We showed up for MOCK the next Saturday night, dressed for the event in our "Crony" costumes, i.e. the same trenchcoats and hats we'd worn the previous week. Convention staff was checking for wristbands (normal, pin-on badges were, after all, a security risk because people could share them with saboteurs and other evil malcontents) at the front entrance, but we thought it might be possible to enter via the back door. As it happened, the back door was not merely unlocked, but was in fact lying on the ground by the rear entrance. We entered unmolested and circled the upstairs rooms, passing such venerable sci-fi events as the "Grab-ass Room" and the classic "Fagg (sic) Bash" before descending to the ground level and being immediately asked by con security to display wristbands we didn't have. Claiming we were looking for registration, I inquired about the cost of membership; our legitimate shock at being told that a convention at the end of its second day in a teetering stack of cinder blocks and timbers was still charging forty dollars for entrance served as a ready excuse to turn about and leave. We'd seen no sign of Rook, and a security escort wasn't going to provide us with many chances for blazing away with our Nerf armament. After a few minutes of trying unsuccessfully to start the car, get it in the proper gear, switch off the windshield wipers and actually drive away, we thanked our lucky stars we had not been running back after a successful pranking, security in pursuit and a speedy escape in mind, and went home. This shit wasn't working. We needed a new strategy. Perhaps the altogether simpler approach of the Christian Crusade had been the better idea all along.
So it was back to printed propaganda again. We produced two "Krony recruitment" flyers (click to enlarge) imploring readers to stop wasting time on SF and fantasy, and instead join The Kronies in asserting control over the one part of the world (MOCK) we had yet to conquer. Their purpose was obvious to anyone with two functional brain cells: we were blatantly spoofing Rook's own aggrandized assessment of his supposed enemies' power and influence. (Rook would later cite the text of these flyers as being a "confession," proving some people just don't get sarcasm, and/or are batshit crazy.) The crony rhetoric that was a staple on the MOCK message board made it clear just whose cronies Rook believed were behind the alleged war on his event: he blamed the whole thing on Ed Kramer, head of Atlanta's behemoth convention Dragon Con, for his failing business, though he was careful not to name Ed directly due to a previous slander lawsuit. With this in mind, we used the spelling "Krony" to suggest the name "Kramer," even though we had no association with the man. I personally couldn't have picked Ed Kramer out of a lineup, which is unfortunate, since that's exactly the sort of place one was likely to find him in later years, for widely-reported reasons.
That particular year (1998), Rook had decided to start holding the con twice a year; thus, we had only to wait six more months until "Mocktoberfest" rolled around that Halloween before trying again with...whatever the hell this whole affair had become. We'd arranged with a dealer we knew ("Richard S.") who was selling at MOCK to get a pair of complimentary dealers' wristbands for the con, only to arrive and find that the con had reneged on the deal. Forced to improvise, we obtained one badge legitimately through an intermediary, and then, uhh, made another one out of crap we scrounged up on the cheap at Target. This was mostly my brilliant plan. On arriving at MOCK, we found the back door had been screwed back on in the interest of not becoming a drop-in habitat for bums, but the rear passageway was enclosed on the exterior side by a criss-crossing brick arrangement which left roughly diamond-shaped openings in the wall, through which outsiders could just shove handfuls of Krony flyers without even having to get past any locked door. We should've quit while we were ahead, but myself and K1 stuck around to push our luck with the badges, which got us successfully past the front door, after which we were nabbed inside three minutes by the same security goon we'd met last time, who found Krony flyers on us and then dragged us to con registration whilst loudly announcing, "We caught the Kronies!" At least there was no talk of burning us.
We showed up for MOCK the next Saturday night, dressed for the event in our "Crony" costumes, i.e. the same trenchcoats and hats we'd worn the previous week. Convention staff was checking for wristbands (normal, pin-on badges were, after all, a security risk because people could share them with saboteurs and other evil malcontents) at the front entrance, but we thought it might be possible to enter via the back door. As it happened, the back door was not merely unlocked, but was in fact lying on the ground by the rear entrance. We entered unmolested and circled the upstairs rooms, passing 
such venerable sci-fi events as the "Grab-ass Room" and the classic "Fagg (sic) Bash" before descending to the ground level and being immediately asked by con security to display wristbands we didn't have. Claiming we were looking for registration, I inquired about the cost of membership; our legitimate shock at being told that a convention at the end of its second day in a teetering stack of cinder blocks and timbers was still charging forty dollars for entrance served as a ready excuse to turn about and leave. We'd seen no sign of Rook, and a security escort wasn't going to provide us with many chances for blazing away with our Nerf armament. After a few minutes of trying unsuccessfully to start the car, get it in the proper gear, 
switch off the windshield wipers and actually drive away, we thanked our lucky stars we had not been running back after a successful pranking, security in pursuit and a speedy escape in mind, and went home. This shit wasn't working. We needed a new strategy. Perhaps the altogether simpler approach of the Christian Crusade had been the better idea all along.
That particular year (1998), Rook had decided to start holding the con twice a year; thus, we had only to wait six more months until "Mocktoberfest" rolled around that Halloween before trying again with...whatever the hell this whole affair had become. We'd arranged with a dealer we knew ("Richard S.") who was selling at MOCK to get a pair of complimentary dealers' wristbands for the con, only to arrive and find that the con had reneged on the deal. Forced to improvise, we obtained one badge legitimately through an intermediary, and then, uhh, made another one out of crap we scrounged up on the cheap at Target. This was mostly my brilliant plan. On arriving at MOCK, we found the back door had been screwed back on in the interest of not becoming a drop-in habitat for bums, but the rear passageway was enclosed on the exterior side by a criss-crossing brick arrangement which left roughly diamond-shaped openings in the wall, through which outsiders could just shove handfuls of Krony flyers without even having to get past any locked door. We 
should've quit while we were ahead, but myself and K1 stuck around to push our luck with the badges, which got us successfully past the front door, after which we were nabbed inside three minutes by the same security goon we'd met last time, who found Krony flyers on us and then dragged us to con registration whilst loudly announcing, "We caught the Kronies!" At least there was no talk of burning us.
