talking, and… God!” While normally Datur’s anger is tinged with panic, in this case it’s just frustration, no fear. She gathers up her jacket and bag, grumbles something about people waiting for her, and stomps off.

Ferdinand just sits there for a few seconds after she’s gone. He puts an elbow on the table and leans up against his hand and forearm, rubbing his forehead. With his other hand he pulls out his cell phone.

“Hello, Dad? It’s — hold on.”

He pulls the phone away from his face and calls to someone out of frame. “Excuse me? Is there — yeah. Is there vodka at this snack bar?”

Another montage of FenCon. Chainmail-and-boffer-sticks LARPers competing with black-lipstick-and-clove-cigarettes LARPers for space. A huge cafeteria packed full of mostly-kids playing mostly-Magic: the Gathering. Bearded men with slide rules playing some game involving hexes and cardboard counters. A panel discussion on, if the signage is to be believed, the Elf/Dwarf Armistice. Girls in chainmail walking around. Andrew and “Natural 20″ approaching one corner of the wide and varied dealer’s room.

A small booth: the Secret Door, manned by, oh, let’s say memento_mori, I mean, let’s call him, uh, Flip… Flip. An amalgam of many fictional characters bearing only a purely coincidental resemblance to any person living or dead. Flip is hawking Secret Door games to a small crowd of bemused onlookers. As Andrew and “Natural 20″ join this crowd, Flip singles Andrew out. You! What are you here for?

Andrew, diffident, says something about wanting to see what’s up.

Flip takes Andrew’s bag of dealer’s-room purchases and leafs through them. Andrew has bought a small pile of vintage Dungeon Majesty supplements, a lot of first-editions and foreign-language editions and to-be-sold-only-at-BoulderCon-1974-editions. Mary Lukas wrote many of them.

“Dungeon Majesty? Is that your game?”

Andrew admits that it is.

Flip starts tossing a lot of pejoratives Dungeon Majesty’s way. What is this, the 1970s? Should they all be wearing bell-bottoms? Is Gerald Ford the president? I mean, hell, you may as well be living in your parents’ basement, all scared of girls, man!

Andrew asks what Flip is selling.

–It’s called “Wizard.”

–Is it about wizards?

–Hell no! It’s got nothing to do with wizards! You’ve got to get out of that headspace, man!

–How does it work? How does it… how does it reward experience?

–This game doesn’t reward experience! This game punishes experience! You don’t want to be playing it too long, man. You don’t want to be limiting yourself like that. That’s the problem with “Dungeon Majesty.” It’s all about limits. It’s all about the fascist power concentration in the hands of the “Dungeon Magister” and away from the players, a dichotomy inherently unfair and deprotagonizing! You can’t be actualized if you have to ask the “DM” permission every time you want to drive to Boise! You want to develop your own character arc and screw anyone who tries to block you with his fetishistic “Dungeon Magister’s Screen.”

“Natural 20″ is eating this up. Andrew, on the other hand, is getting slowly more hostile.

–But where’s the fun in that?

In the background, a glum Ferdinand wanders by. He notices Andrew and moves towards him.

–It’s not about fun! You’ve got to get beyond that Funist agenda, man. Do you think your dramatic arc is being actualized?

“No, you know, I don’t think my arc is being actualized,” Ferdinand interjects.

“Are you a protagonist, or are you spinning your wheels?” Flip asks him.

Ferdinand and Andrew look at each other. “Wait, wasn’t Oliver with you?” they say in unison, then do double-takes and shrug.

“I’m definitely spinning my wheels,” Ferdinand confesses.

“Natural 20″ laughs, either because she sees the disconnect between Ferdinand and Flip or for some other reason. She makes odd choices.

Andrew scowls. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he tells Flip. “You’ve obviously never really examined these supplements. They’re classics! By the great Mary Lukas!”

Flip scoffs and says something about Mary Lukas and wet paper bags and the inability of the one to game-design her way out of the other, even with a ten-minute head start and a twenty-stroke handicap.

“You can’t face your monsters until you enter the dungeon,” spits Andrew. Annoyed and flustered beyond his ability to articulate, he turns and walks away, towards the Mary Lukas Q & A session.

“Natural 20″ and Ferdinand watch him go, then turn back to Flip. Ferdinand asks him how, then, one actualizes one’s desired character arc and reaches personal goals, and Flip tells him it’s just not that simple.

Andrew reaches the Mary Lukas Q&A too late to formally participate. The panel discussion is over, and people are stacking chairs and cleaning up. Mary Lukas herself, though, is still around, genially answering a small knot of fans as they question her about the old modules.

“Why were there pirates in the Citadel of the Jade Pelican?”

Because the citadel is near the coast. The pirates used it as a base of operations. They didn’t have any ships because the ships were all at sea during the time period of the adventure.

“In module C32, there’s a coffee shop at the bottom of the abandoned kobold mine. Why?”

Kobolds like coffee. The shop did such brisk business that even after the mine closed down the owners still turned a profit on the coffee shop.

“During the Feast of the Redwing’s Song, player-characters have the opportunity to drink the Elf King’s Brandy, which is presented as a reward for saving the Elf Prince’s pet rabbit, but if they drink it they’re turned into ghosts with no saving throw or resistance roll.”

That’s correct. You have a question?

“I guess not… also in that adventure, there’s an oak tree in a ten-by-ten dungeon room. Why doesn’t it die?”

Druidic plant-magic is involved.

“Why is the Hawkmaster of Loon Lake immune to broadswords and two-handed swords but not bastard swords?”

Because when she wrote that, there weren’t any bastard swords. Bastard swords were introduced in 1978…

Andrew asks her why she stopped writing Dungeon Majesty material so early in the game’s history — nothing after 1975 — and she shrugs and says that originally it was just her and Dave and Rob and a handful of others up in Wisconsin, and as it got bigger it got away from her.

Andrew asks her why the bird motif. She’s confused at first; he has to spell it out for her. Blueheron Castle, the Citadel of the Jade Pelican, Escape from Blackbird Manor…? Huh. She never really thought about why — it was just something to tie the modules together and give them a sort of definite flavor, a Dungeon Majesty feel.

Andrew observes that Siddartha Gotama (he mangles the pronunciation a little) called birds the messengers of heaven. (Buddhism, he knows, is big with Kestrel.)

“Huh,” says Mary Lukas.

This crushes Andrew. Could he have been wrong about Kestrel? Where did he make his mistake? Or is she just being really, really cagey? He asks for her autograph, which she cheerfully provides, and as he walks away he compares it to Kestrel’s handwriting on the note to Jack. No match.

Blinking back tears, Andrew stuffs the note back in his bag, crumples and throws out his FenCon 2005 program, and shuffles back to his hotel room.