written by Rachel Downing
Hey, guys! I’m back. Did you miss me?
… Do you remember me? I wrote that one What You Missed post two years ago about the Arisia event, The Mountain Citadel. Go ahead and read it, I’ll wait.
Done? That was pretty quick. You really expect me to believe you read that? You know what, here’s the gist: I’m the person who wrote a View post about a Realms event without participating in said event, or participating in any other Realms event, or knowing any of the people who ran the event, or being involved in Realms in any way, shape, or form. Because Pi asked me to.
Okay, that’s out of the way. Now strap in, because this account of “Excursion to the Boundry Summit”, this year’s Arisia event, is going to be absolutely amazing. Despite the sleep deprivation from only getting five hours of sleep the night before because there was an unavoidable party in my room until 3AM, and needing to be awake at 8AM, and missing most of the event due to prior commitments I hadn’t fully understood at the time but couldn’t back out of, and… Yeah, this is gonna be great.
It started out strong, with a whole gaggle of children excited to run around whacking each other, before the scheduled start time of 9AM. Of course, it was necessary to train them all in basic Realms combat, i.e., lightest touch, take your hits, don’t put anyone’s eyes out. All this explanation was made much more interesting by the interruptions of a very small and very energetic child with a helmet and molded foam sword, who would become crucial to the PCs later. Probably. For some value of crucial, anyway. For now, he was simply very, very bad at taking hits.
While the PCs were getting themselves sorted out, and hitting each other with things (probably crucial to the getting-sorted-out), the combat NPCs huddled ominously in a corner, probably plotting something really evil. One of the PCs lost his lemon, and then found it again; we
The time was now 9:45AM, and the plot was trying to start happening. Some goblins were mad at the PCs, and were trying to air their grievances, but someone still needed to be combat trained. Fortunately (ironically?), the very small child cut through the distractions and raised the alarm, shouting, “GOBLINS!! YOU GUYS!!! GOBLINS!!!!” The goblins departed without battle, but with a threatening parting shot - “Be ready! … er, please don’t be ready.”
It’s at about this point in time that I was forced to depart the event, because I was working tech staff for a separate event rehearsal at the convention. Luckily for you, dear reader, your intrepid reporter (that is to say, yours truly) has an account of the ensuing events from a confidential informer, who will remain nameless. Back to the action, from my notes:
The PCs discovered that the goblins were mad that the humans built a giant tower in their land. (SPOILER ALERT for the impatient reader - it wasn’t a tower after all! It was a spaceship!) The PCs encountered a traveller who spoke gibberish. They beat up a dragon. I’m not sure where the dragon came in, but I’m sure it made sense at the time. They eventually got into the spaceship, née tower, and discovered some real weird things behind glass doors in the cargo bay, including an ithilid, and a giant worm from three years ago. They beat up the weird things. Some scared strangers, speaking gibberish, shot at the intruders--er, I mean, the PCs. Who were totally not intruding.
The PCs got into an electronics room with a closed-off reactor giving off radiation. I think the radiation is what was bothering the goblins. The PCs solved some puzzles to turn on the room’s computer, which was then able to translate the gibberish. The PCs fixed the spaceship, which was apparently broken, and flew it home. The end, probably.
(Now, personally, I feel like if the goblins hadn’t wasted their time being so mad about everything and blaming stuff on innocent people, they could have fixed their own problem and not bothered anyone at all. But hey, that’s just my opinion.)
To sum up, it seems like it was a pretty good event, and you should have been there, but you weren’t. We’re all very disappointed in you for not showing up. But I’m sure you can join your fellow nerds running around hitting each other with foam-covered sticks another time.
And that’s what you missed in Realms!
