What an amazing weekend
I spent the past weekend at a boffer event called The Blood Games. This game was a time for people from all over to come and fight with foam swords. I put together a group of people from my longsword class and from my D&D game, and made a team to go.
The first night, we arrived late enough that the sun set before we had our tent up completely, but The Kingdom of Baronia, whose campsite was next to ours, lent us a flashlight to set up with. I gave the flashlight back while Baronia was having the concept explained to them that they should not attack the hosts of the event. Apparently, one of them had done so, and had been killed outright for it, receiving a stern lecture on how this was not to happen again if they did not want EVERY other realm turned against them.
Most of Saturday was spent negotiating and wheeling and dealing with the other realms in order to create the alliances necessary to keep our small group alive when faced with so many larger groups. Alliances were struck with five other small groups, and the six of us marched together for The Grand Melee this morning.
The Grand Melee was the final event, and by far the most fun. The army of Cro and the Kingdom of Baronia allied against The Unbound (us), The Realms, The Four Seaons, Arden, Dupree, and Aerun. At first, the battle was sliding in our favor, because Cro and Baronia did not trust one another, and allowed a schism in their lines. As soon as they regrouped, however, they pushed us back and we had a real fight on our hands.
About twenty minutes into the fight, most of our healers were out of magic, and needed five minutes to recover, so I stood back and guarded them. Then our line broke, and I watched the man who was charging through look left, and look right. To his left was the gap that led to me and the healers. To his right was a man whose back was to him. I shouted to watch his back, but he was struck from behind, and our line crumpled under Cro's and Baronia's swords.
Suddenly, our alliance was falling back quickly, until only I and stormqueen were left alive, at which point I challenged the nearest person, a warrior of Cro to whom I had spent a long time last night talking, to a duel of honor. We began to fight, and then our duel was interrupted by three Baronians running at me with swords and spells flashing. They were quickly corrected by stormqueen's magic and by their Cro allies, and then the real fight began.
I would like to tell you that I was a thousand times better swordsman than he was, that I cut him down quickly and moved onto challenging the entire other army into single combats until I defeated them all single-handed. I would like to say it, but it would be a lie. He was better than I was. His sword was longer, he was faster, and he guarded his low-line better than I did my own. I fell... but I fell last. I was the last member of our sextuple alliance to remain standing, by a matter of about two or three minutes. He was better, but that was how long it took him to defeat me. He wasn't THAT much better.
But I got a total of less than ten hours' sleep the whole weekend, and the adrenaline isn't keeping me awake anymore. G'night!