Right now, as you read this, the fine citizens of Port Townsend, Washington are three days deep into the Brass Screw Consortium Steampunk Festival (June 12–14), a “chronologically discontiguous” weekend where Pirates, Aetherists, Outcasts, and Bodgers settle their differences via games of skill, wit, and an alarming amount of brass.

This year’s plot: a stray Plague Rat has caused a power vacuum in Consortium leadership, and attendees are invited to weigh in on the new regime. Naturally, nature abhors a vacuum, but the Aetherists love one; it gives them something to aetherify. Honestly, “power vacuum caused by a rat” is the most accurate description of several real governments I could name, but the Doctor doesn’t do American politics, so moving on.

The real highlight is the Bodgers’ Grande Exhibition, a maker showcase that is, in essence, a county fair for people who build steam-powered nonsense in their garages and then bring it to a seaport to show off. This is, and I cannot stress this enough, the single most respectable use of a garage in human history. Forget the lawnmower. Build a brass octopus that dispenses tea.

If you’re anywhere near the Olympic Peninsula this weekend, go pay your respects to the rat. Tell them the Doctor sent you, and that the rat has my full endorsement; unlike most candidates, it has never once promised me anything and then failed to deliver.

Via: Brass Screw Consortium