This Fall Coronation marked the second time I have seen the line of King Kurn III ascend to the throne. Sadly due to circumstance regarding her divine nature, Her Royal Highness will be elevated to the rank of Queen at a later date. Her Highness comes from the lands of Aegyptus, and it could be seen in every aspect of the event. From the wandering priest of Sekmet to the cotton-garbed waterbearers. Every detail was attended to for this glorious occasion. I spent most of the event either in armour or working in the camp kitchen, so I sadly missed some things, but let's talk about what I did see.
This event also marked the first time that I have ever volunteered to feed the house; it was very much a learning experience. I have cooked in camps before, but never for a large group of people. This made all the difference in the world. There were a few major issues with the planning that could have been taken care of if I had more experience, things I will fix if I ever get the chance to cook for everyone again. The main issue was the storage and temperature control of anything that needed to be preserved. The other one was having enough cooking surface to get the food cooked before the previous items got cold: I wanted everyone to have hot meals.
For the sake of my sanity, I only offered breakfast and dinner each day with lunch being catch as catch can. The meals were designed to be easy to cook, easy to eat, and light on the pocket. For Saturday breakfast, I made Arepas, a corn cake that is meant to be sliced open and filled with various ingredients. The ones I made are from Venezuela (Colombians also have a recipe, although it's somewhat different), and I was taught to make them by my mother in law. These were a great idea and went off really well. John called them"bread made outof grits." As it was followed by "this is awesome," I will take it as a compliment. I don't know that I would change anything on them, although now that everyone knows what they, I might tell them to bring any special toppings they might want to try, that way they are more customized.
Dinner was a little less adventurous: skyr-mashed potatoes and pork chops marinated in Mojo Criollo (a marinade made of sour orange, oregano, bay leaves, garlic, cumin and salt) and olive oil. My lesson on this meal was that not everyone eats carbs the way I do. I think I ended up with twice as much mashed potatoes as I needed, and they were the more difficult of the two parts of the meal to warm up and store. They also didn’t reheat as well as I would have hoped, so they ended up being drier than I would have liked, a complaint I had with a lot of the things I cooked this event. The taste on both the meat and the potatoes was good, and the camp seemed to have enjoyed it, so you'll forgive me if I mark this one as a quiet success.
Sunday opened up with what was everyone’s favourite meal of the weekend, waffles and bacon. It seems I am better at planning breakfasts than I am at other things, because both breakfasts went off really well. I would like to bring a little more waffle mix per person next time, as I feel I was just a little short. Everyone got one, but I am sure many would have liked seconds. Our fearless leader taught me a new and more efficient way to cook bacon, all at once, individual slices be damned! It worked out GREAT. I would've been sitting there the rest of the day trying to get through it all if it wasn’t for that tip. Next time, I think I'll bring more bacon: 3lbs were barely enough for 9 people.
Dinner was a slow painful experience to cook. I decided to make Arroz con Pollo (chicken and rice), thinking I could cook the chicken at home and then slow-cook the rest at camp. Slow cook is the operative term, until someone pointed out the flaw in my logic of cooking surfaces: I had been trying to boil water for 3 hours… Once I was on the right path it was slightly faster, another 2 hours to get it table-ready. Which meant I was able to go and enjoy court, something that I had missed the rest of the weekend. Again, I feel the taste was right but the whole meal suffered from how long it took to cook, and the fact that I didn't anticipate it. If I was to make it again, I wouldn’t change anything except add another cup of chicken broth to give it more liquid to absorb, and use the right heating element.
The final and biggest mistake I made throughout all of the meals: I forgot to plan for some kind of dessert. In the future, knowing that I can put together a decent meal plan on the cheap, I will endeavor to make dinner at least a three-course deal, so that it can compete somewhat with the experience of feast. Sunday night was particularly nice, because wandering bards even made their way to our camp and provided entertainment.
Cooking aside, the next big take on my time (and arguably the main reason I go to events): fighting! Coronation events in Trimaris are particularly important because the champions for the new Crowns are chosen. This is true for all disciplines from equestrian to rapier. On the Chivalric field this means choosing two different champions: the Champion of Trimaris and the Spear Champion. While the Spear Champion is a position of much honour and heavily competed for, the Champion of Trimaris is considered to be the hardest tourney in our Kingdom. Many say it's even more difficult than Crown Lyst. As I said in my Spring Coronation post, in addition to being a tournament to determine the Champion of Trimaris in the upcoming war, it also holds the tradition of honouring a fallen Trimarian:
“This Helmet of Champions was made and fought in by Sergeant 1st Class Paul Ray Smith. Brother to Duke Solomon Spite. Best friend of Earl Gregory Ahearne. Compatriot to many. Paul gave his life April 4th, 2003 saving the lives of over 100 of his troops in Baghdad in the War on terror, the truest embodiment of a Hero. On April 4th, 2005, Paul received the highest honor awarded in our nation, the Medal of Honor. Let this helmet inspire your tour as Champion of Trimaris. Let no dishonor ever befall it.”
Those words are engraved upon the helm that is given to the winner of the tournament. The winner acts as the guardian of the helm, and is the person in charge of running the next Champion’s tourney six months later.
This time the tournament was run in what I believe was called a Swiss format. Each fighter would fight 7 rounds, each a best two out of three. If you defeat your opponent without him beating you, it's worth 10 points. If you win two fights and lose one, you receive 7 points and your opponent receives 3 points. If somehow you managed to tie by means of a double kill, you each gain 5 points. This means that a perfect score would be worth 70 points. The pairings for each round are chosen from pools of people with similar scores, which means that the field quickly is divided into people of more or less equal skill levels. I fought 4 rounds before the heat conquered me. In my first round, I faced a squire of Duke Gunnar’s house, Klintr. The match went quickly: I was uncertain in my movements from too much time out of armour, and he was skilled enough to make sure I couldn’t get away with poor performance. I was defeated 2-0. The second round, I came against Lord Gunnolfr Jarnhauss. In this fight I was a little more on point, and was able to use my axes as the tools they were designed to be. I managed to strike one clean blow against my opponent, taking his arm. Unfortunately, in that same exchange, he took my head giving him the win, again 2-0. In the third round, I faced Feodor Heinemann. I had finally found my place and was able to get into A range more efficiently; this led to a double kill that we refought, because of some confusion and a 2-1 loss for myself. I felt that it was my best pairing of the tourney. My final fight was against a greatsword wielder named Alex. In this fight, I felt like I had control of the fight the whole time, and I was getting frustrated as I landed blow after blow cleanly on my opponent. When the match ended, also 2-1 in his favour, Alex pulled me aside and told me that my short axe was soft and that he couldn’t call my blows because of it. Suddenly the rest of the day started to make a little more sense. I knew I had landed blows that I thought were good earlier, but I let it be thinking that my opponents had gotten their shield in the way or I was out of range, the latter being something that happens to me often with the short axe, and the main reason I am desperate to get a pell to work on. It wasn’t until I fought someone with no shield that the problem became obvious. I was very grateful for the courtesy of letting me know what the problem was. I went and spoke with Jarl Ari, and HL Fenris later that night for ideas on how I could prevent this from happening the next day for the mother of all melees and the other tourneys. The long and short of it: remake the axe head. Which is now my current project, expect a post on that soon!
This issue with the axe head is one of the reasons it's so important to keep your kit maintained. Unlike our ancestors, we aren’t fighting for our lives, but our armour can save us from injury. Our weapons being properly maintained can be the difference between a good shot and one that is considered light. This isn’t the first time I have seen something like this: last time, I was on the receiving end. At St Valentine’s Massacre earlier this year, I came across Lord Joshua le Charmant on the field. Now Josh normally hits hard, but on this day his blow didn’t connect quite right, so I wasn’t able to call it. He asked me about it, and I told him that it was light. It was left at that. Later on once everyone had gone home he untaped that sword, and saw the state it was in, thus solving the mystery of why the hit was no good.
Sunday there were no tourneys for me to compete in, but the Crown had arranged for a massive melee battle that pitted the Knights of the Kingdom against everyone else. It was a timed scenario with four sections that needed to be captured. The first section was a field battle: once the field had been cleared, the attackers would move onto a redoubt with two doors, then a bridge, and finally a section of a castle wall with one entrance open from the start and one that would open part of the way into the attack. The attackers would have infinite resurrections, and the defenders would be able to resurrect and move back one station. Basically they could resurrect up until the last section. The defenders would split their army into quarters, one at each section. This also meant that as people resurrected at the next section, the defending army would get larger. Meaning that in the field battle, the defenders would only have a quarter of their forces, but when those forces were defeated, they would resurrect in the redoubt. This would give them half their army in the redoubt. The same would be done when they were defeated in the redoubt giving the bridge three quarters of the army, and then again leaving the whole defending force in the castle with no more resurrections. Each side would take a turn at being on the attack and see how quickly they could move through the sections.
Given the issues with my axe from the previous day, and the fact that two weapon isn’t particularly useful in this kind of melee, I borrowed a hewing spear from Jarl Ari. This was the first time I had fought with a glaive; all of my previous two-handed experience was either great sword or two handed axe. It was a learning curve. It took the entire field battle for me to figure out the most effective way to attack from behind my shield brothers. By the time I made it to the redoubt I had died 3 times, but I was starting to get the hang of things. I only died 3 more times in the time it took us to conquer the stations. I am not sure if I was effective in killing anyone as the Knights were very outnumbered, and anytime one died it was under a hail of blows from the unbelted warriors. That being said, I was able to use my spear to leverage people, hook shields, entangle spears and generally make a nuisance of myself. The biggest thing I learned while fighting with the hewing spear was that people hate spearmen. I have never been hit as hard as during this battle, I was finally bruised through my zoombang pads.
The final score for the two rounds was Knights 6:02 and Unbelted 8:03. We managed to get within 2 minutes of the Knights' time, which was a lot better than many expected us to do. That being said, we could have done better. Many of the unbelts hesitated when presented with the heroes of Trimaris. I recall one moment in the field battle when 5 unbelts faced off against Duke Gregory Ahearn. They all hesitated unsure of how to proceed on such a dangerous target. This hesitation gave His Grace all the time he needed: he charged forward swinging, and 3 of the unbelts were down before the rest managed to move. He was only taken down by a group of spears surrounding him. I am sure scenes like this played out around the field. Those 5 unbelts could likely have taken him with less casualties if they had charged, but they were worried about what would happen. This was their undoing. Hopefully, we will get more chances to do things that make us face opponents or numbers that would intimidate us to build the courage of the Trimarian army. It was one of our strengths at war, the enemy would hesitate and we would pounce. Now we need the new crop of warriors to be able to pounce when they don’t have the heroes behind them.
Overall, the event was amazing. It was a ton of fun, and beautifully planned. I honestly enjoyed the combat and aside from the blistering heat, I have no complaints. I would like to extend a very hearty thank you to Alejandro de León for allowing my Lady and me to borrow one of his tents, since we still haven’t managed to get a new one, and a thank you to House Stormborn for letting me feed them all weekend long. Grimault was terribly missed, but work called. A great time was had and I can’t wait until next time!
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