Gary Con, it’s the heart of the beast. The kind of place where you can swear allegiance to a lobster god for a second shot at another player’s life, and that’s exactly what I did—Blibdoolpoolp, bless her twisted claws gave me a lobster head. Or at least Zeb Cook did. A Raise Dead was on the line, and all I had to do was kneel before the scuttling god of the kuo-toa and pledge my eternal servitude.
Standard Gary Con fare, right? No big deal. Just another day in Lake Geneva. It was shortly after this sacrilegious craziness that things took a darker turn. Someone – me – in the party went and got themselves tangled up with Lloth, Queen of Spiders, the eight-legged nightmare herself. Now, the decision to swear allegiance to her wasn’t exactly made with a clear mind. But I gave in —joined the dark web, quite literally.
Then again, you think you’re ready for anything until you’ve faced down Mike Mearls and an anti-paladin with a gleaming vorpal blade of doom. Half my party, man—decapitated, like some medieval guillotine show gone wrong in one action. Heads rolling, characters dead before we could even cast a goddamn spell. This was pure, unfiltered sadism. And I won’t lie, I walked away from that massacre with an idea brewing deep in my brain. Revenge, you see, is a delicious thing, especially after Carlos Lising made me play a demon in the abyss and Mark Greenberg turned me into a living tree.
So I took that decapitation spree and inflicted it on my own players in a Tegal Manor session at Gary Con. That’s right, I became the anti-paladin. Full-on, unhinged, maniacal justice, cutting them down without mercy. I saw the same terror in their eyes that I had felt days before, and it was glorious. No apologies, no regrets.
Fact is, they loved it. Sometimes you have to give back to the community, and if that means cleaving a few heads at the table, well, so be it. This is Gary Con, baby—where loyalty to lobster gods, spider queens, and death is all part of the chaotic, glorious ride.
So yeah, it’s not for the faint-hearted. But if you can swear your soul away a few times, take a head or two, and keep rolling, you’ll fit right in with the rest of the maniacs. Until next year.
