We woke up bright & early on Friday morning, got the littles to school (Lo & Taya skipped for the day) & then we dressed up in cosplay as our favorite Stormlight Archive characters. I dressed up as Veil, Taya as Shallan, & Lorien as Jasnah. Lorien made the most incredible shardblade (sword) out of foam & wire. It was pretty incredible. We threw on our lanyards/tickets & headed to the convention.
We met our friends at Sel.
(each area of the convention was named after one of the planet systems in Sanderson's books)
Sel was located on the 2nd floor of the Raddison Hotel next to the convention center.
Because it was so close to Christmas, the area was decorated with Christmas trees & lights. I had scheduled us a "picture with Mistborn Santa" which was hilarious. He had a "mistcloak" on & had a sword. We had a blast taking pictures together with him.
Also at Sel, they had a lot of beautiful artwork on display. They had a table of 10 drawings that Brandon had done (awful drawings scratched out in pencil on canvases). At some point during the convention, Brandon's artists (for his book) all took one of his drawings & created a masterpiece out of it. They then sold the painting at auction for charity which was WONDERFUL.
They also had some cute crafts to do at Sel. You could paint a tile for the giant mural going in Brandon's Office (it was the cover of Tress), you could make a pattern ornament, & then they had several charities that work with Brandon where you could buy things or donate money to to support people in need all over the world.
After visiting Sel, we went back to the shopping area (Taldain) to see if we could get a few more stamps for our passport. The lines were pretty long everywhere so we decided to go to "Hoid's Museum of Curiosities."
While we waited in line we came upon a "chull" (a crablike creature from his books), & we noticed a little ornament hooked to it with a QR code. I scanned the QR code & it took me to a page of sudoku puzzles. While we waited in line, Jessica & I started solving the puzzles & realized it spelled out a word. We talked with some other people in line & there were I think 6 ornaments hidden around the conventions with different puzzles to solve to get clues. Once you solve all the clues, you say them to a specific secret person & they give you a special stamp in your passport. You better believe we found every one & solved the puzzles.
This convention was one game/puzzle after another. It was amazing.
Once we got up to Hoid's Secret Museum, Taya got to hold Nightblood & Trek got to hold Oathbringer.
The Museum was full of "relics" from all of Brandon Sanderson's books. It was really really fun to look at it all.
The highlight of my afternoon was meeting the man himself. Somehow my convention ticket won the lottery for meeting Brandon Sanderson & having him sign one of my books. I couldn't believe it. The rest of the crew went to a panel about "fashion in the cosmere" while I went to get my book signed.
I had him sign my copy of Tress of the Emerald Sea. He signed it in green ink. It was so great. What a fun experience, meeting someone you admire so much.
The girls went off on their own for a while, exploring & attending some classes on art & storyboarding while the rest of us did some of the trivia panels, & cosmere 101.
Taya got to meet the artist of Yumi & the Nightmare Painter which she was SUPER excited about. She actually was able to attend a one on one class with her where she taught her how to draw. Taya LOVED that.
We all met back up in the game room. They had over 3,000 board games that you could check out & play. They had some Sanderson specific games, & just the games I love to play too.
We visited SO MANY panels & classes. We got stamps in the shops, & at every class/panel we attended. Our passports were filling up fast, but we still didn't know what to do with them.
The one class I was overly excited to attend was the panel with Kate Reading & Michael Kramer. They are the narrators for Sanderson's books & I LOVE THEM. I listen to his books while I cook, clean, run, etc. I've gotten to know their voices over the years & THEY make the books magical for me. They joined via zoom & read chapter 14 of the new book in all the voices. It was SO FUN.
While we listened to them, Jonah went around & found out where ALL the store/shop passport stamps were. We were missing 3 of them & he now knew where we could find them.
Our goal for the last day, was to fully max out all the passport stamps & get our STORY CARDS. We finally figured out the point to the stamps. Every page you got stamped awarded you one pack of story cards (remember the 2 packs of cards we got the first day? MORE packs). The story cards were Brandon's new "activity" for Dragonsteel. He wrote 3 brand new stories that fit into the Cosmere Stormlight timeline & made 54 story cards for each story. When you collect them all, & put them in a card holder (3x3 = 9 cards per page), they made told a story & made beautiful pictures for the story. Some of the cards were foil, some were normal, & some were "nonsense" meaning some cards had 2-3 cards for that particular number that changed the story in some way. It was INSANELY CLEVER. There were also 9 herald cards & once they were all collected it made a mural of the 10th herald. We were determined to get EVERY PACK we could get with our passport stamps & try to complete our stories.
No comments:
Post a Comment