By: Eric "Johan" Stegehuis
Even the weather wanted this event to happen; it had snowed just enough to give the ground a nice coating, but not enough to create major physical problems. We kept our cloaks on and made good use of the provided breaks between tournaments to rehydrate and warm up. I will try my best to recall the order of the tournaments, but please forgive me for any inaccuracies. The tournaments(all limited) were: sword and dagger, mixed florentine, 5 points to victory, broken sword, sword and board, 3 lives.
For the ones that aren’t self-explanatory, 5 points to victory gave each competitor 5 points of armor to distribute however they like; I made the mistake of forgetting head armor, which Aelias and his 6’6 quickly pointed out to me. Broken sword, which I heard was new, had each competitor starting with a 6’6 and downgrading their weapons based on who won. If you won with a 6’6, then you got a 5’, and if you won with a 5’, then you moved to single short, and if you won with a single short, then you won the fight.
I had an epic battle against Sir Temorse where he got out to an early lead, managed to run me down with a 5’, and then nearly managed to run down my 6’6 with a single short before I got a shot back at him. I then managed to win with my 5’, which brought it down to an even single short mirror. That fight ended quickly when my sword met his head as he closed. Great fight Temorse! I will definitely play those fights again in my head.
By the end of the day, light was fading (not dying, that’s in a few months) and the top 8 was being announced. Funnily enough Jasper and I tied at 6th or 7th place (don’t make a joke) and I proposed a limited 10 match as tiebreak, which Daekara quickly vetoed in the interest of time and his own marshalling energy. We decided on a simple best 2 of three and Jasper made quick work of me. Finally, we had a top 8 and lighting set up for the final fights of the night. These were fully armored and as epic as battles come with Shandar coming out on top.
I had a great time fighting, spectating, and gambling the few hands of blackjack I got to play at the end. Other adventurers seemed to enjoy the casino which sounds to me like a resounding success for the new Moonlight (I think?) Casino. This was a blast and I hope the blood god ended the day as satisfied as we did.
