The Weekly Warfare   Musings martial from across the SCA

The bruises are pale yellow, I can almost walk without a limp, and the rust has been knocked off the blades, all of which means it’s time to write down the happenings of Pennsic before all proof of their existence vanishes or is repressed and they slip into the dark murk of history.

As was probably mentioned somewhere on here, I’m guessing, at least once, this was the year of 40-for-40, a goal to have 40 rapier fighters, 40 armored fighters, and 40 artisans turnout. My personal goal became simple: fight every warpoint battle (and also actually do A&S for the display).

GETTING THERE

Letia, She Who Must Be Obeyed, and I loaded into Letia’s mom’s van and drove up Friday night, getting to camp at some ridiculous early hour in the morning morning and crashing on the floor of Mistress Lucia’s tent. We had done this before, and it resulted in a good story and a mediocre song. So as we lay there, it turns out we were all thinking the same thing: “Some drunk person is going to start crying any second”. As a man who appreciates a good story, I was disappointed no bawling occurred, and was forced to go to sleep.

SATURDAY AND SUNDAY

Woke up bright and early at 9am, and was mulling whether or not I’d be able to test my hypothesis for the day. That morning promised the fighting of the Battle of La Rochelle. While this battle has, some years, been an exciting demonstration of the efficacy of discipline or innovative combined arms, usually it’s just an exhausting meat grinder where people get angry a lot. Dante holds that the best way to fight this battle is to Marshal it. I theorize that the best way to fight it is sitting behind the hay bales with a cooler of ice cold beer. But, we had neither ice, nor beer, nor a tent set up, so I ended up remedying those shortcomings instead of going to the battle field. Anybody who was there, feel free to chime in on how it went, what worked, what didn’t, what changed from previous years, etc. The same goes for the Battle of Tortuga.

Speaking of Sunday, I spent most of that day helping set up camp. Our awesome steward, Rowan, boosted the spiff level of camp by about a hundred, with more on the way, but all the spiff needed many hands to be set up. I didn’t feel much like going and fencing, still wasted from the drive and the day before, though there was a By the Book tournament that I’d mulled entering with intent. Next year, oh well.

HI DONOVAN

I think Sunday, or maybe Monday, was the first time I had a particular phenomenomenomen occur that I’ve been expecting for a little while: the “Hey, you’re that guy who writes that blog” conversation. So, “Well met, Donovan!” and I’ve not forgotten about you. Drop me an e-mail (otownes AT gmail) and I’ll send you a brain dump of drills.