Discworld 2006

[watervole]

It was a very good convention and I'd recommend it to anyone

I started the con feeling a bit drained and tired with the aftereffects of a recent throat infection which was also probably why I felt rather travel sick on the journey north. We stopped off at a very nice nature reserve which helped me feel a bit less queasy, but I was pretty wobbly and didn't walk as far as I would normally have done.

I spent most of Friday on the Redemption/Orbital con table. Gaspode had brought along the new Orbital hoodies and polo shirts with the embroidered logos, which looked very good.

WEnt to the opening ceremony which was good. However, Discworld has one general problem. It's really just a little bit too big for the hotel and this problem comes to a head with the opening and closing ceremonies. You can't fit everyone into the main hall. This was a particular problem for people who couldn't get in and who missed information like where the initial guild meetings were.

The Hinckly Island is thinking of extending their main hall (by losing the swimming pool) and this would solve the problem if Discworld returns to the same hotel (and it's great for the con in every other way). Otherwise, they need to try and find some other way of preventing people from feeling left out (and missing announcements). When I spoke to the committee, they said that they'd tried a live video feed to another room one year, but that it hadn't worked well (and had been expensive to boot). Maybe a shorter, second, ceremony is needed?

AFter the opening ceremony, I went to the first meeting of the priest's guild. We turned out to be blessed with a very active guild deputy (our leader was one of the guests, but he didn't really get involved). megamole had arrived with a stack of pre-printed indulgences which were printed in an attractive font on parchment effect paper. THis made them much easier to sell than the permit tokens (for various things) which were being sold by other guilds. They also allowed more imagination as you could fill in the specific sin that was being covered. My favourite indulgence of the weekend was sold to Diane Duane to allow her to commit the sin of 'non-procreative sex' with her husband! I love people with both imagination and humour.

We worked out initial plans for several activities which were then fleshed out at later meetings. The priests were an imaginative bunch and I made several new friends over the weekend.

I then made the mistake of going to Terry's bedtime story reading. It was interesting, but the main hall was very hot and I was tired and it ran late and I got to bed much later than I'd intended. (The main hall was often hot - though not to the really painful level - but then we had a lot more people in there than it was rated for and the tech equipment gives off a lot of heat)

By contrast, the dealer's room, has had severe overheating problems in the past, has now got really good air-conditioning and was pleasant all weekend.

Saturday morning, I was up just in time to be early for the maskerade rehersal. Elias and I (priests) had decided on an item and we'd arranged for the assasin's guild to find us an assasin to take part. Carmilla turned out to be our assasin and was to play her role excellently. We got our rehersal in ahead of almost everyone else and were free to go away and do other things (like sitting on the con table again).

Next programme item I attended was 'folk songs of the Monstrous Regiment'. This was one I'd been determined to attend and I greatly enjoyed it. I also met two people in the audience (Roz and David) whom I got to know and meet many times over the weekend. They were in excellent fancy dress outfits as members of the Klatchian Foreign Legion.

Next was a talk by the Organgutan Foundation. http://www.orangutan.org.uk/ I raised a tenner for them over the weekend by doing tarot readings for people who were unable to give me guild tokens.

Another guild meeting. megamole was a few minutes late, so when I realised we had two scripts for a play (each guild does an entertainment for the kids at some point - atruely excellent idea), I split them into two groups and one did a play for the kids and the others were to perform a mystery play for the general public. Further ideas arose, including a confession booth to be set up in the Rotunda as a place where confessions could be heard, mediums consulted and fortunes told ('priests sacredotes and occult intermediaries').

More time on the con table.

We performed the mystery play (I wish I had the script as it was very funny and had been written by one of our members in under two hours the night before). It basically involved me as a dragon and another priest as a noble knight and the narrator reading the actual (rhyming, of course) story. The knight is almost killed, but Blind Io rolls some dice and the dragon (being a Discworld dragon powered by internal gasses) had a fatal internal blowback!

We'd timed our appearance exactly right to catch the initual queue for the evening meal and had enthusiastic applause and generous donations of tokens.

Went to listen to Graham Higgins telling traditional stories (something I always like listening to) and then onto the maskerade. AS we were in it, of course, Elias, Carmilla and I had to be there early and didn't actually get to see any of it from the audience.

The Discworld maskerade is massive and has entries that would make many Worldcons weep. It's a masterpiece of organisation as entrants flow from room to room behind scenes as the event progresses. The tech organisation is incredible and takes up more effort than I suspect most entrants have any idea of. (only one entry had a tech mistake and that turned out to be becasue he gave them a mini-disc that wouldn't work in their player) Tech always get blamed for mistakes and rarely thanked for miracles as people don't realise that they are miracles.

Anyway... Elias went on stage and began a very impressive invocation to Om (In Danish for extra effect) AFter a few seconds, Carmilla crept on and stabbed him. While he was dying, she read out a letter from her employer to the effect that all priests were parasties and there were no gods. Just as she deperted and the adience are starting to applaud, I come on (another guild member had been loaned some real chasubiles by a former priest and were were both wearing them) and start to lament his death. I begged my fellow priests to pray to Om to help restore brother Elias and get all the audience chanting the name of Om while the priests in teh audience stand up and lead the prayer.

TEch do thunder and lightening (and micavity tells me that it took them a while to work out how to synchronise the two. See what I mean about tech miracles...

As Elias recovered, the audience applaud and then, I stood forward and announced:

"This public service broadcast was brought to you on behalf of the priest's guild. In case of sudden, unexpected or recurrant death, please contact your nearest priest."

That got us a laugh that made the entire effort totally worth it!

I got to bed at a relatively sensible hour and slept the sleep of the just - grin.

Sunday. Overslept and missed part of the church of Om. Went to the 'create your own religion' panel and started the ball rolling by proposing Sussurus, the god of air-conditioning. We ended up with an entire pantheon of convention gods who look after things like queues and alcohol.

Spent a lot of time in the confession booth doing tarot readings, hearing confessions and raising the dead (My favourite was a vampire who'd been assasinated. He got us to raise him and then persauded another vampire to remove his black ribbon and bite him to restore to his undead status again - now that's what I call role-playing!)

More time on the con table. Then, it was time for the gala dinner. I didn't attend this last time, but we're a little more solvent this year so we'd decided to book tickets. On our table were gaspodex and Rita and also my two new friends from the Foreign Legion as well as waveney and exalted_mugwump. It was a good meal and I think I fully relaxed for the first time in the entire convention. Lingering illness had cleared and I had no work of any kind to do with/for anyone. The food and the company were both enjoyable and I'm very glad we went. I also love the way that nearly everyone dresses up for the meal. Men were in dinner jackets from all periods of history, wizards robes, military uniforms, etc. (Richard came as the Librarian as he was university faculty. It was hot, but it looked good.) Women were in evening dress (again from lots of different periods), corsets, dressed as goddesses, etc. Wonderful when you saw them all assembled.

The atmosphere after the dinner was great. The hotel refurbishment has led to a really nice social space between the bar and the foyer and there's a gentle drift of people across the whole area. The one thing this hotel really lacked was a social 'heart' and now it has it. This is where people spontaneously gather and socialise. (And the whole area, bar and all, is now non-smoking. Yeah!)

Monday. Actually got up early enough to go to 'Breakfast with the Committee.' A good gripe session (ie. no one had any gripes worth mentioning) so I had an enjoyable natter with djelibeybi_meg who had put in so much hard work and effort with all the rest of the committee.

Had a Redemption meeting with the hotel conference staff at 10 with steverogerson to check on details of our event and to clarify a few points with regard to things that had worked/not worked at Discworld. eg. We'd like more options for the evening meal, but we're happy to do without a starter/sweet. We're hoping the free WiFi access will continue, but don't yet know. They've only just installed the system, so it was free this weekend while they were settling it in.

Spent much of the rest of the day gently ambling. People kept saying to me "You're still singing!" It's a good way of telling if I'm relaxed. I tend to sing quietly without even consciously realising that I'm doing it. I watched part of the Unseen Univesity Challenge - Henry's team were winning. Watched part of the Great Hedgehog Race (making machines to rustle sheep...), Richard's team were winning. A good day for the Proctor family!

Went to watch the Trial of Lord Vetinari. Stephen Briggs can act Vetinari in a way that just makes him walk off the page (and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if some of his ways of portraying the man have occasionally influenced the portrayal in the books.)

More happy ambling. THE closing ceremony was excellent (and packed out). Discworld do very good closing ceremonies... I wish I could make them that ingenious!

More chatting to friends when it suddenly became nearly 7pm without any time having passed at all!

So, we went home and collapsed...

PS. And I now have a rather nice pendant of Brutha on the back of Om made in a very small edition of six by Bernard Pearson. It went to the most productive members of the Priest's Guild.

PS. I'd like to express my complete contempt for some (not all) members of the Conjuror's Guild. It was clear throughout the convention which guilds were being active and gaining tokens and generally entertaining and interacting with people and the conjurors were largely conspiuous by their absence. Their score (and that of a couple of other guilds who had been performing poorly) suddenly shot up magically right at the very end. The method is sadly all too obvious. One person spontaneously told me that they'd traded 60 tokens with a member of another guild. 60 tokens is about equivalent to what I earned all weekend with a lot of time and effort. (tarot readings take me around 15 mins each and I never charged more than 5 tokens). I wouldn't have minded if the Alchemists, for example, had won. I know how much work went into the film they made and they were doing a lot of other stuff too. But for a group to win by what was effectively cheating... It was a very sour note to end the convention on. (And I'm certain the Guild Head did not know what they'd done. I'm sure Trevor would never have condoned something like that. He was as surprised as anyone when they won)