And then we went off to Mordor
Over the 9 years we’ve been doing Phoenix Swords I have had sword break in my hand twice. I’ve also had my partner’s sword break in varying degrees of spectacularness (give me a break, you find a better word). One of the most spectacular was when my wife’s broke off and the blade went flipping out into the audience to hit the wall over the head of a 90 year old blind guy. (Who later died, but that’s another story.)
The most recent sword breakage was 2 years ago yesterday .
My wife wanted me to talk about the other one because it was just before I got an LJ and the actual event wasn’t recorded here.
Gladly, it wasn’t anywhere near as spectacular as the saber break.
We were doing a pirate festival in Rockport Maine . It was a great show. They had a pirate ship come into the harbor and shoot at the town. How often do you see that?
Our fire show was the last show of the day and they asked for it to only be 10 minutes long and our very best material.
So, we decided to go with the fire sword fight as it is usually big with the crowds.
The fight starts with me doing a right wrath then left under cut. (You can use the German words if you want, I’m not going to.) I swung the wrath, brought the flaming sword around for the upper cut, Tom brought his flaming sword down on mine as he should and I tried to do my sword lift over. But, there was no sword. I was only holding a hilt.
Tom and I looked down. The blade of my flaming sword was flaming on the (thankfully cement) stage. I was only holding a hilt.
“Well folks, this might not be as impressive as we hoped,” I said to the crowd.
Tom and I finished the fight with me using one of our normal long swords against his flaming sword.
Day two we did the same thing. It wasn’t the same.
The saddest part was these were brand new fire swords and this was their first show with us. But, the person who made them agreed to make a new one to replace it.
Then, I was mistaken for Aragorn when I went to mail the hilt back. I guess the post office assumes anyone getting a sword fixed is Aragorn. It’s probably not a problem they face often.