Crown Tournament

Yesterday was a fun SCA-filled experience. tpau and I spent the day mostly watching various fighters vie for heirship to the East Kingdom throne, accounts of which tpau and jducoeur have already written. I'm very glad on the whole that she and I were 'list runners' (those who run back and forth from the actual combat to the organizational centre to convey the results of each bought) for most of the tourney, since it gave me at least a great firsthand look at the process. Without a reason to be right on the edge of the proceedings, I probably would have seen it as far more abstract.

I have been meaning to try fighting again (jjaquinta is semi-permanently lending me his armor, which ought to help), and I thought this event would be a good way to see how really good fighters fought. Unfortunately, what art exists in combat tends towards subtlety, in that the truly impressive parts are those that an observer can't see. Some combinations of weapons are also more interesting and informative to watch than others, and about 90% of the fighters there were using plain sword-and-shield, which is all about moving quickly to take advantage of small openings. Still, it was interesting to observe the progression of various participants, and I held out hope that the final bought would be somewhat more interesting, particularly since it often mandates using a variety of different weapons.

It turns out that the final and semi-final rounds were different in only one major respect: they took roughly five times as long per bought. The surprise format for this tourney's final round: best of three, with combatants choosing weapons. They both chose sword-and-shield, and it was exactly like previous rounds, except moving faster. In the end Darius (who was just king) won, plowing through all his opponents. (Interestingly, despite widespread comments that Darius was fighting unusually well that day, probably because of his apparent strong desire to be king again, his comments to me afterward while changing were rather the opposite. He said his main motivation for trying to win was that his wife wanted to be a duchess, and that he didn't think that highly of his performance compared to his previous victory. He also noted that it had not been especially fun since he'd been fighting with several injuries including a torn rotary cuff.)

So, during 1-2 hours of the final few rounds, I wandered off to see the Arts & Sciences exhibit, in which a few friends of mine had entered, and the entries for which were amazingly thorough. The two most impressive to me were the woman who made a period violin, and another who had made a place setting, including constructing the table, weaving the tablecloth, and forging the cutlery, as well as baking foodstuffs for it.

I wound up spending most of that time, as well as the time waiting for court, chatting with various friends similarly non-busy. Since I tend to view socializing as inherently fascinating, I had a good amount of fun throughout the day, although I would have to say that I was not very impressed with the entertainment value of the event itself.

Right before going off to court tpau got protegéd to msmemory in a nice "small" ceremony that had essentially all the Carolingians at the event present, including the Baron and the Seneschale. I think it was technically larger than a number of Baronial courts. They were both very nervous, but it was a nice ceremony (which I took a number of poorly-timed pictures of), and I think the formal relationship (which came almost entirely out of the blue three weeks ago) will be a very good thing.

At long last, court happened, several very worthy people got neat awards including Yeliz who got her well-deserved Silver Crescent, and it ended only slightly late. Being by then fairly ravenous, tpau and I went out for a delightful dinner featuring high quality sushi with jducoeur and msmemory.

Oh, and it rained abysmally most of the day, but I was generally too busy to notice.

(no subject)

spent most of the day hanging out with tpau at her office since she had to come into work. it doesn't matter much to me since i can do most of the things i need to anytime i'm plugged into some cat5 (can i get it intravenously yet?). and actually much of my time was spent reading the silmarillion anyway. it's kind of sad that i would have been reading Ullyses except that i need at least two books of added reference material, so it doesn't really travel well. as i slowly work my way through joyce's corpus, i am becoming more and more aware of just how dense and complex everything he wrote is. in small doses it's rather breathtaking, actually.

anyway, we spent the evening pleasantly visiting my parents. it probably explains a lot about me that my parents are prone to whipping out references (dictionaries, atlases, gray's anatomy) for even the most casual discussion. it certainly makes for an informative evening, which i'm always a big fan of.