What is this for? A LotusCon Lore Dive

Hello, my name is Nile (like the river)

A few weeks ago I learned about an MtG event called LotusCon which was an utter disaster.

The people who ran LotusCon ended up not paying their judges for the event. Fortunately someone independently paid the judges out of their own pocket, but there are more people affected by this event and the people who ran it.

The organizers of this event also managed an MtG alter auctions service. They would auction off alters on behalf of the artists, take a pretty sizeable cut of the profit, and then pay the artists the remaining profit. Only, that's not how it ended up going down much of the time. In the wake of LotusCon I came into contact with many artists who had given cards to these people and either

A) never received money after their cards sold or

B) never had their cards sold but couldn't get the organizers to send them back

I personally gathered all of the info about who is missing what in terms of cards or money, and I've made it my mission to get them paid.

What all is missing?

Originally there was about $4,000 worth of art missing. Fortunately after many phone calls with one of the organizers of this event I was able to convince them to mail me their binder of cards they never sold. This didn't cover everything, but it did get a lot of the missing artwork in my possession. I have been tracking down artists and mailing cards out to them (all at my own expense) and this has left the financial damages at closer to $1,500

Where does the money go?

There is a little more than $1,300 worth of money owed to artists at the moment. The priority of these funds is to pay them. The order they are paid in is based on the order they have each individually decided. Some artists have said things like "make sure everyone else is paid before I get paid" so they'll receive the last of the donations. Other artists have been trying to get funds from this org for a long time (over a year!) so they'll get paid first.

Should we get to a point where the artists have all been paid in full and we still have money left over, I will take exactly enough money to pay back my shipping costs (currently around $140). Should we exceed both of these goals, any excess money will be evenly distributed among the artists.

What are we doing to raise the funds?

There will be fundraiser streams starting on 12/1 and going all weekend long! You'll see tons of familiar faces in these streams and a wide variety of activities all weekend long as we try and reach our goal.

Additionally, there will be many prizes given out to people who donate, including:

Every $5 gets you an entry into winning one of these prizes! Winners will be contacted at the end of the fundraising campaign.