Thursday night I ... huh. Don't remember very well. I believe I packed the car somewhat and relaxed with my family.
Friday morning I rose, bustled around, did some work remotely, and put things in the basement. The garage is now almost empty enough for a vehicle. (Almost.) Then I packed more things into the car and drove up to the Border Skirmish site.
There, I helped around the campsite. And Geoffrey and I set up the list field, which took a couple hours. (We used Ravenslake's list poles, the bases of which need to be filled with water, dirt, or rocks. So we found a pile of dirt, filled thirty or so of them, and moved them to their positions.) There were plenty of other chores to do as well, including setting up the Northshield pavilion (which is a beast ... though I don't know the actual dimensions. I see that at one point it was going to be 20' x 40', but I'm pretty sure it's bigger). Countess Guilia tells me that once upon a time two people put up the NS pavilion, but we couldn't figure out how to do it without at least five. And I think we had eight - four to raise and hold the center poles, four others to run around and put in the supporting poles. Anyway, it got done. I also set up one of the Northshield shade flies and one of ours for the list field.
The torchlight tournament began a little after 9, with two combatants. We wrapped it up by 10:30, and I went home. Laura was at Irish Fest, and I beat her home by about half an hour.
Saturday morning I overslept and sprinted to the site. Got there about ten minutes before I had to actually do anything, set up the paperwork, and hauled out my own stuff. We took care of our one authorization and waited for the fighters. While we were waiting I set up our second shade fly, which has sat in the garage, unused, for years. (It was in the first flood, and we were too scared to open it. It's fine, by the way.)
We had sixteen people in armor at the start of the fighting - three Midrealm, thirteen Northshield. We did a 'for the glory' open field battle, followed by a round of 'single combat' in which each Midrealmer lined up to challenge and fight one Northshielder. Then the Northshielders finished their line against whichever Midrealmer felt like fighting. And then we split the sides more evenly for more open field battles.
After open field we did bridge battles - a twenty foot bridge, with eight people per side, for 15 minutes (including resurrection). And followed that with a few rounds of 'regicide' - each team selected a fighter to be their regent, and we fought open field battles in which the objective was to kill the other team's regent and protect your own. During these, the Cheshire combat archers turned up. We had five or six rounds of a modified Gulf Wars ravine battle to give them some time in the sun as well, followed by some smaller four-person melees. Until everyone was done. By the end of the day, we had had twenty people in armor.
Magnus and I moved all the list pole buckets back to the dirt pile and emptied them, then collected the empties into a single location. I cleaned up the rest of the field and took down my shade flies, and helped take down the Northshield shade flies as well. And took a quick jaunt into town to get some food.
I came back during dinner, which was a feast of epic proportions. As it wound down, we took the NS pavilion down and put it away (so that we wouldn't have to put it away wet later). Then over to Alasdair's camp for a Boar's Head meeting, and finally home. Laura was out at Jenny and Karl's, and came home not long after I did.
Sunday was Faire. It was not our best day ever. Afterwards I went home and had dinner, and we crawled into bed early.
Tonight is D&D. Tomorrow night is Curia. And the rest of the week is unassigned. Todd wants some help with his web server again, so I'll see if we can fit that in. And otherwise, there's plenty to do. So.
And so, like that.
Posted by trent at August 18, 2008 10:59 AM