by Christopher "Janus" Donnelly
Hello, and welcome to Home Questing, the Seventh task’s submissions and judging. For those who didn’t see it, we asked you to recreate your favorite tournament, with the most accurate recreation being the winner. Before we begin our reviews for the week, I have a small correction to add. DelHemar did have a submission to the Horror writing contest that wasn’t attributed to him, so he earned 5 points for that as well. Onto the submissions!
First, from DelHemar is his rendition of a Bardic tournament:
Next Cressida is recreating a Bardic Circle, with an improvised story:
Next from Laika en'Naur is his recreation of a Bridge Battle:
More images available at https://imgur.com/a/flS72kH. From his submission:
“The tournament is based on bridge battles. There are shieldmen in the front with graham cracker shields with toothpick pikemen behind them. On the back line we have casters with sunflower seed magic missiles and lightning bolts with the ends having archers. The field is made of 3 pieces of construction paper denoting the bridge, the surrounding land and the water on either side of the bridge.”
And finally is Janus’ Queen of Hearts/Hadrian’s Wall tournament.
He informed me that this was constructed using Jenga blocks, prizes from previous KOEF tournaments, some amiibo’s, incense for pikes and pom-poms.
This week, I needed somebody who understood tournaments on a level I didn’t, so I have brought Elouan here as a guest judge. Elouan, take it away.
Cressida: Bardic Tournament (5 points)
A different take on the bardic tournament, and an excellent one at that. Those stuffed animals definitely made for good Realmsie substitutes, being as helpful as the average audience is for one of these routines. I’ve also seen similar performances from Cressida at other bardics, and this was pretty spot on.
Laika: Bridge Battle (4 points)
I think this might be moving too fast to be a bridge battle - wait, I was just informed that I am looking at a still image. Yup, that’s about right. The props in the water are certainly accurate. However, I don’t remember a bridge battle ever involving cheese and crackers (trust me, I’d remember). (Quick aside: is bridge battle really your favorite tournament? Who hurt you?)
DelHemar: Bardic Tournament ( 3 points)
DelHemar captured the feel of a fireside bardic, complete with ambience. The songs he chose were thematically appropriate as well to how a lot of us are feeling at the moment!
Janus: Hadrian’s Wall (2 points)
You know, I for one would love to see a ducks vs. ...elves? Magic humanoids?...version of Hadrian’s wall, and this might be the closest I ever get to actually seeing that. There is one glaring problem I can’t ignore, however: there seems to be no stand in for someone complaining to Lord Aeston about Hadrian’s Wall.
Thanks Elouan. For my review:
In 3rd place (3 points) is DelHemar. This was really tough for me to put here, but the lack of using objects from around the house caused Cressida to barely end up in front of this entry. The songs were fantastic, and the multiple songs helped simulate a bardic tournament..
In 2nd place (4 points) is Cressida’s bardic tournament. I have seen her perform this type of Bardic before as it has been her specialty, and it made great use of objects (and others) from around the house to simulate the audience of a bardic.
And in first place (5 points) is Laika en'Naur: This both hit the spirit of what I was looking for in regards to objects around the house as well as an incredible amount of detail into the tournament itself. I have seen the mess a bridge battle creates and it definitely recreated that mess in addition to the people themselves.
I unfortunately had to disqualify Janus. It appears he finally broke into my place...and was not wearing a mask at the time.
So, that brings the scores for the week. After the participation point, both Cressida and Laika earn 10 points and DelHemar earns 6 points.
See you all next week for another new task and the results of Task 8!