The Weekly Warfare   Musings martial from across the SCA

Back like a 31 Year Old

A week before Ymir, Tassin was over and we were talking about voids in a Fabrisian style.  With other styles, the inquartata ends up with a fairly vertical body line.  But from, say, Fabris’s first or second guards that would require raising a great deal of the body’s mass up, which seems to waste time and energy.   So, how to void an attack on the inside line?  The conclusion I reached was that, while still keeping the spine pointed towards the enemy, the torso entire torso should be rotated to bring the left shoulder back (and here we ran into a problem of nomenclature: Are we talking about ‘back’ based on the perspective of the fighter’s head which is currently angled forward and about to start twisting around thereby skewing any sort of Cartesian coordinate system, or an outside observer to whom back is back, up is up, and right is right?  Answer: From the perspective of the fighter’s head.  The rotation of the body should bring the left shoulder “behind” the fighter’s head as his head continues to face the enemy).  This also has the benefit of extending the sword arm further and bringing it across to close the line of attack.  Great.

The thing is, a 31 year old who has not been doing Fabris and whose core muscles are sadly flabby, cannot do this action repeatedly while discussing it and, you know, be able to stand the next day.  I spent most of the week leading up to Ymir with a heating pad on my back, then helped it out by fencing on Thursday, running, and doing other things that are great for the back’s healing process.

Realizing that this was not best policy for an upcoming tournament, I consulted Lily, the better angel of the fencing community.  She sent me a big long list of things to do (this will be posted shortly).  So I did some of them, and… it actually worked.  My back felt fricking awesome come Saturday.

The Round Robin Pools

Come Saturday I continued to list to Our Better Angel and did a couple sets of sun salutations before the tourney started, and was all warmed up and ready to kick some ass.  Then my first round was a bye.

My second round was Jack Marvell, of Meridies, who is himself no slouch.  And pretty soon into that fight he took one of my hands (my left, I think).  So I lunged and we doubled.  Which was about the point my brain woke up and said “Oh, right, we’re trying to kill people here.”  And I vengefully dismantled him in the re-fight.  Nobody makes me bleed my own blood.

My next round was Alric, and my brain which had been “kill kill kill!” went “FRIEND! PLAY PLAY PLAY!”  Until it once again remembered what the job was, and I sent a center line shot into him and that was that.

There are a few rounds I don’t remember all that well.  Then, paying attention to the list as I was, I realized my next fight but one was going to be Dante and so I shut out everything except the murdering.  Before him, though, I had a fight with a young lady who had been authorized less than six months.  I one-shotted her.  I felt bad enough that I apologized after, but also explained that I was not able to play at that point.

Then there was the fight with Dante.  It was long and excellent.  At some point he legged me, then proceeded to annoy my right hand until my arm got.  You should ask him about that tactic he was using.  It was mean and evil, but I can understand he’s afraid of my sword.  It took him a while but eventually he closed and killed me.

He was my only loss in the pool.  He had two losses, so I was actually at the top of the pool, and he had to fight a tie break with Jack Marvell.  Then he and I were off to the quarter finals.

Quarters

I pulled Mattheu.  I’d been giving him crap since November for always being short on sleep when he came to events.  The night before Ymir he got a good eight hours.  So instead of his highly defensive, low energy style he brought energetic dominance of the fight.  It was pretty damn awesome.  But I won.

Semis

The semi-finals were against Celric.  His big weapon is his lunge, my big weapon is my lunge, and our lunges are about the same length, so it was a question of who could get the other one to open up.  He caught me flat footed and I was toast.  He went on to lose the finals against Aedan, but not before Dame Roz called the finals as “Aedan vs. Celric.”

Other Fighters Were There, Too

Letia, Ruairc, and Tassin were all working their Fabris to some degree in the tourneys.  Jaume was working his Agrippa, and Gawin his Capo Ferro.  It was pretty spiff.  I don’t know how successful any of them were, but I get the impression much frustration was felt.  Which is rather familiar

But enough about them…

In addition to excellent fighting, Their Excellencies, in their last court, called in Sweetums and me, and Rowan and Lukas, and awarded us all Baronial Awards of Excellence.  As we determined, while in front of the thrones, this pretty much was for being the Bad Idea Bears of Their Excellencies’ tenure.  To which Rowan said “Vivant Ursi IdeaeMali!”

And then in the evening court, I was called in and awarded the Golden Dolphin.  So now I can be in the biggest polling order in the kingdom and cherish, love, and enjoy the White Scarf list even more.  Also, recognition for service never makes a person feel bad.