Organized by: Kyle Yazinka
By: Nataliya "Shader" Kostenko
My hands still kinda hurt writing this because this past weekend was Pressure Point! It was so much fun to trauma-bond with the squad, and I highly recommend future iterations of this event to anyone and everyone looking to really ignite their Realms spark and get hype about pushing themselves alongside the rest of the community.
Here’s a summary of what went down from my perspective. First, there was the captain’s competition. We got to eat some really dry “food”--except the blessed irish-jamaican-vanilla-AI-generated-or-whatever-the-fuck sea moss drink. That was 10/10, refreshing. We also jumped around in bags clearly made for children, solved metal puzzles, threw heavy stuff, and memorized colored pieces of paper. Luckily I excel at eating weird shit, naming primary colors, and jumping around as a toddler would, so I prevailed and got the honor of being captain alongside Jack and Hedda.
For my intrepid team–Forbidden Blueberry–I selected Temorse, Ryu, Kara, Companion, Ham, and Saegan Jr., the rock. This was Ham’s first time adventuring in the Realms: the absolute maniac. We were also assigned Mommy Saegen, who went above and beyond as a Team Mom in every capacity! Each of my team members proved invaluable to our squad and pushed themselves to their limits with all their contributions. For a highlight reel, we lugged heavy stuff around and identified ancient pictures of Realmsies past (I still can’t believe that was Trent), crawled through webs rapidly (some of us were dropped, but that’s okay, I forgive), made beautiful matching blueberry belt favors, lost spectacularly at tug of war (but defended Saegan Jr.!), scored some goals, cooked some riceballs, built a giant tower, made our way blindly through a maze, wept over cursed sudoku at 4AM, put on an avant-garde performance, scavenged, climbed, pushed up, sat up, squatted, and everything in between.
Ryu was our dominating assassin, the fastest fire-starter in the West, and our overall MVP; Kara was our excellent mage and healer, Saegan Jr.’s most caring babysitter, and the most spirited player with the most uplifting attitude; Temorse was the brains and wisdom of our operation who dominated the trivia portion so thoroughly that even the event photos look like he’s a professor delivering a lecture on Realms geography to the rest of our team; Companion was our master engineer and crafter, who’s so good she can build a perfect sword blindfolded and raise a paper tower (angled) to the heavens; and Ham, it turns out, is an absolute fitness beast who did basically half our team’s exercises by himself.
My personal favorite part was the fight-a-ton at the end! Nothing I love more than limited Realms fighting for hours and hours. Though it did eventually become unlimited, interspersed with sprints and squats, burdened with unnecessarily heavy weapons and shields, and narrated by bad-cop-drill-sergeant Killian and good-cop-Mommy Saegan, it remained fun the whole time! Everybody gave it their all and I don’t think the marshals were expecting all of us to fight on as long as we did. All three teams were locked all the way in.
I want to thank the Red SyRenZ and Swallow Twice for being such excellent competition. Now I’m going to lay around until I recover the ability to move again.
Hi. I'm Jack of Redwall and I am very very tired.
Pressure point 4, it's a thing I did and I'm going to tell you about it. Not all of it, God I don't have the energy for that.
The event starts.
I'm a pirate, there was an opportunity to be captain. You can see where this is going.
The worst part about being picked for a captain? I don't get the opportunity to have the other captains on my team. I knew this before, but seeing Shader and Hedda compete and lead their teams over the course of this monster event, there is nothing to describe the way I feel other than just immense respect for these two.
The best part about being captain? getting to work with other crazy talented individuals, rely on their strengths and expertise, and to push myself for their sake.
The exhaustion makes it hard to remember but I believe there were games and fighting. Putting balls in holes, manhandling teammates through a net, and a nice leisurely team stroll across a field. And back.
Then there was cooking. We stunned ourselves with how good it was. Or we were just starving.
There was some trivia , I really didn't understand most of it. My weakness. However I did pick a team that did. Everyone got a chance to shine, and everyone got a chance to sit in confusion and throw random guesses at the wall and hope something stuck. Fun was had, jokes were made, a good time all around.
And then the sun went down.
Looking at the stars at night is wonderful. However the literal hundreds of reps of exercise does dampen the magic of the moment. You ever do a burpee after midnight and get a little aftertaste of century egg, vegemite, and “cheese?" There is no equivalent. Singularly unique experience. But so is the energy and camaraderie of doing it together. This was nothing like a daytime sporting event. It was brutal, raw, and emotional. Being there to cheer on each other, even the other teams. This was something we all overcame together. We surpassed what we thought were our limits, for each other. No other event I have gone to can compare to that moment at 3 am. Period.
And then the sun came up
And the music started
Like a fight practice that never ended, with no rest. Just fighting. Again the teams fell away and we all were just surviving and overcoming. It was fun. It was practice.
Until the music stopped.
Pressure point is about endurance. And man was it a blast to do. But by the gods was it better to stop. And to watch everyone who continued after can only be described as inspirational. I saw the top of the mountain and thought “that's where I want to be someday".
Gonna be honest, I like winning. I like the points, the competition, the feeling of overcoming something. But by the end of the event, you felt it. Points be damned. We showed up and we beat this event. And I am so proud of Luke John, of Jericho, of Elizah, of Grazen, of FaiBy, of Theodore Red-eye Rockenstein the 5th.
For you guys, I'd do it all again.
Jack of Redwall
Captain of the Red SyRenZ
Pressure point did not disappoint. I called for arms in the field with me and many of you answered. I was able to toil and become captain. We took the extra food provided to fuel us, even though it was not delicious food. I took the century eggs, natto, and exoskeletons to fuel my fight. I can’t even begin to cover everything that happened. I will try and give you a perspective. Every person that was there gave their all. We fought challenges of body and mind. We had to physically lift each other through mazes, carry bags of sand while testing our knowledge of the realms, and do a fitness challenge of hundreds of workouts. As a captain I witnessed so much, I worked to take on whatever my team couldn’t and did my best to lead them whenever possible. I noticed the teams working to win for themselves but still cheer on others. A few highlights for you; when Shader and LukeJohn were locked in combat for 40 minutes straight with no break to a stalemate, when we all fought our fitness challenge and our team down a person was cheered on and supported by every team till we completed it, when we were locked in trivia and the Forbidden Blueberries Team were a wealth of knowledge, when Grarr fought till he was medically pulled and the Red SyRenZ had Elizah join our team so we were not two people short and could continue the fight.
The event came to a close where everyone fought till they physically couldn’t anymore, even the battles had to be made more difficult to put us all down, ending the long stalemate I mentioned. Being told our teams only had a two point difference between the placings shows how hard everyone fought. I am thankful to my whole team and our efforts. These memories will live on and I am glad to have been able to lead people as we made them.
-Whan-Hedda con Atlantis
Captain of team Swallow Twice or Pressure Point 4
