[copied from the LJ, and augmented with additional material]
The Night Before
Friday night I got away from work at 3, hoping to hit the road and drive up to the Bro-and-Sis-in-Law’s house and get there by 8, enabling rest, food, and an easy half-hour drive to Holiday Faire.
Unfortunately, the deliverable I’d expected to get out the door by noon was not wrapped by 3pm. This was mostly due to the sponsor changing spec. At the last minute. Again. I went home at 4:30, but work was not done with me. It was not done until 9. I took a nap or two in there, but mostly ran my ass ragged. Driving to DC was right out.
Once I got to sleep, it didn’t last. I was restless and miserable, and at 2am I woke up with a bitch-tastic headache. Watched “Mars Attacks!”, and then realized the headache demanded a Rule 1 violation (Her Excellency has a rule, the First Rule, against any mention of oral effluvia, or any other effluvia, in her presence). Once that was done with, around 3am, the head was a little better and I was able to get a little sleep, until 6am when my alarm went off. Authorizations at HF started at 10, my shit had to get moving. I was short on Ibuprofen, Zyrtec, and caffeine, and headed for the one place that I could solve all those problems: The bigger, better Harris Teeter. The movement of the world around me on the way there, though, induced a bit of nausea. Rule 1 violations in the Harris Teeter parking lot? Classy. Seriously, cargo pants, sweater, Chucks, and still rockin’ the White Trash roots. It got better.
The headache went away somewhere around the bustling burb of Butner, NC. But, still, I take no small pride in noting that everything happened in HF happened after six hours of sleep in the past three days, involuntarily purging my dinner, and driving four hours in the morning. I got to site about 11 o’ clock, trolled in, and went looking for the fencing.
Authorizing C&T
I had a couple of goals for the day. The first: A week back I found out there’d be cut-and-thrust, and figured I’d try to authorize C&T, also, so Pretty Stick and I lined up to do our thing. I borrowed Baron-and-soon-to-be-Master Llwyd’s helm for it, which is HUGE. And I say this as a man who has to wear XXL hats. So, you know, at least I’m not the biggest melon in the fencing community, but I think the gravitational pull of my skull still means more head shots than should happen. Or maybe the gravitational pull from my ego.
Giacomo was my usher, and we laid into each other at full speed just like we’ve done when we practiced with eachother. A day later I review my just-shy-of-a-corpse and realize I didn’t have this many bruises after my heavy authorizations. The damnedest thing I’ve found with C&T is that they never hurt when you get hit: Jimmy does not hit hard, for all his reputation as a bruiser. But the next day there’s an ugly bruise saying “I hope you called me ‘good”.” Today’s bruise is right above my ankle, and purple. I can’t figure out how Giacomo managed that through my boots, but I know I clipped his ankle, too, so we may be equal on that count. All the other evil bruises from the day correspond surprisingly well to the number of times I double-killed with Ragnarr. I really have got to learn to stop doing that.
The First Tourney: Unbleached Tourney
A few months back, Roz and I started talking about setting goals, and “doing well” at Holiday Faire was one of them. So it was time to see if my hard work had paid off. Dante put together a really excellent plan for the day: Part one was an “Unbleached Tourney”, double-elim with a slight twist: The finals were the two fighters unbeaten in the winners’ bracket, the losers’ bracket champ was placed third. Part two was a White Scarf hunt, taking names of those you beat. Most names at the end of the day won.
There were twenty-three unbleached fencers, so the first round was “challenge-ins”. I got paired against a scholar, who only had single-sword. My plan had been to fight case all day. Roz has a policy that you should take your best form into a tournament. Objectively speaking, my sword-and-dagger is better than my case. But in the context of the rapier community at large, case is my better form. Most fighters don’t know how to fight case well, and don’t get practice against case fighters. Whereas lots of people know how to fight dagger. But as the scholar only had single sword, I thought it might be too bastardly to run her down with case, so I took single; and immediately switch in to “teaching mode”. I’ve spent a week getting my brain into “killing mode”, and the switch just about made me soil myself. I took a few steps back, a deep breath, dropped my tip down into my usual fighting stance, and got my brain back in to killing mode. I still played a bit too much, but came out on top.
The next two rounds were fighting case against a buckler, and then against sword-and-dagger. Both fights went smoothly and quickly, without much trouble. And this is actually a small point of disappointment with my performance. I’m pretty sure I could have one-shotted them. Instead I played a bit too much. It didn’t hurt me this time, but it could in Ymir, or Sapphire Joust, where wasting energy early means dying before the semis.
I then took over marshalling another fight in that same round, which “just happened” to be the fight that would decide my next opponent. It was Matthieu and Caitlyn, both excellent fighters, both fighters I feared having to face. Caitlyn won that fight. She and I had a long fight, as she does a great job of keeping range and closing lines of attack. Eventually we closed, I landed a shot to her torso, she landed a shot about four inches down from my hip. Just barely not a double kill.
From there I advanced to the finals. Ilaria and I had an EXCELLENT fight, nice and tight at long to medium range; and then, at His Majesty’s request, another one (which ended with us both on our knees sawing at each other). Afterward, Mattheu told me that Ilaria had bet him 5 bucks I’d charge. He could’ve been 5 bucks richer.
The prize is an illuminated tourney tree showing who all was in the tourney and the results. That SoB’s going up on the wall!
The Next Tourney: White Scarf Hunting
Then I went and joined in the White Scarf hunt. My strategy was to go for quantity, and to fight every single provost there.
I got to fight Alan, Celric, Ceridwen, Connor, Chris, Dante, Dom, Geoffrey, Giacomo, Illadore, Llwyd, Melchior, Ragnarr, Richard, Roland, and Stephen. All of them were excellent fights, and pushed me to keep my brain completely in the fight. I ended up fighting until 4:00, and was exhausted but so very happy.
I ended up fighting 16 of 22 provosts there, going 8 and 8 (though one of the 8 losses was after the hunt had ended. I turned around to start heading off and packup, and Ragnarr was standing there saying “Hey, Wistric, let’s fight!” See above about the double-killing). Most were best of 3, some were best of 5, Dante went single passes all around. So, yeah, more than 50 passes with provosts. Sweet bebe jebus!
Ended with a few passes with Mattheu (who thinks you’re a chump, by the way!), and then we got the results of the WS hunt. Nobody else had chalked up the 8, so I got that prize, too. It’s a book, the Art of Martial Prowess, on body mechanics. It comes with a quest to get the comments of all the provosts who beat me written in the book. I snickered when Dante mentioned that, and he said “Oh, yeah, you have a history with quests, don’t you?” Yeah… a little. On the other hand, eight provosts did beat me, and if they happened to make it through the day unbeaten, I had, you know, promised them two dozen chocolate chip cookies.
Luckily for me, Ilaria dropped Alan, and Jean-Maurice dropped Dante. But I still may have eight dozen or so to bake. Worth it.
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