This past week was the thirty-third annual Pennsic War, an event to which I have not gone since 2001. It is held in Pennsylvania and is a battle between the Middle Kingdom and the East Kingdom, and the assorted allies of each. Atlantia traditionally sides with the East (though we in the rapier field tend to mock them the rest of the year), and the East traditionally wins the war. The War is decided by a number of scenarios for a total of 27 War Points. This year, for the first time, 3 of these points are decided by rapier events: a champion's tournament, a field battle, and a woods battle.
We arrived Friday night, set up camp, and walked around the site looking for familiar faces—not so easy with 9000 people already in attendance, but we tracked down the Atlantian contingencies and passed the time until the next day… man, was I bored. It is an Immutable Truth that parties suck, so going to any of the 200+ attendee parties was out and I just wanted to get to the next day so I could armor up and take the field. I did manage to have a pretty good time listening to stories from people who had been in the SCA for 10 years or more, since I get a good sense of the history involved from that.
Saturday, I woke up and headed to the field for pickups. Constanza and I took turns holding the field in bear pits (winner stays in), and later there was an Atlantian melee practice. It was a little frustrating because some of our people have, in the words of my primary sponsor Roland, "no fucking clue what they're doing out there." We did have one good run where my side charged and I was able to run the line for 6 kills, out of 10 on a side.
Later, Gunny, a Warder (Middle Kingdom White Scarf equivalent), and I took on 6 members of a barony that Gunny evidently belongs to now or something. We actually did okay, though I took a header over a hay bale and landed on my rapier's guard. Let me tell you, I tore some skin off my knee and got my first of several ugly bruises doing that. It hurt a heck of a lot, and had me out of action for a good 10-15 seconds.
I add extra hit points at every level.
Sunday there was a Movie Madness tournament, which was a fun sort of thing. People took turns being the "hero" in a scene, with random movie powers for each round. First round had one villain, second round two, and third round three. I won all my rounds, but Constanza used the fewest super powers to win it (things like "My father's medallion blocks the shot" and "Boot knife disables a limb" etc. etc.) and she went home with the top honors.
Monday was the Ansteorran tournament, which is considered to be THE tournament for rapier at Pennsic. It had about 75 participants and was double elimination. It was all heavy rapier, and I fought rapier and dagger throughout.
Round One, versus a newbies with case:
I legged him and he barely armed me, but since he'd only been fencing for 9 months I took the shot to be fair. So, left-handed and facing two blades, I picked at his hands over and over again until I found myself in a position to step through with my back foot and arc backward to land a shot to his head while voiding his attack. It was pretty.
Round Two, versus a nice guy with rapier and dagger:
I leg him, take his arm, and then headshot him for the win. He was a pretty nice guy overall though, and we chatted a bit afterward.
Round Three, versus one of the fighters from the Rapier Champions War Point tournament with case:
We moved around trying to pick a shot for a while, but then he got overly aggressive and I tagged him in the chest.
Round Four, versus Tora, a British fighter who has trained around the world in various martial arts and was lately of Japan, using rapier and dagger:
Connor had been talking this guy up to me earlier since evidently he'd been kicking the snot out of the gypsy the previous day, but I was more excited about the chance to fight one of the best than I was nervous—after all, while I may not be as good as I can become, I'm good enough to drop top people.
Tora was FAST. He has the fastest hands I've ever seen. He took a low guard, and threw a shot at me, which I parried. He took a second shot, aimed at my leg, and I voided the leg and lunged in response—a classic move I learned from Aedan that has served me very, very well—and landed the shot on his mask and his chest with my second intention. I'm pretty sure I surprised the heck out of Connor. :
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After this round, the marshal in charge made an announcement that there were currently only four undefeated fencers left in the tournament, and that they were all Atlantians: me, Connor, Aedan, and Melchior, another Free Scholar.
I, of course, got paired up with Aedan… whom I practice with every freaking week! Not to mention that he's pretty much the only Provost in the kingdom I've never beaten in a tournament. Argh!
Round Five, versus Aedan, using rapier and dagger:
We press each other with feints, until he throws for my stomach and I parry the blow but it clips my front knee—and knowing that I have no chance without my legs, I use my back leg to launch myself into a lunge and throw a shot upward at an angle, and clip his mask. I was ecstatic at this point, and I feel like I overcame a major mental hurdle there.
So Melchior and I are the only undefeated people left, so we have to fence. I made no mistakes, but he executed a perfect void on my shot to his face and tagged me in the chest—he was on fire that day, and went on to win the whole tournament. I lost in the next round to Sasha Gray after making a really dumb mistake and playing into her very repetitive offense—however, the next day she was made a White Scarf of Ansteorra, so I can't complain too much about losing to her.
Later, I fought 24 passes with Raphael d'Angelo, who is an A rated epeeist and is ranked 52nd in the world for competitive fencing. I double killed with him 3 times and killed him outright 4 or 5 times. The rest of the time, he whomped me pretty handily. His goal for Pennsic was to get in 1000 fights, and when I spoke to him Thursday before I left, he was at 1150 fights… but also had 960 ***WINS***. The guy was winning 9 out of every 10 fights and then some! I felt a lot better about only getting a handful of clean wins after I heard that.
Tuesday was the Atlantian Five Man Melee tournament, which had a total of 35 teams enter. My team went 3-2, which was about as well as I'd expect. The most worthwhile part of this tournament to me was that I finally managed to intimidate someone, even if it was someone I know well and practice with regularly. Before each bout, each team calibrated, but in this match it was all people who fight each other all the time so we were pretty lax about it. I walked up to Adam Starling, popped him once on the head, and asked "Was that good?" He replied, "Yes, I'd take that." I then grinned and said "Good. We're done calibrating now because that's where I'm going to hit you." He later remarked that he found it very impressively unnerving, even though he knows me and I teach him all kinds of stuff.
Wednesday had the East Kingdom tournament, which I did not participate in because I wanted to save myself for the war points and I'd already done really well in a higher caliber tournament. I was glad I sat this one out, for though Kenji made the semis and Tora won out, there were a lot of embarrassingly stupid antics going on that made me glad I wasn't a part of it. A couple examples were Pasquale using flesh colored hose and a fig leaf under a kilt that tore away to be a non-rigid parrying device, and Nataliia and some other too-small-to-be-called-petite woman pretending to get "frisky" with each other during their bout. It was all pretty fucking stupid, and I'm glad that real fighters made it to the top. Some people are an embarrassment to everyone who wants to show some dignity.
Wednesday was also the Broken Field Battle war point, and I had assembled a team to hit the enemy line hard, fast, and to hold a position until reinforcements came in. We had more or less a suicide mission, but Kenji, Alexander, Freddy and I pulled it off and established the line right on top of their starting area.
One neat thing that happened in this melee was that I had a knight across from me, and Freddy shouted for me to leg him. The knight waved his white belt at me, trying to intimidate me. I shouted back "You mean the knight?" and Freddy said "Yeah, him!"
The knight then waved his foot forward at me in a taunt, and then brought it forward a second time in a show of confidence… and then sat down after I planted a shot right on the top of his foot. Then, I took both his arms because I'm a frickin' Free Scholar and he thought he was tough. Wheee!!!
Freddy told me later that we needed that guy out of it because he was one of the best spearmen in the SCA, and was pretty dangerous.
With this battle won, the East and Allies had 14 of 27 total points (and 16 possible at that point) and were victorious.
Thursday it was pouring rain so we packed it up and came home early.
All in all a good event. Alexander and Stephen were both awarded Sea Dragons, and Melchior was given a Shark's Tooth for kicking ass in the Ansteorran tournament. I managed to further cement myself into the upper tier of rapier fighters, though I still have a way to go.
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Signore Dante di Pietro
Premier, Order of the Sea Dragon
Free Scholar, l'Academie d'Espee
Rapier Champion, Barony of Caer Mear
Kingdom of Atlantia
