The sun rose on NukemCon to find many a bleary-eyed gamer driving through Phillipsburg looking for breakfast. After snagging sustenance at McDonald’s and Manhattan Bagel, the stalwart dice-throwers returned to Easton and the first session of the day: Dungeons & Dragons.
It was the third part of the D&D adventure we’d been playing all weekend, and in it we finally located the impact point of the Hextorite flail-turned-comet: the Bright Desert. It’s an exceptionally dangerous place ruled in part by the archmage Rary (formerly of the Circle of Eight, turned traitor during the Greyhawk Wars) and his chaotic and ultra-powerful henchman, Robilar (the selfsame Robilar who once freed several demigods imprisoned under Castle Greyhawk, several of which were as evil as he was).
After an hour or so break for yet more Halo, half our group — Bill, Eleanor and Bob — headed out; the first two returning to Delaware, the third snagging a ride with them to Philadelphia and a bus ride home to central Pennsylvania.
The rest of us — Damon, Nate, Lance, Jon and myself — planned to launch into a game of Battletech that Damon had put together. Unfortunately, Damon had to bail at the last minute, but he left everything we needed to run the scenario, including two mech armies and several rulebooks.
The scenario pitted mechs from the Inner Sphere against fanatical followers of the Word of Blake, a theocratic order obsessed with controlling technology. On the side of the Inner Sphere were seven mechs: two WVR-7M Wolverines (55 tons), a CES-3R Caesar (70 tons) , two COM-5S Commandos (25 tons), a PHX-3M Phoenix Hawk (45 tons) and finally, a GLT-5M Guillotine (70 tons).
The Word of Blake forces — painted all in white — were composed of two BCN-3R Buccaneers (55 tons each), two TYM-1A Toyamas (75 tons each) and two SDR-9K Venoms (35 tons).
It was a fierce, hotly-contested battle that waged for nearly six hours. Jon’s Commando was nearly taken out early in the game, but escaped destruction and went on to devastate several other mechs, including my Toyama. A huge, close range firefight near the middle of the engagement decimated the Word of Blake forces, but Nate and I were able to launch a counterattack using our extremely annoying, but very effective Venoms. That attack took out two of the remaining Inner Sphere mechs, leaving only one standing, which surrendered.
And with that, NukemCon came to a close.
Nuke(m)Con 2004: The Schedule | NukemCon: Day 1 | NukemCon: Day 2 | NukemCon: Day 3 | NukemCon: Afterthoughts
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