Vlog 3 - Christmas

t's the holiday season and the Wandering Legion of the Thomas Tew and some of their friends got together to send out some seasons greetings.

Vlog 2 12-11-10 - Lucretia's Package... You know what I mean!

Lucretia made it back to the correct dimension, and received disturbing news that her disappearance was a hoax. Her reaction needed to be shared immediately, but she got distracted by an unexpected visitor. Lets watch ...  

GobbleCon and Anachronism Wrap Up

Having completed GobbleCon, The Wandering Legion of the Thomas Tew had a terrible accident that the General and the Professor tried to cover up. However; the Baron and Lucretia manage to send out a distress message. Will anyone receive it?

From The General:

Well, Ladies and Gentlemen, it has been two weeks since the Explorer II landed somewhat safely and not so worse for wear, although the came can't be said for several poor members of the crew. Though, it is what it is and from time to time these things can not be helped. All in all the maiden voyage of the Explorer II was a fantastic time. I must also say that being present for the breaking of the sound barrier was quite a privilege although I suppose it pales in comparison to cutting through time. STILL it was something I have never experienced before and was quite fun.

Lord Bobbins and some of his Crew and Financiers

The crew of the Explorer II were a bunch of fine young lads ever willing to lend a hand and carry your bags or any number of menial tasks that are clearly below most of us. This amazing crew was headed by the wonderful Lord Hasting Robert Bobbins, the mad genius behind the whole endeavor. With a handful of bankers and a few less engineers Lord Bobbins created the Explorer II as if from thin air. Although credit where credit is due, I think he is a very humble chap and did A LOT more work than he lets on. The ship was wonderfully built with beautiful art adorning the hallways, unique signs to mark the rooms, and an atmosphere that I dare say could not be replicated. I must also say that the engines were marvelously built, adding a beautiful and ever present hum to the journey. 
 

One of many fun signs

The unfortunate murders, ensuing investigation and finger pointing did not quite so much take away from the journey as it did to make it much more FUN and interesting. Of course everything was settled in the end, rather good timing if you ask me. Amidst the chaos everyone seemed to be having a good time. The clothing was stunning, everyone turned out in their "Sunday best" everyday. It was quite a sight. Of course the entertainment was superb, so many interesting people and discussions as well as spending the evening with other Citizens of the Red Fork Empire that had not been encountered before. The Minster of (dis)Information and Prop(er)ganda and The Ministress of Science were in attendance. 

All of the Citizens of the Red Fork Empire in attendance

Cherie Priest

Taxidermy is cool

The "high priestess of steampunk" Cherie Priest was there to talk about her new wonderful novel Dreadnought, as well as other guest speakers covering topics ranging from "Where do we go from here; the future of steampunk" to "taxidermy throughout the ages" to "creating a persona" all so very interesting. And not to be forgotten is the evening entertainment such as the "Elegant Wonderland Deco Rococo Salon" and a performance by Eli August as well as other musical guests.

Airship Archon

A special thank you to several people:

Cherie Priest

The Emperor of the Red Fork Empire

Meagan Maude

Austin Sirkin

Samantha Rei

The Airship Archon

Lord Hastings Robert Bobbins

And of course we cannot forget the grand creator, Lord Hastings Robert Bobbins!

See MORE photos here!

-Disclaimer-

NOW, if you have no idea what the above recount is all about then you missed out on one of the most fun and DEFINITELY the most immersive conventions I have ever attended: TeslaCon in Madison WI. It was truly an experience and I urge you all to attend in 2011, I have it in good confidence that Lord Bobbins will be venturing 20,000 Leagues beneath the Aether.

The End of October

Hello everyone!!! I do hope all of you had a good All Hallows Eve. I know the Legion certainly did but that is a story for another time!

It has been such a busy, busy month! though I cannot say for sure, I do BELIEVE there may have been some time manipulation to fit everything in, shhhhhh. I know I, for one, have been trying to track down the source of all the commotion aboard the Orgia. Something about a scroll and a little Dark Wizard, and I must say he is a man of incredible power and wit. BUT I think I have set everything back and in order... I think. Or hope.

Also some other events and activities of note would be the Steam Puffin Form and Function Art Show at the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation. I attended this with The Emperor of The Red Fork Empire and The Lady of Graves. It was quite the astonishing show I must say, such amazing pieces of work. Of course I happen to go for opening night and the show is going on for 6 months so you all should take some time and go check it out. Special thanks to Bruce and Melanie Rosenbaum of ModVic who curated the whole thing.

Also, the other day The Lady of Graves and I happened across a wonderful Tea Party at the amazing Mark Twain House in Hartford, CT. The Tea was put on by Miss Kitty and was a huge success! The rumor buzzing around the Tea is that this was only the first of many events to be hosted there. 

Oh what a time, and we are not done yet. The year still holds many happenings for The Legion, so keep your eyes peeled! 

- The General 

October.... WOW the second!

AAC: 

So about two weeks ago we wrapped up another one of our favorite conventions Another Anime Con in Nashua NH.  It was, like all cons, a lot of fun!  We met the likes of BrentalFloss, hung out with our good friends the Nerdfit Network and totally last minute guerrillaed up a photo shoot!  Not to mention that this was the convention debut of Abigail Mycroft, The Baron's assistant!  Next yeart we plan to rebuild the roof we blew off this convention.... SO WE CAN BLOW IT OFF AGAIN!

http://www.anotheranimecon.com/

BROOKLYN INDIE MART:

After narrowly escaping a group of Hytalia Cosplayers and an enraged little person seeking hippopotamus, Lucretia was able to make her way to New York City to watch Ayleen the Peacemaker read from Scott Westerfield's Behemoth.  Ayleen read wonderfully!  It was a cute event.  Very small and intimate but charming.  The event was being put on as a part of Tor.com's Steampunk Fortnight.  We also ran into our friend Leanna Renee Hieber!  She of course read from a few wonderful selections of her Strangle Beautiful series which is currently hard to find... 

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2010/09/steampunk-indie-mart

STEAMPUNK MAGAZINE:

Legionaires rejoice! My article about transgenderism in Steampunk was picked up by Steampunk Magazine!  If you haven't read please please do!

http://www.steampunkmagazine.com/guest-post-using-the-transgender-umbrella-to-describe-the-steampunk-parasol/

VIDEO:

What's that you say?  You want to see the new video from us?  Weeeeelllllllllllll OK!  Thanks Dogtoon Media!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3O6u28rgYKY

But WAIT there's more!  The Professor also had some nice words about Lucretia!  Take a look!

October... WOW

So a lot has happened in October.  So much so that blogging about it has become incredibly hard.  So without further ado here's what we've been up to.

STROWLER CON:
            This convention had one of the best ideas/concepts of any convention we have attended!  This convention was intended for people who are traveling performers/gyspy etc.  The con itself catered to Fairy culture, Gypsy culture, and (Of course) steampunks!  The convention gave "Votes," to everyone at the con.  ANYONE could recieve votes; performers, vendors, costumers etc.  At the end of the convention the votes would be worth $3 each.  So potentially anyone could make money at this con!

There wil be more on the other conventions later but for now we'd love to give a quick shout out to Legionaire Ay-Leen the Peace Maker, editor of the blog Beyond Victoriana for winning the the Last Drink Bird Head Award, founded by Ann & Jeff Vandermeer for work in the genre. Beyond Victoriana had been nominated under "Gentle Advocacy," and the winners were announced in DC this weekend in conjunction with WSFA Small Press Award hosted by Capclave.

And she thanked us:
"I'm very humbled to be nominated for this award, because Beyond Victoriana wouldn't be as thought-provoking or insightful without the amazing people I've worked with. So really, this award doesn't just belong to me, but an entire team of thoughtful contributors who have dedicated their time and effort to its content. And, coincidentally enough, today is also marks the first year anniversary of Beyond Victoriana (yay!), so I can only look forward to working with more wonderful folk in the future.

So, in no particular order, I'd like to thank the following people: Jaymee Goh, Matt Delman, Evangeline Holland, Michael Redturtle, Noah Meernaum, and Kevin Mullins for your emails and your contributions; The Wandering Legion of the Thomas Tew, Jake von Slatt, Mike Perschon, Allegra Hawksmoor, Leanna Renee Hieber, Karin Lowachee, Kevin Steil, Jeff VanderMeer and SJ Chambers for your continuous support; all the wonderful artist, creators, and steampunks I've met in the community through this site; the readers; my family for tolerating my weirdness; and lastly but mostly lovingly, my fiancee Ashley Rogers."

~Lucretia

Death Becomes Me

So I died, and it isn't that bad actually. I had a feeling it was coming, seeing as I have been dying every October for the past 10 years, but I always have a momentary thought of "what if it doesn't happen this year?" I guess I should explain.

It all started 10 years ago on a dark and stormy night. I was bored and told Abigail to get our traveling attire ready because I wanted to play in the rain. She advised against it saying something about trees and something about enchantments, but of course I ignored her and said we were going out anyway. I was surprised and impressed at the sheer volumes of rain coming out of the sky as we exited the warm confines of my office and walked into the garden towards my personal shuttle. I turned on the automaton pilot, told him to take me on an adventure and we were off. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that The Orgia was flying so close to the enchanted forest known as Witch's Woods, and I reprimanded Abigail for not telling me. The trees reached out and plucked my shuttle out of the air and placed us not so gently on the ground in the middle of a dirt field. I was outraged. How dare these enchanted trees attack me, didn't they know who I was. Opening the door of the shuttle I walked outside to yell at the trees when I was suddenly pushed aside by Abigail rushing past me. I tumbled around for a bit, fell down a small dirt hill, did a few summersaults which were quite fun, and ended right side up with my coat over my face. The sounds of fighting reached my ears and I knew Abigail was off having her own fun, so I proceeded to walk towards a glow I saw in the trees ahead of me. As I got closer I heard chanting that sent a chill through my spine, and I was tempted to go back to Abigail, but something kept me rooted to the spot I was standing.
"Baron Von Lahey," the voice echoed out the glow, "you have entered the sacred forest and now you are stuck for all time."
"I beg your pardon good creepy thing, but you are quite mistaken if you think I am going to be staying in this dank forest for all time. This is far below the comforts I am accustomed. Thank you for the offer though, but I must be leaving." I turned to walk away when a shiny pile of monies appeared.
"This, and more, will be yours. All you have to do is pledge you allegiance to me. I can offer you immortality, wealth, power beyond belief."
"Excuse me, but I pledge allegiance to no one, or no thing, what are you? How do you do that creepy voice thing, it's a very interesting effect. I might have to add that to my introduction. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a sound system set up in an entire floating city. If I could just look over your equipment and ..."
"SILENCE YOU INSIGNIFICANT FOOL! You will bow before me if it's..."
"Oh no! How dare you! Do you have any idea who I am. I AM BARON VON LAHEY. Heir to Von Lahey Fortune, and Proprietor of AirshipEntertainment, you should be bowing to me. Insignificant, my aunt fanny. You what, I will just buy this land, then rip down the trees and all your pretty little facades and then see where that leaves you. What do you think of that?"
"Can you do that?"
"Of course I can. I can do anything I want. I just need to find the lease owner and throw piles of money at him."
"Oh, I didn't know that. I'm sure we can work something out. How about I give you the monies I have, plus immortality, and add a new title to your acclaim."
"I'm listening."
"How about Lord of the Forest. You can reign supreme over all the creatures and enchantments this land holds. I will be able to advise and help you."
"Yes, that sounds wonderfully interesting, but who are you?"
"Oh, I'm Bob. the Dark Imperial Wizard, Lord Bob. I control these woods and work for a race of hell demons bent on destroying this dimension."
"Fascinating, and you'll show me how to that voice thing?"
"Yes, of course!"
"Excellent. Now what?"
"NOW YOU MUST DIE!"

There was a flash of blinding light, a brief but intense burning sensation, and the feeling of my flesh being taken. When the light dimmed and I could fully see again, I was dead. I had oozing bloody holes in my face, my brain had slipped out of my skull and dripped out of the hole in my cheek. I would have been disgusted except it was terribly interesting. I felt more powerful than I had ever before. The creatures in the woods began appearing and bowing down before their new master. Then Lord Bob came walking out the shadows. He was short man, wearing dark blue robes with constellations sewed into them. He had a medallion around his neck in the shape of snowflake, and was carrying a scroll.
"My Lord. I present to you the eternal scroll of The Keepers. This is your right now. Read from the scroll and The Keepers will be freed upon this world to wreak their havoc."
"Yes, yes, good, good, show me how to do that voice thing."

After many hours of practice I finally got it down, and I spent the rest of the evening walking through the woods getting to know all my new minions. I finally ended up back at my shuttle where Abigail was cleaning her weapons next to pile of beheaded zombies.
"Abigail, look, I'm dead!"
She rolled her eyes, said something about something, and I ignored her.

When we returned to The Orgia I put the scroll of The Keepers in my personal library. Ran around scaring my staff which was quite fun, and then went to bed. I awoke and everyone else was dead. Apparently, wherever the scroll is, all the living will become the undead. Losing interest in not being only dead one, I tried to have the scroll destroyed, but it didn't work. Now, every year during the month of October, the staff, passengers, and myself, all die. I have yet to return to the woods to see if I can make it go away, because it is quite fun, and I refuse to bring forth The Keepers because I like the dimension just the way it is.

An Evening of Steampunk & Robot Theatre!

Greetings Legionaires, Lucretia Dearfour here letting you know that, first and foremost... WE HAVE A NEW BLOG SPACE!  And you're in it! 

But also the Legion successfully traversed our way to the mighty north of Portsmouth NH to view An Evening of Steampunk and Robot Plays being put on by John Herman at The Players' Ring (www.PlayersRing.org)!

 

The General and Cordelia left on their own, attempting to clear the way for Baron and my travel up the Highway of 95 however we still met a familiar enemy which kept us from our destination. 3 hours of gridlock traffic.  Baron and myself finally defeated our slow moving foe by screaming at it, hoping, and debating taking roads off the highway...  but, as if always the case with gridlock traffic, the SECOND we had the ability and the resolve to escape it's clutches it gave us a way out. 

We made it in the nick of time however and were able to sit in the front row of the intimate space.  As we entered two men in goggles, ski boots, tap lights, and various debris were playing gameboys and walking around the stage.  At first I thought this was a bit of Theatre of Cruelty, to have two people playing a game we could never play and could never watch.  It turns out the two were The Attic Bits, who were in fact NOT playing Game Boys with each other but creating music with them as we sat and watched them!  We're not talking Game Boy Pockets either I mean the Game Boys that looked like amazing '80s cell phones!

I digress, THE PLAYS!  They were amazing fun.  All of them, as well as about 8 others that didn't get produced and a few pieces of visual art can be found on producer John Herman's website as well at http://www.johnherman.org/

Each piece was unique reflecting themes such as one individual's feelings versus society, the feelings of the dead and the lost, and even the feelings of handcrafted neurotic automatons!  Also pay attention... a Sonic Screwdriver may show up here or there.  Speaking of which, the props were very well crafted!  We, as we often find ourselves doing, were picking apart each one to try and figure out where and what each piece had been previously.  We saw everything from Hair bands that acted as feeding collars to bug zappers as Tesalating Shot guns!  The set was minimalist but effective.  They tried to have use for every piece that they created in multiple scenes.

If you have the time, the show runs until October 10th, a good time will be had and all proceeds go to New Hampshire Association of the Blind’s 2020 VisionQuest, as well as two other worthy charities. 

Steampunk and Robot Plays Produced by John Herman and The Players' Ring, you have been Legion Approved!  Continue spreading the Brass Sickness!

Too Much Stuff!!!

WOW, it’s been more than a month since we last updated! Terribly sorry, but there are only so many things we can accomplish at any single moment in time!

In the past month we have made it several events including The Imperial “Birthday”, Dragon*Con and The Steampunk Invasion of Salem. So in order than.

Many happy returns to our Beloved Emperor, although I’m not sure why we celebrate the annual date of his appearance in this dimension, he is Immortal after all.

Dragon*Con was AWESOME, quite amazing that we all made it down there. Special thanks to Outland Armour who were awesome as usual and The L.E.A.G.U.E. of Steam, whom it was fantastic to meet. There was so much partying and costuming to be had it was almost overwhelming, 50,000 people in 5 hotels in the center of Atlanta GA. What a freaking party.

The 1st Annual Invasion was a huge success, many thanks to Dr. Phobius for doing 90% of the legwork and coming up with the idea. All we did was lend a helping hand or 3. It was so much fun and we are so glad that so many people made it. Can’t wait to do it again next year!!!

And of course on the horizon there are more videos to come and our favorite anime convention, AAC in Nashua, NH is less than a month away! Cant wait!

Two Man Gentleman Band

Hello everyone! So just the other night we were able to see The Two Man Gentleman Band at Club Passim in Cambridge. If you don’t know who they are you should check out their website: http://www.thetwogentlemen.com.

Mr. Andy Bean and The Councilman have quite a unique “20‘s” sound to them with a very modern day twist. They are really quite awesome and make some great “Two Man” music. I think their rendition of the Ghostbusters theme was a very pleasant surprise although ‘Put it in My Ear (When You Make That Music)’ was probably our favorite song of the night.  Everyone should check out their website and new album entitled “Dos Amigos, Una Fiesta “ which we were told translates to “Two Men, One Party “

ALSO!!! Be sure to check back in a week to see our “interrogation” also known as an interview of The Two Man Gentleman Band!

Postal Service

WOW, I just watched our first web skit entitled “Postal Service”. Personally I loved it!!!! Such a long day of shooting was totally worth the effort. I would like to thank Dogtoon Media for filming, editing and all that neat video stuff that I have no idea about. It looks great! Also Sidney and Eudora of Steampunk Postal.... yeah you really are not human, do you have any idea where I WAS? No one should have been able to find me in that cemetery... no one.

Also, keep an eye out for Lucretia and I this weekend at the The Midsummer Magick Time Traveller's Weekend in Oxford CT.

COME GET YOUR FREE PIN!!!!

-The General

ConnectiCon 2010

WOW!!!! What a weekend. The official launch of The Wandering Legion of the Thomas Tew was AWESOME!!! We had so many panels we could barely keep up.
Special thanks to all of our friends in The Red Fork Empire, Nerdfit Network, Dogtoon Media and Rym DeCoster from ConnectiCon. I hope all of our friends, old and new, had a great time. We know we did! Also, I hope everyone got their FREE Wandering Legion pin!

Coming up next look for us at The Time Travelers Invasion of Mid-Summer Ren Fair.