Deathfest Spring March 7th 2009 – I Have Cat Cancer and I Somehow Bleed from my Eyes

ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE… aka prepare to die… Thanks to Andy Berquist for the picture

The Massachusetts Pioneer Valley nerd community had a barrel full of inhalers ready on one side, decease just in case the roleplaying became too intense. The tetrahedron, viagra buy cube and icosahedron dice kept on rolling down a flat surface of a table. Natural 20s were not common. There were more 4s, adiposity 5s and 8s than a safe 17, 18 or 12.

This is Deathfest, a roleplaying festival that happens every semester in the college of my choice: Hampshire College.

What is Deathfest?

Deathfest was originally called Ravenloft back at Halloween 1991. It started off with just 15 people in the Dakin House basement and they invited anyone who was interested to come and play. It is a RPG tournament that uses a simplified D&D system. Back then, Ravenloft had 3 dungeon masters and now, Deathfest on Spring ’09 had 13 dungeon masters. And what they do is split the rat pack of adventurers into groups for a game. This year, they split us into 9 groups and each game had a theme.

The main thing about Deathfest is to die. You die, you lose, you sit out. The people who survived the onslaught of horror of the game move to the second tier and the ones who survive round two will go on to face the ultimate boss in the last tier, tier three.

What went on your side of Deathfest?

I will be speaking on the behalf of my character, Leroy the Lvl. 3 Geologist.

Well, I did not make it anywhere and since we are all dead, why not tell you a little story? I decided to be a monk for the order of St. Schroedinger of Cat when I was a wee lad and I always enjoyed a good preservation of the old for the sake of humanity’s growing sanity. Other than that freak rock/transmutation goo accident, my life was pretty normal. Although my skin had turned into rock, I had strange cravings for dirt and I love to hump rocks, especially schist. Oh, wonderful, wonderful, schist.

One day, as me and my order were doing our business, a child from the monastery ran from his journey of calling, screaming that books were being burnt. Shocked, we, the order of St. Schroedinger of Cat, raced out from the monastery. As we left the monastery, we were facing impossible odds as a sandstorm decided to blow its violent horns at us. We trekked through the rough sands only to be cut by the rough sands. The shield that the engineer Robin created from a cat skeleton and her robe stopped from any speck of sand to hit her whilst we roughed through, with skin and flesh being ripped slowly from its sinew by the harsh sand.

The further we walked, the further we were to either dying or turning back to the monastery until someone spotted a cave in the distance. Some could not hear our direction to head to the caves. Three people moved towards the jagged rocks whilst one other person walked into the sands further to only disappear. The sandstorm died down and as we called out to the people who went towards the direction of the sandstorm and indeed, they returned. It was the psychologist who had troubles with her mother and the perverted old priest who kept oggling her and the scientist who did something I know that was illegal.

We settled down in the cave, regained our composure and splunkered down the cave or which the psychologist kept calling it a “metaphoric vagina”. There were some slip ups like Luke fell into a hole that was filled with water and me losing my sight temporarily by the darkness of the cave. Everything was fine until we smelled something burning in the air. I heard footsteps while someone saw a flame going through. It was a crazy looking woman carrying a torch, shrieking eeriely throughout the caves and she left us alone, dropping her torch. As quickly as we could, one of us picked up the torch and headed further into the abyss. As we reached further in, this shocked us.

Bonfires as wide as the cavern’s complex, many fires feeding little families comprising of just women and children. And they were burning books. Precious, precious texts of our human ancestors to cook their food, to keep warm. This enraged us all and we decided to kill one of them. The swifty looking monk who was amongst us charged at one of the women who was charging at us with her cooking pot. She was speaking/yelling in a Chinese Mongoloid dialect that the monk seemed to yell back and all of a sudden, she looked dazed and confused. She then dropped dead like a fly.

There were many attacks. Some used their energy weapons to decimate this tribe of book-burning fools and instead, they not only kill the women, they killed their own friends. Some ran off back to the monastery to be safe. Someone shot them with a gun and blew them up with a grenade to the bonfire. Someone had their mutation gun backfire to not only turn a lady into a mermaid but it gets him cancer. Luke was a topper. He killed a child by injecting a serum that somehow made a child’s eye bleed intensely and as the child ran back to his siblings, they bled as well. The mother stepped on the serum, she bled as well and Luke bled to death, together with his victims.

I did something I will never ever regret. I grabbed a child by the neck and summoned an earthquake, killing hordes of children and injuring a few of my party members. Not satisfied with my bloodlust, I continued my rampage with my rock pick and I smashed a child’s skull through his jaw. The psychologist had to calm me down with my bloodlust against children. They look normal. I am a freak. I had to take my anger. No… she had to psychoanalyze me and make me feel guilty with it. My id will never let go. It will never.

This is where my death comes. I grabbed one of the last two women standing and I grabbed her by the sleeves of her hemp-made outfit. I slammed her into the fire, cracking her back and killing her. Without realizing, I stepped on the pool of blood that had the virus. I began crying blood from my eyes and I died soon after. I remember my eyes exploding and it splattered all across the cave. I was alone when I died. The gunmen left and so did a few others. I died a horrific death. I killed children, women and I made sure rubble would not stop them from escaping.

Well, that’s the entry for my Tier 1 experience of Deathfest. Maybe next semester, Tier 2.

You Died? That’s It?

Not really. We also had a Dead Game. A one last chance game for people who died in Tier 1 to make it back to Tier 3. It’s more severe that Tier 1 and 2 combined as 20 people enter and only 5 shall leave. For mine, I will not go into detail but somehow, people cannot jump a 4 FEET GAP. I mean, the epic fail in throwing less than 12 is so hilarious and that many of them just dropped down into the oblivion below. I died by being an ass for starting an earthquake on a building that people were dangling on. I was shot and I was finally neutralized by a “Bitch Claw” that sliced me into chunks of meat. Many died over and over again. Somehow, it ended with a dragon attacking the zeppelin we were on and many died on it. There was an egg but I don’t know what it did.

There Are Awards, Right?

There are but I forgot most of the winners. There is the Survivor, the Leader, the Jester, the Genocidal Maniac, the Morality Needs to be Checked, the First Guy to Die, the Banner Designer, the Ultimate Badass, the Idiot Who Makes the Same Mistakes, MacGyver and so on.

What’s So Special About Deathfest?

Deathfest is different from most RPGs as it involves more humor. Other RPG game tournies have a more serious tone. Deathfest involves not only the nerd community but a community at large like Hampshire College. The intensity of the improvisation of the players and the creativity of how one uses a morality (yes, throwing your zombie child into the mouths of a seraphim makes you chaotic good) is something to not overlook. These qualities bring a definitive fun to the game and people who just want to have a good time other than stuffing themselves with alcohol and one night stands should try Deathfest.

You Have a Beer Garden…

That too… HEY! Sometimes, we nerds need a beer alright?! Do you think all we do is drink soft drinks?

Where are the pictures?

I did not buy a camera so next semester, I PROMISE TO TAKE SOME PHOTOS!

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