Highlights from BronyCon 2019: #finnabuse and Wonderful Eliyora

A/N: I did not expect to publish a Highlight out of order yet again this year, much less have the out-of-order Highlight be the first one published! However, circumstances on the Brony D&D Discord server led me to decide to publish this one first. Either way, enjoy!

In addition, my thanks to Discord user “rillegas08” for his notes; they helped me a bit in plugging in details about the D&D prequel that would have slipped my memory.

Previous Highlight (Chronological Order): Lauren Faust: Stories and Experiences
Previous Highlight (Publication Order): Condensed Version

Highlights from BronyCon 2019: #finnabuse and Wonderful Eliyora

In which son_of_heaven176 enjoys (or at least tries to enjoy) the Brony D&D prequel session, and gets a bit more than an autograph afterwards.

Saturday, August 3, 2019: Day 3 of the Final BronyCon

After the hour of hearing the Good Word of Lady Faust, I headed back upstairs for the Brony D&D prequel session. As usual, I was getting quite a bit of mileage from my Bronze sponsor badge, as con staff was saying that the normal line had reached capacity for now. The sponsor line, on the other hand, was relatively short. Dark Wind showed up a bit after me, but I was unconcerned about his chances of getting in; the line was only temporarily capped.

After a few minutes of waiting, the Hall of the Stars finally opened up. In due time, I was met by SirBob and SharkGirl. Dark Wind managed to be able to get on line, and he also sat near us.

After a few technical difficulties, the show began. This session was the backstory of Amber Hawthorne, one of the protagonists of the main season. The characters of the prequel were:

From left to right:
Voice of Reason as Kel (Dragon Paladin)
Eliyora as Dara (Dragon Bard)
Solar Flare as Varaugh (Dragon Barbarian) — he is Amber’s father
DRWolf001 as Grixian (Dragon Rogue)
Keychi as Esmenas (Dragon Cleric) — she is Amber’s mother
finnthepony as Hawthorne (Human Wizard)
joshscorcher as the DM

The tale began with the DM reading a letter from Wizard Hawthorne to Amber, in which he bequeathed Hawthorne Tower (his home) to her and which told the story of how her parents met.

We then go to Hawthorne Tower in the past. Varaugh was found wounded by Esmenas, who took him to Hawthorne Tower so that he could recuperate. With Esmenas was Kel, who did not trust Varaugh in the slightest. (Kel is a Gold Dragon—Lawful Good. On the other hand, Varaugh is a White Dragon, and chromatic dragons tend to be evil-aligned.) Moments later, Hawthorne and Dara entered.

It was interesting to see Finn play a straight-laced, serious character—especially since he always gives off such a cinnamon-roll personality. Personally, I wish that I could be as sweet as he, but on the other hand, seeing him be able to portray other emotions besides cheerful, perky, and happy makes Finn a more of a real person in my eyes.

Anyway…

Hawthorne showed up and was annoyed to see intruders in his house. However, he eventually decided to help, deducing that Varaugh’s wounds were inflicted by a stab to the back that missed some crucial tendons. However, the weapon had been covered with drow poison (and it is common knowledge to any Brony D&D fan that drow poison is a soporific).

After some more banter (and some more intrusions from the rest of the party), the party decided to fly off to the scene of the crime. The dragons shapeshifted from humanoid form to dragon form, and Hawthorne rode on Dara.

And Finn’s playful nature couldn’t help but come out, as under his acting, the bookworm Hawthorne becomes absolutely adorkable as he revels in the joy of flight.

After some more banter and some investigation, the party traveled off to someplace that made everyone think of the Cave of Wonders from Aladdin (the animated version, thank you very much!) Grixian (Dr. Wolf’s character) had been moving stealthily and was practically invisible, so Dr. Wolf decided that Grixian should throw a pebble at the party to let them know that he was still around. Josh rolled a die to decide whom the pebble would hit—and the lot fell on Hawthorne.

“Ow!” said Finn in character.

The party entered the dungeon, and it was your typical dungeon crawl, with garden-variety mooks, branching paths, and traps.

During the dungeon crawl, something happened that caused Eliyora to try to hit Josh with a plastic cup.

Note that I said tried.

Eliyora missed. And guess who got beaned instead? Yep: poor Finn.

With Finn getting hit twice this session (once in-game and once IRL), someone came up with the hashtag “finnabuse”. I don’t know if it made its way to Twitter, but hopefully it doesn’t become a thing! Finn’s a cinnamon roll: he is to be protected at all costs.

Back to the dungeon: if you are a fan of Brony D&D, you know that if there are traps, there’ll inevitably be attempts to search for traps. And if there are attempts to search for traps, then you’ll hear DM Scorcher utter these famous words:

(No, I’m not sorry.)

Further into the dungeon, there was a treasure hoard. The dragons end up having to resist the urge to try to greedily swipe the treasure. Everyone but Varaugh resists, but Grixian managed to charm Varaugh before he could do something stupid.

But then Grixian later decides to do something stupid: he uses a Sleight-of-Hand check to swipe a Frostbrand Sword from the treasure pile. The rest of the party doesn’t see this, but they do hear a magical alarm go off. (At which point Finn references Aladdin: “You have touched the forbidden treasure!) A red dragon arrives and attacks—

—and that’s where that half of the session ended. Josh only had the hall for an hour and a half, so it was time for everyone to find someplace else to congregate.

Everyone left the Hall of the Stars, and then we all, following Josh, sought a spot to continue the session. Keychi had to leave for someplace else after the hour and a half, though, so Lightning Bliss (Amber’s voice actor in Brony D&D), who had shown up during the session, was pressed into service as Esmenas’s new voice actress. (Interesting that Blissy is now playing her character’s mother!)

We traveled across the bridge to a wide hallway in the Convention Center that had nobody in it. (I believe that this hallway was in the half of the Convention Center that was being used by the Rubik’s Cube competition. At present, I’m guessing that the competition was done for the day, as the hallway was not being used.) Once we got to a suitable spot, the audience sat around the players like schoolkids sitting around a campfire. I, of course, made sure to sit near the front so that I could actually hear what was going on. Dark Wind and SirBob sat nearby.

After a bit of setup, the battle was underway. However, a bit into the session, a problem cropped up: my phone was dead And my external battery had plenty of juice, so that couldn’t have been the issue!

For the past few days, my phone had been giving me problems, reporting that it was discharging faster than it was charging. Even when plugged in to my external battery (which has enough juice to fill two phones from empty), my phone would not really charge.

I asked nearby audience members for a charging cable, in case the problem was that my cable was loose. One of the bronies next to me asked to see my phone and later said that my battery was not able to hold a charge—likely because it was overheated. So I borrowed someone else’s phone so that I could call home: I wanted to tell my parents that I was fine and that if they couldn’t get ahold of me by hone tonight, it was because my phone’s battery was overheated. Fortunately for me, I was able to dredge up my father’s cell phone number from my memory, and the call was made. (I didn’t want to call the landline, lest they not pick up from the unfamiliar number.)

During the fight, Esmenas had cast some spell that allowed her to punch the red dragon with godlike power. And at the punch, Varaugh was smitten: he was going to court Esmenas. I forget whether this was before or after the phone call.

Later on, after a barrage of attacks and spells (including some area-of-effect spells from Hawthorne that didn’t friendly-fire the party thanks to some skill of his) Kel managed to convince the dragon to give up his attack and flee.

Back at Hawthorne Tower, Dara starts trying to ship Varaugh and Esmenas, and Grixian reveals the Frostbane Sword that triggered the fight. Apparently, the session ended with Grixian saying “Is anyone up for Chinese?”

After the session, I did not let all these analysts get away. I already got signatures from Finn and Voice, so I first stopped Solar Flare. After getting his signature on Josh’s wedding present, I stopped by Acharky, since he ended up standing next to Eliyora.

That left Eliyora herself, and I had told her earlier that day that I still had stuff for her to sign.

I got her autograph on my Faerthurin profile

then pulled out the pièce de résistance.

I had greatly anticipated seeing Lunacorva at BronyCon, and had made up two presents for him. One of them would be a trophy of his greatest triumph: getting Eliyora to say something good about herself. The other…I’ll reveal in a bit.

Either way, it was a bummer to hear that Lunacorva would not be at BronyCon, but since we both on the Discord server, I could always give him a picture.

And so, I presented Eliyora with my creation for her to autograph. She marveled that I managed to get her real name right.

“The magic of the Internet,” I replied.

But as far as getting her to sign the thing… I think Eli was less than pleased. What do you think?

Internal dialogue: OK then, this copy will go to Lunacorva.

Of course, I had two copies made: one for Lunacorva, and one for myself. I asked Eli to sign the other copy, and fortunately for me, she was a bit less salty:

Since my phone was dead, I asked Dark Wind to take pictures of the signed quotations and send them to Lunacorva. According to Dark Wind, Lunacorva was really pleased with the gift.

Later that night, after dinner and the Friendship is MTG panel, I was back in my room and my phone got a bit of a charge, so I turned it on and got on Discord. After asking Lunacorva myself whether he liked the picture (“Quite a lot, thank you,” was his response), I told him about my wedding present for Josh, then I showed him my second gift.

This gift was a sign of my appreciation for him leaving a comment on last year’s Highlight “FLUTTERBOMB!” It was a profile in the same style as Josh’s DM profile, but that also incorporated the “stats” that Lunacorva added in the comment.

Unlike Eliyora’s name, I don’t know if Lunacorva’s is public knowledge. His first name surely is, though, so I’m only redacting the surname:

His response: “Cheers!”

Since I don’t speak Australian, I just took a guess that that meant he liked it.

Previous Highlight (Chronological Order): Lauren Faust: Stories and Experiences
Previous Highlight (Publication Order): Condensed Version

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