[Northkeep] events 2 Dionadair
Hugh & Belinda Niewoehner
burgborrendohl at valornet.com
Thu Jan 27 13:51:36 PST 2011
Dionadair:
For a number of years there were a few tourneys in the north but not a
great number. I'd been thinking about how to sponsor one but really
didn't have anything specific in mind. Then, a bunch of us were
sitting around fighters practice cooling down one day and some of the
guys started griping that while FP gave us practice fighting it didn't
give us practice for the tourney mind set. Particularly true for new
fighters who may never have fought in a tourney before. Then it hit
me...a number of years previously, Alaric von Lieutpold had given me a
couple of steel billets which I had thought might make neat spear
points. Unfortunately, I really didn't have a way to change rectangular
pieces of steel into pointy objects but a couple of others there did.
So, once again, I set off to
co-opt someone to help me make trouble. I started discussing things
with Angus. Given my three steel blanks, could he make three different
spear points? He could keep one. I'd keep the other. And the third
would become the prize spear. If he'd make the points, I'd mount them
and do the legwork putting the tourney together. We started discussing
format and requirements. At that point in time, every tourney nearby
was a Swiss five so we decided to do a double elim. just to give the
players exposure to something different. We also agreed that too many
of the tourneys around here were sword and board grudge matches. Both
of us revel in multiple weapon styles so we wanted to see the
participants display a working knowledge of several weapons. Also,
since this was a practice tourney specifically arraigned to include new
fighters, it had to be run as part of fighters practice so that fighters
who had not authorized could participate.
Now for a name... There's too many "Defenders" and "Protectors", etc.
already. We wanted something that sounded unusual even if it meant the
same thing. I started going through xxxx to English dictionaries at
the Library looking up "spear", "Sword", "guard(ian)", etc. Dairmaid
proposed several in Gaelic including the one we decided upon...Dionadair
(jeenader). (One of these days I'm going to find a way to use the old
Calon warlord's title even though the College of Heralds has put it on
the 'disapproved' list. The old Saxon word "Bretwalda" [Overlord] just
sounds too cool.)
Dionadair came to be seen as our local war leader.
Eventually it was decided the there should be a title for the winners
of the rapier and armored combats at Castellan (the Provost and Driton
respectively
Oh yeah...People need to remember, the Driton and Provost aren't the
Barony's champions, the Castellan is. Heretical ain't I?
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