LR - Spring Melees?

[Sluggy]

Conor na Mara wrote:

> Friday, for us, was fairly uneventful until we got on the road. First
> Llewelyn got a call from someone who was relaying the message that Sluggy
> and julie's vehicle had broke down in Huntsville.

It took us from about 12:30 till about 6:30 to get to Huntsville,
including a stop in Centerville to replace a suspect fuel filter. We
expected to have been on site by 5:00...

> Once we got there we picked sluggy up and julie stayed to take care of her car. 

I could not for love, money or threat of revenge convince her to
continue on with us. I wisely know when to stop under THAT
circumstance... See below for other circumstances...

While transferring my stuff to the trailer, Bjorn took a personal
interest in rebuilding my sword and did that on the road between
Huntsville and the site. My sword is now lighter and has both a
thrusting tip and a DynaGrip 9000 handle. That sounds more impressive
than it is, but it works quite well.

> The rest of the trip was fairly uneventful.

...spare the policeman in Onalaska, who could have made things very bad,
but instead gave us ribbing ammo to use on Fearghus. Out of a possible 6
violations, the cop only ticketed him on two and those were things that
could be cleared up via fax....

> We all were up by 8:00 and getting armour on. Melees didn't actually start
> til about an hour or two later. 

7:30 wakeup and 8:30 inspection. uh huh. Like THAT'S gonna happen...
still, I was up and about by 8:15 or so, freezing and seeking the sun
for warmth.

> There were about 40 fighters in all. The sides ended up to be the 
> Coastal region melee team against the 6 Arthurians,
> Talon melee team, and Sir Wilhelm.  

In fact, the marshals generally referred to the teams as Coastal and
Elfsea.

> The first scenario was the mock up ravine. Simply put, we were stuck
> pigs in that one. 

Colorful, but accurate.

> When the pulse charge was called for, it was like throwing mud onto a
> stone wall.  

It was anagram day and the command must have been "splue" instead of
"pulse". 

> We didn't last very long after that. The second battle in the
> ravine was only slightly better.

I attribute our poor showing in these scenarios as much to an iffy
warmup as to anything else. Our time waiting for the melees to commence
would have been better spent warming up with some pickup fights...

I did have one pretty good kill in the ravine. In a defensive pulse
charge in the ravine, I was legged but covered up pretty well. I peeked
out to see an attacking spearman working over me and I landed a quick
face shot with the tip of my sword. About that time, we'd lost the
scenario and the fighter, turning out to be Sir Alexis, helped me up and
told me that it was kinda light, but very clean to the face.

> The next scenario was a bridge battle. Once the coastal region was in
> position, they charged our ranks immediately. Sluggy, Myself, Bjorn, and
> Llew all made up the front line and took the brunt of the charge. 

We held them pretty well on that one. I don't remember exactly how I
died in that scenario, but after I fell and turtled up, a Coastal guy
tripped over me, wrenching my shield over flat and exposing my arm to
anybody who cared to stomp on it. He was moaning occasionally and it
turns out that he hit is head pretty hard when he fell. He complained
that he hadn't even died in the battle, which was over by then.

In the defending scenario, I was legged pretty early on, but I knelt off
the bridge, falling in the water. Crandall pointed this out to me,
though he had to bang my head with his staff to get my attention.

There was a woods battle scenario that ate us pretty badly. In the
attacking scenario, Bjorn and I split off to stir it up as a glaive and
shieldman. We did well for a bit, but we were flanked. In the confusion,
Bjorn and I got separated a little. Once I found him again, he said to
attack the spearmen. Unfortunately, he was looking a different group of
spearmen than I was.

In the castle scenarios, I was pretty much the heavy cavalry with Lew
and Armand as backup. We waited a long time to give the archers a chance
to wither their numbers then charged the door. The door, barred with a
1x4, offered a bit less resistance than I was charging for, so I had a
bit more momentum that I'd planned for on the other side of the door. I
hit the right side of the shield wall and got tangled in someone's
spear. While trying to both kill the spearman and free my shield from
the back of his spear point, I was killed by either of two other
fighters. I rolled out of the castle and while appraising the situation,
saw that Lew had made it up the stairs to the base of the flag before
being taken by an archer with a sword.

In the defense scenario, we made a thorough killing zone, flanking both
sides of the inside of the castle with Arthurians on the right and
Talons on the left, both with spearman, then Airaklee and a few other
such veg-a-matics to clean the dregs that managed to make it through
there. It was the only scenario we won and we suffered few if any losses
in that battle. Not only did we win, but we won by a large margin!

We had another scenario with the castle using the sallyport. Once again,
the 1x4 barring the door was inadequate to the task and not only did I
make it through the line and defend from a few fighters, we had time to
reform another shield wall before being overwhelmed.

Apparently during that charge, I had an armor failure that is not polite
to describe on a public mailing list, so I sat out but observed the
resurrection castle battles.

> That evening was fairly entertaining. Sluggy pulled the same trick that
> you did at Defender. 

I'd like to say that my trick was unique. I had one beer with dinner
then only two drinks the rest of the night. Ask thee not about the size
of them.

> The stew that Afan cooked was delicious. 

Indeed! And hot food was exactly what I needed after the chill of the
night set in! I am still curious why the ice cream following the stew
was so good if I wanted hot food, but whatever.....

> It was nice, but I certainly missed having you
> there. No songs or music surely makes for a quiet night.

A good fire wants a good song, no doubt! There were a few songs about,
but mostly songs I have not yet learned.

> I'm not sure what time it was when we got up but it was definately later
> than the day before. 

I was up about 8:30 or 9:00 and was actually not too badly off. Many
people seemed amazed that I had even lived. It helped that I had gone to
bed fairly early compared to the more sober folks. As the morning wore
on, however, it became more apparent what I'd done to myself. I am
thankful that rather than a massive hangover, I had a mild hangover
that, technically, is still with me today.

> The traditional stop at Golden Corral was made. 

They warned us as we went in that they were having troubles and would
have only the buffet. They had no rolls or bread, save cold cornbread. I
had, shall we say, gentle foods. I left wanting bread. It would be after
10:00 Sunday night before I would finally get the bread fix I'd wanted
all day. Thank the heavens for Waffle House...

In all, it was more than just an event, it was an adventure!

Sluggy!
============================================================================
Go to http://lists.ansteorra.org/lists.html to perform mailing list tasks.