Seamarch Anniversary 2014

Seven years ago I found the SCA; this was a huge revelation to me. I had never known such a place existed, or that I wasn't alone in my constant feeling of being stuck somewhere out of time.

My introduction to the SCA is probably a story with which many people are familiar: I attended a meeting. Coming to a public place and seeing this group of people in one corner of a Barnes and Noble cafe, and mustering the courage to walk up to them and say “ Hey, you guys wouldn't happen to be the group of people that get together on weekends and dress up funny, would you?”.

I was shocked at how quickly the group accepted me, and at how happy they were to have new people come in. The first person I met was Mistress Aibinn ingen Artain, the then-Seneschal of Southkeep. She and her husband, HL Donatello di Napole, were the first people I met. It wasn't long before we had taken up the whole cafe, and plans were being made for Southkeep to go up to the upcoming event, Seamarch Anniversary 2007. I didn't think that I would be able to make it; at the time I had no car, no garb, and very little money, but the members of the Shire made sure that I could go. Another newcomer, HL Petra di Africana, helped out by giving me a ride, and HL Herbert loaned me garb. This was my first event, and I met many of the people that would shape my early time in the SCA, including Duke Mittion and Mistress Finnguala. It was where I fell in love with all of the things that made up the Dream.

Since that long-ago day in borrowed garb and with newcomer's eyes, I  have always tried to make it to Seamarch Anniversary. It has special significance since it's my anniversary event. This year marks my fourth Seamarch Anniversary, as I missed three while I was inactive. Seamarch Anniversary 2012 was actually my Lady’s first event, and so the tradition continued.

This year marked the 35th Anniversary of Seamarch, a great occasion that they wanted to commemorate. From the moment we stepped on site, there was a cohesive theme: the full house. The site tokens were lovely playing cards, and each visitor got a random one. I received the Two of Spades and my Lady got the Queen of Diamonds.

The whole site smelled amazing as the grill had been going for some time, and already the food was starting to pile up. There were six tables piled high with all sorts of goodies for people to eat as the day progressed. On one of the tables, they also had an album with pictures from the last 35 years of Seamarch history. I loved seeing how friends have grown within the SCA and what came before. It was a relaxed schedule, which meant more for the enjoyment of old friends than for a strict day.

In a slight change from the way schedules usually work, the rapier tournament came first this day. The rules for the tournament were simple enough: the first person to wound all of their opponent's limbs won, but if you accidentally killed your opponent, you'd lose points.

The first two rounds passed rather well, if slowly, and the marshall and the populace decided to remove the special rules and allow the tourney to continue as normal. The final round of the tourney found Countess Sibilla Daine facing off against Lord Augustine van Kleve. It was a difficult match as Augustine uses a unique blade that makes his opponents wary from lay on, a long wickedly-curved sabre. Now, the blade itself is not as deadly as his proficiency with it, as not everyone can get the strange sword to perform so well. Her Excellency is known for being a great fighter at a long distance, which meant that both fighters had to be very careful with how they proceeded. After many lightning-quick encounters, with parries and attacks going in ways I couldn’t quite decipher, Augustine was left standing.

The heavy tournament was well attended with 7 fighters present: Duke Mittion, Sir Maximillion, Sir Gõcauo, Sergeant von Hessen, Lord Vikarr, Lord Cormac, and myself. The format was a round robin, meaning each fighter would go around the circle and face all the other fighters. This would make a total of 12 possible points. By chance, the circle ended up being nearly in order of precedence; the only person out of order was Sir Gõcauo, which meant that my first three opponents were Duke Mittion, Sir Maximillion, and Sergeant von Hessen. This made for very quick matches; I fared best against Sergeant von Hessen,  managing to defend myself sufficiently that he didn’t defeat me with just one shot. After these three fights came my turn in the middle; I started with Lord Vikarr and worked my way around. Lord Vikarr has grown as a fighter considerably since he first put on armour last year at TMT. We went through several exchanges before he was finally able to land a solid blow on me. Again, the more experienced fighters managed to nearly one-shot me, but this time I did manage to defend myself long enough against Sir Maximilion that I got an axe punch through his defence before he killed me. The only other fighter I managed to defeat was Lord Cormac, giving me a final score of two points. Duke Mition ended the day victorious with 10 out of 12 possible points. The whole tournament was a great show of chivalry, every single match in which an opponent lost a limb was followed by an act of chivalry, and at no point did anyone have any doubts about the calibration of the fighters.

Throughout all the fighting, even when I was having the most difficulty, Beatrice stood by the side of the field to offer inspiration and anything else I might need, which proved to be vital when, during my round in the middle, I got WD-40 in my eyes, a lesson not to clean your helm the night before a tourney. I finished out my round, but immediately had to get off the field remove my helmet. My Lady was right at my side and even offered me her dress to help clean my out my eyes; luckily someone was on hand with a spare scrap of fabric and her gown was saved from such a disservice.



When the fighting finished, we were called over to one side of the field to bear witness: Lord Vikarr Bjornsson had requested that Sir Gõcauo take him as a man-at-arms, and Sir Gõcauo had found him worthy of the title. Before all his friends in attendance, Vikarr swore to follow his Knight along his own path towards excellence and chivalry, to be a good student, and to always act in a manner that would reflect well on his teacher. Sir Gõcauo swore to teach, to guide him along the path to becoming a knight, and to help him become worthy of such an accolade. It was a great moment in the day to see a friend recognized in such a way, to see him take such a concrete step along his own path.

After the swearing of oaths was done, I made it a point to ask Sir Gõcauo about my fighting for the day, as he is one of the knights that I have fought the most and has seen me grow thus far. I asked him what I was doing wrong that the experienced fighters all managed to kill me more or less with the same head shot. As we were talking, Duke Mittion overheard us, and also lent his experience to the conversation. The consensus was that I was blading my stance to far, which was making my blocking axe ineffective for the head wrap. They gave me some tips on stance that I will be trying to work out, the main one being to try more of a boxer’s stance. The disadvantage to this would be that I shall need to be more on my toes to block the body shots.

Almost as if it had been politely waiting for us to finish up, just as all the outside activities wrapped up, the skies opened up and drenched the site with a downpour. Luckily, there was more than enough space in the pavillion, and that's where the food was. The rest of my time was spent chatting with old friends and swiping food off any of the dozens of plates that had been provided. Too soon we had to leave, because it was a long ride home, but we brought with us wonderful memories of a lovely event.

I would like to extend a heartfelt thanks to the Shire of Seamarch for continuing to host this wonderful event that means so much to my Lady and me. It was absolutely lovely, and I can’t wait to do it again next year.

Picture by Lady Ennelyne

Fall Coronation 2014

      It has been a very rough summer for me personally, and a slow summer (as most are in Trimaris) SCA-wise. Fall is coming, and that means that things are looking up on all fronts, and so I can come back to posting. The goal is to post biweekly from here on out; my previous weekly schedule was a little too ambitious for what I could do with my other obligations. Hopefully this new schedule will be more manageable. Now let's talk about Fall Coronation!

        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!