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Hundreds of Catholic fans gather at ClaveCon


This week, hundreds of crazy fans of the catholic faith are gathering in Rome, France Italy [thanks, Mario!] to celebrate an event called "ClaveCon". The greatest fans, or "ordinals" take part in an ornate cosplay ritual by locking themselves up in a hall for days on end to vote on who is the best catholic of them all. The winner is called the "pipe", since they take the costume of each contender and burn it in a big pipe: if the smoke in the pipe is black, then he loses. Else if the smoke is grey then the owner of the costume is chosen as "pipe" and is awarded with a new set of robes with which to rule the catholic fantasy universe for the next ten years!


If I weren't battling the WIPO in geneva this week then I'd be there in a flash, but juding from the photos it seems like a bit of a male geekfest...

Update! John Paul III writes to say, "Apparently the game is a whole lot more complicated than Cory thought: there's an entire version of the Wikipedia devoted to this game where ardent fans have created a complicated backstory to explain the whole catholic universe. They've got up to about two thousand years ago so far, can't wait to read how the rest of it turns out. Link.