Scenes from real life
Like Grau over at Frizzen Sparks, I too am a member of a re-creationist group: The Society for Creative Anachronism. While he’s into the early American stuff, we go back to the middle ages for our fun. Here’s what happens when I get into armor…
So there I am at Briaroak Bash, one of the early years, and there’s a long battle coming up – the King’s men are supposed to hunt down a band of rogues in the forest. I’d love to play, but have yet to complete a suit of armor. I’m kvetching with Sir Paul of Sommerton when I notice the limp he’s nursing.
“Aye – I took a shot in the ankle yesterday, and the chiurgeon’s banned me from the field until it heals.” he says. We both look at each other for a moment, and realize that we’re damn near the same size. “Y’know,” he continues, “if we wrapped an Ace bandage around your ankle, it might scare folks off long enough for you to get a shot or two in…”
I grin back at him, and we scurry back to his camp to stuff me into his armor. I had to turn his white Knight’s belt inside-out since I’m a lowly commoner, but we skipped the bandage. I was young and cocky, figured I’d get at least one good swing in…
Yeah, right. Thankfully, it was a resurrection battle, so I still got some good play in. The part that sticks in my head the best is my death during the siege of Castle Dunlop.
Somewhere in the past, some soul saw fit to dump some 3000 old tires in the woods at a State park. Don’t know how he got away with it, but we couldn’t let them all go to waste. We stacked ’em up Lego style and built some rough castle walls to play around.
So here we are, the King’s men sieging this pile of discarded tires. I’m fighting sword-and-shield, so I have a couple of pikemen in front of me trying to bust through the defences so that I might jump into the fray and wreak havoc for the 0.2 seconds or so that I expect to live. Off to the right of us, a rogue javelineer is tossing some pretty accurate spears, so I’m keeping one eye on him and the other on the battle before me. He’s not pating me much attention, though, so I’m not worried.
The pikemen are stabbing furiously trying to bring down a defender or two, and it looks like we are getting close to a way in. I check Sinkyu the javeleineer – he’s still not looking. One of my pikemen manages to take down a defender – Sinkyu is still not looking. The pikeman jumps the three-tire-tall ‘wall’ and forces a man back, making room for me – Sinkyu is…
WHAP!
Sinkyu had apparently been waiting for me to move. As soon as I did, he slung one of those dastardly spears of his my way, and I just happened to turn and look just in time to catch one straight in the face. I swear the man never even looked in my direction…
Hollerings