Fernando's Third Quest

 “That...that's a lot of people,” Teodor murmured once the party had taken full stock of what lay before it: a snaking queue of people numbering in the hundreds wrapped around the convention center's exterior, tended by about a dozen yellow-shirted volunteers who maintained order. There was no wiggle room; as soon as Fernando and Company stepped away from the curb, they were hustled to the end of the line. As they walked, they could see through the many pairs of glass double doors that dozens, hundreds more people milled about the interior lobby in even more clusters and rows accompanied by the yellowshirts, with no end in sight to this endless tessellation of humanity.

Thanks to the captive audience so helpfully provided by the yellowshirts, buskers of all sorts wandered up and down the line, unimpeded by the volunteers. They plied their wares upon Fernando and Company: copies of The Onion, pamphlets about militant veganism cloaked in rhetoric implying that any non-vegan tacitly approves of widespread animal cruelty, and fliers advertising random clubs, each with its own upcoming Walking Dead theme night.

Fernando has this to say about the yellowshirts: they did their jobs with Germanic efficiency. The lines moves swiftly and it took perhaps fifteen minutes before the Company and a few random and unimportant henchmen stood at the head of the line, to be pinched off and led through the convention hall's doors by a pair of yellowshirt escorts.

From the outside it seemed as though people were standing around the foyer, a huge and glossy tiled marvel larger than the entire Dominion, willy-nilly, but there proved to be order within this chaos. Truly a microcosm of our own universe, for its slow slide towards final entropy is halted only by chance and only in miniscule portions of quasi-organization which dot vast nothingness. The clusters were reformed into lines by other yellowshirts and the lines were funneled through a set of doors which led to a concrete-floored gymnasium-type area even larger than the entry foyer.

Strips of blue tape had been put down. Humans stood between these strips in a queue which numbered in the thousands, waiting their turn to approach one of about a dozen windows at which entrance to the convention might be gained—this was the line for people who had registered early, rather than the poor saps who decided against doing such a thing. Fernando and Company were shunted to the end of the serpent and stood around for another twenty minutes, surrounded by nerds of all kinds.

Finally, the group reached the head of the line and from there was guided by a yellowshirt to an open ticket window, where they received their bright orange wristbands, which they could under no circumstances remove for the convention's duration. This task completed, they were escorted by a yellowshirt around the sprawling mess of people, back out another set of doors to the entry foyer, and bid to ascend an escalator into the convention proper. There was no other option available, as the tide of people, focused by the yellowshirts, required that Fernando and Company go with the flow, like cattle being herded down a chute which would render them into cuts of meat and offal.

Redundant checkpoints had been set up, one at the bottom of the escalator, one at its top, and one more at the entrance to the showroom floor. A black rent-a-cop woman demanded at the top of her lungs every ten seconds, “Wristbands up!” Her black rent-a-cop man companion stood by in silence, looking almost apologetic.

They entered the showroom floor. The first thing Fernando noticed was that it was big. Bigger than any of the rooms he'd visited earlier. It was jam-packed with vendor stalls, a bazaar of nerdish delight. Men hawked comic buy-sell-trade. Booth babes and their gravity-defying tits flanked stands whose goal was shameless advertising. Dealers in collectibles and antiquities displayed overpriced posters and knick-knacks for weak-willed souls to purchase.

Navigating this labyrinth of booths and stalls required navigating people, a directionless mess of everyone going every way without care or foresight, and the fellowship was quickly divided. Fernando and Ronaldo, and to a lesser degree Teodor, managed to stay fairly near each other as they browsed. Ronaldo spent a good amount of time investigating dealers of knives and swords, but found their wares lacking in craftsmanship. Fernando had his eyes peeled for a seller of roleplaying materials, for he still held out hope of picking up the near-mint first printing of Tomb of Horrors autographed by Mr. Gygax himself for around eight dollars.

A man can dream.

The sales floor proved itself fruitless in the end, for nothing of value was gained. The only available Dungeons & Dragons-related items were those for Fourth Edition or for Pathfinder, neither of which particularly appealed to Fernando. The crew reunited in a cluster of inflatable chairs and bean bags on which young whippersnappers lounged to decide the next courses of action.

Panels, for some. As stated previously, Doctor Who figured quite prominently in the convention's itinerary, and both Macombo and Natasia had plans attend every panel dedicated to the show which they could. Teodor had wandered off on his own, but Teodor is also a big boy. Ronaldo and Fernando would continue wandering this building, mapping it for the party's future benefit.

They found the games room, in a side chamber affixed to Moria itself—vaulted ceilings, chandeliers the size of a minivan, no life. The games room, in stark contrast to that at OddCon, was inhabited by people not playing games, but instead amusing themselves on their smartphones. No Chess Kids or Sirs Dicks-a-Lot here, nosirree. When Fernando peeked in on this sad state of affairs, a young woman at the far end of this room, roughly the size of the front half of the Dominion, beckoned him. “Come in, come in!”

Fernando is not often beckoned by women, and he had mild curiosity as to the games loadout here, so he did as bade. Two metal racks, each about five feet tall, were filled with boxes belonging to various board and card games.

“Hi!” she said, looking away from the laptop computer on the table before her.

“Hello.”

“Looking for a game to play?”

“Maybe. Just browsing, mostly.”

“Well, we have all kinds here. I'm sure you'll find what you're looking for.”

“I'm sure.” Fernando decides at this moment to veer to the side of extroversion. “You wouldn't happen to know of any dealers here who have any old D&D stuff, would you?”

“Old stuff?”

“Yeah, like First or Second Edition, or BECMI.”

“Ummm...not offhand. Let me—wait, there's my boss, we can ask him!”

Fernando turns and sees a middle-aged man shuffle into the games room with a steaming styrofoam cup in one hand. “Ask me what?”

“This man would like to know if you know anywhere here that has older D&D stuff.”

“1E, 2E, BECMI, stuff like that,” Fernando supplies.

“Hmm...well, I have some reprints back at the store.” Recently Wizards of the Coast had reprinted some of the core rulebooks for older editions, in a feeble attempt to show they still cared about people who played outdated editions of the game. The only problem is, of course, that Fernando owns copies (in some cases multiple copies—he has no fewer than 3 1E Monster Manuals and 3 1E Dungeon Masters' Guides kicking around) of these reprints.

“I was looking more for used books and modules.”

“No, sorry. All I've got are the reprints, down at the store, but that's all the way in St. Louis.”

“A little far afield for me, I'm afraid.”

“I figured as much.”

“Well, thanks anyway,” Fernando says, then exits the games room.

The convention closed its doors fairly early on this first day, so by seven the party had reunited and waited for Cool Driver Jim to collect them. He was a little bit late, and he apologized. It weren't no thang. They had to squeeze in with some gentlemen who'd driven twelve hours nonstop to the convention from out on the East Coast. One seat was left empty.

The purpose behind this grew clear when Cool Driver Jim diverted to the airport and pulled up to one of the drop-off locations. As he clambered out of the car, Fernando heard a woman shouting quite loudly in Spanish. Cool Driver Jim's responses carried a polite tone, at first, but the Spanish lady's tongue-lashing continued as he loaded her luggage into the place Ronaldo had called his seat earlier that afternoon. He grew frustrated and terminated the conversation with a clipped, “No podía hacer nada.”

Martha, the crabby Spanish lady, sat next to Fernando in the van. It was awkward. Her presence tainted the jovial atmosphere, and so the return to the hotel was in complete silence.

The party split then, for Macombo and Natasia wanted head back to their room and change so as to check out the swimming pool before it closed for the evening, and it would have been uncouth, indeed, for Fernando & Co. to follow them and begin amateur voyeur hour. Instead, they retired to their leased bedchamber and discussed meal possibilities. Rocky Rococo pizza was listed as serving the area, but this was to be a new adventure, not a rehash of old times! Instead, Ronaldo suggested utilizing a pizza dealer in an agreement with the hotel. This was done, and forty minutes later a pair of steaming pies, one “Zesty Italian” and the other “Zesty Supreme,” sat upon one of the beds. They pizzas came with dippin' sauce and a lack of napkins.

It was delicious.

A bit more Munchkin was had between the Original Three and Macombo. Natasia sat out, because obviously she hates the world and everything fun in it. They finally turned in at around 11.30. The day tomorrow would begin brighter and earlier than it had today, so everyone needed rejuvenation before tackling the up-fuckeries to come.