It's been about a year since I started to become heavily active in the SCA, beginning with the event known as Ymir, which had come around again. It also happened to fall on Valentine's Day, which worked out well because I'm dating a SCAdian. We drove down on Friday night, and arrived at the campground around 10. Some minor unpacking later, and it was straight to sleep in bunkbeds in a shared cabin, because we were not smart enough to sleep in a hotel this time. It was mighty cold, but I had a lovely hooded sweatshirt for extra warmth, plus a bunch of blankets.
We woke up mighty early the next day, mainly as a result of being cold as hell. The forecast for the weekend was 50 degrees and sunny, but the cold and the clouds showed up two days early. It was cold enough to see your breath, but it was still a lot warmer than the year before when it was about 15 degrees in the middle of the day, and so cold at night that people were shivering under their wool cloaks. I wore long underwear under my garb this time, and after a hot shower I was in pretty good shape all day.
The tournament didn't start until around noon, so we had a few hours to kill helping people set up their day shades and pavilions, and generally seeing who was there and getting caught up. Aedan's lady Ella felt the need to tell me that there is paint in their bathroom called "Dante", which is evidently some form of tan with yellow hints. I'm not sure how I feel about having something that reminds people of me in their bathroom, but what can you do? I shared with her my idea of doing a bathroom in a huge jungle theme, and having a CD player set to sporadically make sounds of the jungle like "sudden chimp attack". She liked the idea as much as I do, but there's someone else who is going to take some convincing on that one….
I also got Ciar her Valentine's Day present: metal studded leather. A brigandine gorget, to be exact, for fighting schlager or general throat protection. I always wear mine for safety reasons, and I feel a lot better now that she has one. She was, of course, giddy with excitement.
Ymir is located in Wake Forest, near Raleigh, so it is fairly centrally located in Atlantia and therefore gets a large turnout of rapier fighters—last year it was close to 60, and this year it had about 40 or so, with maybe 6 people authorizing that morning. So, pretty much everyone I knew was there with a few exceptions.
The format was called a Magic Tourney, and worked where each round was worth 10 points, and each round was the best of three fights. So, if you won twice in a row, you got all 10 points. A 2-1 round was 7 points to the victor, and 3 to the loser. A draw would be five points each. Each round people were paired against someone with identical points, so after 5 rounds the eight fighters with the highest scores would advance to a single elimination quarter-finals round.
The ground was a little muddy, but nothing too bad. I watched Kenji and Vyvyan warm up for a while—Kenji has a schlager-legal katana that he's using for his persona. It looks really neat, and he does kendo so he knows how to use it, but it seems pretty inefficient to me—it's not entirely suitable for thrusting, and slashing is slower and has less range. It's certainly unorthodox, but I don't think it's really the best choice outside of the cut-and-thrust style that is emerging as an optional form.
Alexander Blood (Alice when she has a skirt) and I warmed up for a while, and I got quite a few good hand picks using the fourth guard (palm up) because it allowed me some new angles of attack. I normally use the second and third guards (palm down, and palm perpendicular to the ground and facing inward to the body, respectively), but I've been experimenting with first (palm perpendicular to the ground and facing out from the body) and fourth guards, and I like them so far. They let me do new things and get new lines of attack. The ground wasn't too bad, but it was definitely something to be careful about. The field was divided into quadrants as well, which were maybe 20' x 20' with a charitable estimation.
Round 1: Dante v. I never met him before and can't remember his name, epee and dagger.
First Fight: I realized fairly quickly that I was several steps ahead of this guy in terms of skill level, which made sense because he told me that he's been fencing for a couple years but not very often. I took a hand, and then a leg, and then kept feinting at his remaining hand until he over committed a parry and I was able to take a clean shot on his head.
Second Fight: Fairly similar to the first one, except I took a hand, dropped into a low stance with a high guard and popped him right in the eye.
1-0 rounds, 10 points
Now there's about 20 minutes of down time, a pattern between all the rounds because the format was not good for so many people. Dividing us up into 4 random pods
Round 2: Dante v. Ihsan, single epee.
Oh boy, one of the people I see every other event. Ihsan is Connor's ex-girlfriend, so I see her all the time. How wonderful to travel so far and fight almost no one new.
First Fight: I get an early hand pick and follow it up with a half lunge, which she parries, allowing me to complete the rest of the extension with an insist to score a touch to her sternum.
Second Fight: I do another hand pick, and then take advantage of the fact that she's several inches taller than me to circle her to the high ground and hit her leg. From there, I try for a second hand pick until she exposes her head and I can get a clean shot:
2-0 rounds, 20 points
This is about when it started to rain and get very cold. Argh!
Round 3: Dante v. Connor Levinstoune, case schlager.
Oh boy, I get to fight Connor! I haven't done that in about 2 weeks.
First Fight: We both press at the same time; he catches me in the hip just inside the kil zone and I hit him in the throat as we close. Yay, double kills.
Second Fight: I try for the half lunge and insist, except my foot hits mud and keeps moving forward, so I slid right onto his point. Ugh.
2-1, 23 points
By now the rain was coming down fairly heavily and we were running WAY behind schedule, so we moved on directly to the 8 man single elimination part. Enough people had decisively high point totals to make it a clean determination, and I was one of them.
Quarter Finals: Dante v. Jean-Claude de Calais, schlager and dagger
My lady Ciar was no where to be found. I sent Adam off to find her (his knee is bothering him, so he can't fight right now), and thankfully (kinda) there was a huge delay before starting the fight so he was able to find her—she'd gone back to the cabin to get warmer and drier clothes, and had been taken off a return course by socializing and hot cocoa. She made it back in time with great hustle once she found out what was happening, so I was much happier.
Jean Claude and I fight ALL THE TIME. He's a Free Scholar in a neighboring barony, so this was again nothing new. We trade back and forth for a bit with almost no footwork at all, and then I score a hit to his neck for the win.
Semifinals: Dante v. Sir Vlad, case schlager.
Sir Vlad is a knight, and one of the best polearm fighters there is. He's a few inches over 6 feet tall, and his heavy weapons of choice involve angles and range. He's also left handed, which is tough to judge range against. The ground was wet and the space was so small I had nowhere to run… two double kills and a hold later, he ended up just barely tapping my mask, but enough to be a kill. With a little room to move and surer footing, who knows?
As I reported the results, of the women at the Minister of the List table asked me "Are you the Dante from the north?" I said yes. She became really excited and said "I'm from Hawkwood! I know the Other Dante!" I had a good laugh over this.
There are three Dantes in Atlantia. One is a newbie in my area that I never see anyway. The "Other Dante" lives in South Carolina near Georgia, and several months ago we had a verbal spat about my insistence that he be referred to as "The Other Dante" or "False Dante". We had a duel scheduled for Ymir because of this (I offered him the choice of schlager to disinclination, hand shots only counting, or case of baguettes. He chose baguettes, but backed out because he had to close on a house this past weekend), and it seems that regardless of that outcome, I've won.
Connor ended up beating Vlad in the finals, so my only losses were to first and second place in 40 fighters, so I was happy with my performance—my only regret was the conditions and space of the field, because it made everyone fight ugly and with a limited repertoire.
By this point, it was cold, wet, and nasty, so Ciar and I decided to cut our losses, get into warm clothes, and head back to Richmond. She told me that evidently Ella (with the Dante paint, same one) has been gossiping about us to mutual friends… about how happy we are together and so forth. Everyone say "Awwwwww."
Upon our return, I checked my email and learned that my friends Cam and Aleshondra now have an 8.5 pound baby boy named Alexander Cameron Meaker. Everyone say "Awwwwww."
Finally, a Valentine's Day that didn't completely suck.
