Greetings unto those to whom these words may come, from Corwyn Ravenwing.
For those of you who don't know me, I have somewhat of a reputation as a metalworker,
a songwriter, and a cook, and to a certain extent as an archer. Not as a figher.
And that is fine; but I recently overheard someone saying "... that's about as likely
as Corwyn ever putting on armour ..." and I felt the need to enlighten the gentle in
question that I had, in fact, put on armour and engaged in the armoured combat for which
the SCA is famous.
Once.
Allow me to bring you back to the very first event I ever attended, the winter after Pennsic 24.
I saw a group of people in armour beating each other with sticks, and I thought, "Wow! That's
what I want to do with my life! Where do I sign up?"
I'm just kidding, you know me better than that. What I really thought was, "Doesn't that hurt?"
As will often happen in gatherings of that nature, someone (I never learned who, his face was behind a
whole lot of steel bars and I hadn't yet learned the value of heraldry) asked me if I wanted to try?
I told him that I'd love to, except that I didn't have any armour or weapons or anything. "That's
not a problem!" said the fellow. "Mykos, lend this young lad your armour!" This last was to someone
standing aside the fighting field, who dutifully ran off to the cabins to fetch me the armour in question.
Having been properly fitted out in my borrowed armour, I returned to the field. I am assured that I
looked every inch the Avenging Knight in Armour Returning Victorious After Battle. What I felt was
more the Puppeteer Working Oscar the Grouch from Inside His Trash Can. It was heavy, it was dark, I couldn't
hear anything, but I was game to try.
The fellow running things, who in retrospect must have been the Marshal in Charge, paired me up with
"John", telling him to show me how everything worked. "John" turns out to have been "Sir Jon Blakstan"
who I have since met in better circumstances, but at the time I didn't know that random new fighters
didn't face "Sir Anybody" in combat with any chance of winning.
He tells me to raise my shield until he can't hit me. Then he tells me to lower my shield until I can see him.
Then he hits me on the back of the head. When my ears stop ringing he tells me to do both of those at the
same time, but as my eyes aren't built on twelve-inch stalks on top of my head, I find that a tall order.
A few more times we go around this. Raise shield, lower shield, get hit on back of head. He lets me try to
hit him a few times -- I say "try" because what I end up hitting was his sword, which is somehow in the way of mine
*every* *single* *time* -- and then he says "Gosh, this is only quarter-speed, I'm keeping it easy for you because
you're new. What would you do if we were being serious?"
I assure him I have no idea how he could get any faster -- I already can't duck faster than he can strike -- so he
offers to show me "half-speed". *Bang!* Not only can I not duck faster than he can hit me, now I can't even *notice
he's started to swing* before he can hit me.
That was suitably impressive, so he offers to show me ... and here's where being new to a culture can cause problems
in comprehension. Because I promise you I thought he said ... "the speed we use when we hit a lawyer".
It was amazing -- I didn't even see the sword move, but I know it must have because I heard a loud *clang* and the back
of my head hurt again -- but I had no idea why lawyers were so reviled in this group that there had to be a special
fighting style used only against them.
I decided that this sport wasn't for me after all. But I learned my first filk that day, as well, and found out about
the Beheaded Purple Dinosaur t-shirts available at Pennsic, and I haven't looked back yet. But it was years later that I
realized what he must have said that day.
He was offering to show me the speed he'd use if he were fighting in a Crown Tournament and the fate of the Kingdom, or
at least whether he were going to be its next King, were on the line. But I didn't know any of that yet.
He had called it ... "at Tourney speed".
I had heard ... "attourney speed".
- Corwyn
PS. Appropriately, I found out later that Mykos, who lent me the armour, was studying to be a lawyer.
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