The Charlotte Geeks

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Great Event For New Members!

Come join us for a night of games, laughter and general chaos! All levels of gamers welcome. Bring your games or play some of ours. We tend to play shorter, more crowd friendly games and are always willing to teach you. Games usually available for play: Betrayal at House on the Hill, Carcassonne, Obscurio, Azul, Camel Up!, Dominion, Bang, and some party games.

Mugs now serves beer and wine, as well as coffee and soft drinks. They also have tasty baked goods and sandwiches. Or you can bring in outside food, we just ask you buy your drinks on site.

Come when you can - stay as long as you like!

The Charlotte Geeks will again have a table at Matthews Comic Con. Come by and say hi, or if you want to help work the table to promote our Geekery Market and food drive for Second Harvest, let us know in the comments!

This is a fun, free family-friendly event in downtown Matthews - with a great chance to meet some local artists, sellers, and food trucks.

Scheduled events and activities include:
Comic vendors
Craft vendors
Game vendors
Comic artists
Sketch Charlotte Art Show
Cosplay contest
Anime and cartoon cars
Food trucks
and more!

Join us In Person at Park Road Books at 7 pm on March 11th to discuss Providence by Max Barry.

You can always pick up the book at Park Road Books for 20% off this month, but we welcome all versions both paper and digital.

The Author:
Max Barry is the author of seven novels and the creator of the popular online game NationStates. He also once found a sock full of pennies. He lives in Melbourne, Australia, with his wife and two daughters. Sometimes he coaches kids' netball.

The Book:
Gilly, Talia, Anders, and Jackson are astronauts captaining a new and supposedly indestructible ship in humanity's war against an alien race. Confined to the ship for years, each of them holding their own secrets, they are about to learn there are threats beyond the reach of human ingenuity--and that the true nature of reality might be the universe's greatest mystery.

In this near future, our world is at war with another, and humanity is haunted by its one catastrophic loss--a nightmarish engagement that left a handful of survivors drifting home through space, wracked with PTSD. Public support for the war plummeted, and the military-industrial complex set its sights on a new goal: zero-casualty warfare, made possible by gleaming new ships called Providences, powered by AI.

But when the latest-launched Providence suffers a surprising attack and contact with home is severed, Gilly, Talia, Anders, and Jackson must confront the truth of the war they're fighting, the ship that brought them there, and the cosmos beyond.

On the 3rd Friday of every month we discuss a Fantasy, Science Fiction or Horror book. We're a pretty laid-back group so you don't need to have read the book to join us and engage in the conversation, but if you haven't you can't complain about spoilers.

This month we are reading:

#### THE POPPY WAR – RF KUANG

When Rin aced the Keju - the Empire-wide test to find the most talented youth to learn at the Academies - it was a shock to everyone: to the test officials, who couldn’t believe a war orphan from Rooster Province could pass without cheating; to Rin’s guardians, who believed they’d finally be able to marry her off and further their criminal enterprise; and to Rin herself, who realized she was finally free of the servitude and despair that had made up her daily existence. That she got into Sinegard - the most elite military school in Nikan - was even more surprising.

But surprises aren’t always good.

Because being a dark-skinned peasant girl from the South is not an easy thing at Sinegard. Targeted from the outset by rival classmates for her color, poverty, and gender, Rin discovers she possesses a lethal, unearthly power - an aptitude for the nearly-mythical art of shamanism. Exploring the depths of her gift with the help of a seemingly insane teacher and psychoactive substances, Rin learns that gods long thought dead are very much alive - and that mastering control over those powers could mean more than just surviving school.

For while the Nikara Empire is at peace, the Federation of Mugen still lurks across a narrow sea. The militarily advanced Federation occupied Nikan for decades after the First Poppy War, and only barely lost the continent in the Second. And while most of the people are complacent to go about their lives, a few are aware that a Third Poppy War is just a spark away....
Rin’s shamanic powers may be the only way to save her people. But as she finds out more about the god that has chosen her, the vengeful Phoenix, she fears that winning the war may cost her humanity...and that it may already be too late.