SCA -- Sapphire Joust

I played my Free Scholar's prize this past weekend at a local event called Sapphire Joust. It's one of the larger events in Atlantia, and one that typically attracts a large number of rapier fighters. I had been nervous all week, but going in I felt perfectly fine. Plus, I also had a brand new pair of huge ultramarine (the color pigment extracted from the mineral lapis lazuli) Venetian pants, which were incredibly comfortable and incredibly spiffy, thanks to the hard work of my lady.

Once we arrived on scene, we found the list field and unpacked. I ushered an authorization to loosen up, and quickly realized that I needed a serious carbohydrate boost as I felt sluggish and slow. A few bananas later, I was back in action and ready to go.

A prize is played as follows: the soon-to-be Free Scholar faces off against all incumbent Free Scholars present, one right after the other. Outcomes are irrelevant, but it has a nice sense of bonding to it as far as rituals go. Because I am smart, I used a part of the Free Scholar's oath about not killing true subjects of Atlantia to fight all my bouts to first blood, which made it take about half the time, if that. With about 15 people in line, it took long enough anyway. I had it videotaped, so expect to see an mpeg of that in the future. Yay!

I took the oath, with my three sponsors presiding (Roland, Aedan, and Connor), and my lady Simona tied the gold scarf she'd made for me around my left arm. So that was that, and suddenly I have to watch everything I say.

Two nifty things that happened as well: there is a prize box where people can give you stuff as gifts. Celric made me a weapons rack, which was super awesome of him to do, and a woman I've never met before gave me a clay vase and told me that she felt like she knew me from my posts on the Atlantian Rapier mailing list and that she was happy to see me honored. This was both cool and weird, because I still really don't feel like anything more than some guy, and certainly not someone who should have fans.

During the tournament, I quickly realized that I wish I'd been in a different pod. There were ten of us, and only three were scholars. We had Marcellus and Vyvyan representing the Provosts, and me, Freddy, Stephen, Christian, and Chris representing the Free Scholars. Some other pods had 1 Provost and zero Free Scholars. I hate those pods. Everyone in each pod would fight everyone else, and the top 2 records from each pod would advance to a single elimination bracket.

I don't remember the order or particulars of the fights at this point, except for a few. Freddy got me after a refight, and Marcellus pretty much took me (and everyone else) apart that day. I also lost to Christian by about 1 inch (my shot landed late), but I won the other bouts and finished out with a 6-3 record.

The relevant bit of coolness in that bit of information is that I beat Vyvyan. Vyvyan is one of the Super Scary Provosts, so killing him was worth the whole tournament for me. I actually legged him first, which made life a lot easier as well. That was pretty sweet, as it cemented me in the ranks of the better rapier fighters more than before.

The real stories come from the next day, which is when we did all the melee stuff. There were some pretty good highlights for this.

We had a two-bridge battle, during which I ran the enemy line… with toe shots. I legged three people in about 4 seconds, and it went downhill for them from there.

I also ran a line of 6 all for kills in another scenario, which was mighty neat. After that, we started doing some objectives melees, where in order to win you had to touch a box with your blade. One team attacks, and one team defends. When my team attacked, we sent me, Christian, and Kenji as the front of a blob against 1 point in their line—we all died, but broke through and won almost immediately. It was pretty much a train wreck, but it worked. Later, we each had a box and could win by tagging it, so we had to attack and defend at the same time.

Celric and I broke left with the intention that I would tie up their line and then he would run around and make it to the point. What happened instead was that they saw our plan, and ran after him, leaving me wide open to dash through the middle and tag the box—this happened twice in a row.

We next moved on to having to bring 3 of 5 tokens past a point, in much the same fashion. Evidently my 9 years of soccer have given me a good field sense, because I was able to find openings and run through holes about 15 feet wide three times to win for my team. There were two exceptional instances that are worth noting.

First, the other team decided to try the "blob" technique from before to try and force their way through—except that the blob can be stopped by 2-3 people if met early on. Celric and I merely sprinted past it to the open half of the field and each scored for our team, who then won moments later as a third person on our side had the same idea.

Second, Celric and Briana of Skye were dealing with two people to my far right, and I was in the back dealing with Gunny. I called for Briana to help me, and she moved over to engage Gunny. She brought the person she'd been fighting over too, who then stepped in Gunny's way as he retreated. He stumbled, she got pushed forward, I killed her, Briana took over with Gunny, and I ran to the victory point through a wide open field. It was PERFECT.

Alric accused me of turning myself invisible. It was pretty sweet.

There was also a moment where my team was trapped in a corner, and I ran from the far side of the field to bind the blades of the man on their end and pull the side off so they could all break free. It was pretty swank.

Sorry this is so short, but so much happened that it mostly blurs together at this point…. I'll have the videotape of my prize converted to mpeg soon though. Yay!

Oh, and funny sidebar: it turns out that Kenji and I lived in the same dorm at UR for two years but never met each other. We know a bunch of the same people: my friends had friends who were his friends, but we never quite overlapped. Small world.