Wow, judging from the amount of mail I’ve gotten over the last few days, I figure a lot of people are interested in hearing how Clinton was. Well, 2 or 3 anyway. I hope that doesn’t represent my entire readership for this humble little journal 🙂
Although Iambe has already posted her thoughts on the trip, and a decent view of what happened, it wouldn’t be right not to throw my own thoughts in. The trip up wasn’t that long, only about 4 hours. We drove up with fozbaca in his car full of stuff, and I got a lot of reading done (finished Xenocide on the way back actually, now I’m on to Linus’ autobiography “Just for Fun”). The weather sucked leaving chilliwack, and I was not in the best of moods, forseeing 3 days of rain and misery (camping in the rain sucks in case you were wondering…. I don’t enjoy it nearly as much as camping in the sun). Coming through the Fraser Canyon things improved considerably, which made me feel a lot better. By the time we arrived it was full out sun, which was very nice 🙂
There were a lot of people there. I never realized the SCA attracted so many people to one place! The parking lot on the side of the huge field that was being used as a campground/battleground was full of cars, and the rest of the area was full of tents. We were given only the instructions on finding our party (Cyranth and CyranthSqueeze) was “House of Juxt” (except we had no clue how to find it). To imagine how we felt, go to a large mall and go in and start looking for Bob. Just Bob, nothing else. After asking a bunch of people we thought to check the message board at the front and found a note with a map (whoho!) on how to get there. After another 20 minutes of finding the area, and then finding the people in the area that actually knew what we were looking for, we found our camp.
Tucked in near the creek showers and washrooms, it was a nice pavillion type structure from Walmart ($500 I’m told) that belonged to the Gypsie party we were camping with. It was very nice, and there was enough room around for our tents, which Scott/Roger/Cyranth had planted the day before when he came up.
My basic impressions of my first Clinton war were “wow”. The garb ranged from ok rags (what myself and Engel and Foz were wearing (Iambe says we look good but I still say that’s just a way of getting us to look like peasants who have lost their homes to bombing and are wearing poofy pants)) to simply amazing gear. Full armour, chainmale (chainmail?) and musketteer/rapier type garb was common and simply amazing. I’ll see if I can find some pics somewhere online and post, because some of these guys (and gals, but I’ll get to them in a moment) looked amazing.
The women’s garb on the other hand (aside from our own ladies, who looked awsome) was also amazing. Again, they ranged from ho-hum, to, well, wow. Lets just say that cleavage was in back in those days (apparently when a lady bows to you it’s an invitation to check the cleavage) and some went as bellydancers (again, wow). The lady dancing in the tavern in the gold chainmale (chainmail?) bikini top was quite impressive (I hope that the metal links weren’t cold!).
The camp was as I said before, basically a big field. It had all the amenities of home though, if your home was in the 600AD-1600AD period. Latrines were all around, as well as a Tavern where you could get your beer and conversation at night. Behind it were showers with real hot water and a bread making place called the somethingorotherthaticantremember Bun. There were firepits for the bardic circles and woods all around, as well as a couple of streams, one of which was the Clinton water supply.
Over the next two days I watched the war, rapier fighting, hung out in the evening, browsed the marketplace, and sat in on a bardic circle or two. The venders in the market area were pretty cool. You could get anything from food, tarot reading and a massage, mugs and clothing, weapons (both steel and the competition type that you can actually bash another person with without killing them) and armour etc. A armour helmet can set you back $250-$450. A knife or sword is between $5 for a tiny little knife to $450 for a huge and beautiful double handed sword with some awsome metalwork on the handle and hilt. I accomplished my goal of owning a sword on the last day by picking up a small sword (not a knife, a full length sword (for a short person anyway)) for a cheap $44. Nothing special looking, but a sword nonetheless. The “steel” “sharps” are used for decoration only, but certainly add the the effect when you are in medievil garb wandering around. Some of the venders were just re-sellers of stuff from medievil shops, but a lot sold their own warez and were in their SCA life, venders. Pretty cool. I’ll see if I can get a pic of me and the sword (which hacks up a dead airmatress just great by the way).
There were classes going on in the day on everything from intro to rapier fighting (fencing) to “the art of lechery” and “the art of bedwarming”. At one point wandering around I came across either a lesson or a demonstration or just plain fun at the tavern where they were doing knife fighting. 30ish people, 20ish knives. The knives were the shortswords used by rapier fighters (made of rattan, covered with soft stuff as not to hurt of course). Basically the knives went on the middle table, the people stood around the edges in their protective gear, and on a signal, well, last man standing. You are trained to realize the concequences of the location and harndness of a hit, so that if you got hit on the arm you put it behind your back as it’s out of commission, or ignore light hits… honor system and chivilry make you (hopefully) honestly take a “killing” blow appropriately. Lets just say that not all rapier fighters are all gentlemanly and chivilrous. People were falling over dead and being stepped on, and there were honest questions before of “can we throw people/hide behind the bar”. It was very cool to see the the chaos that ensued when the signal was given.
In the evenings sometimes we sat around the fire, and sometimes wandered. The Tavern of course was “the” place to be. It was very cool to see the assortment of people in their costumes sitting around and playing drinking games, chatting, or flirting with the bellydancers. The second night I sat around on a bardic circle where guys with decent voices were telling stories, singing songs, and in one case, singing medievil version of Arrogant Worms songs (“Me Like Hockey” was “Me Like Battle”).
Probably the neatest aspect for me was the ability to get away. No technology, no email, no computers. Hell, even I wasn’t there. In the SCA you assume the persona of a person who would have lived in that period. It’s done “as it should have been, not as it was” because in those days 99% of the people were poor farmers who were going to die of hunger or illness before they were 30. So you become someone else. You are no longer a pasty faced programmer but now you are a spanish swordfighter banished from his homeland and crossing the country with the gypsies (or whatever). Even with just a new name you can easily drop into a world where you introduce yourself as someone else and that is who you are taken for. And the same with other people. In the SCA “every woman is beautiful and every man is handsome”. It basically re-enforces good manners, which only helps with the illusion of this other life. It was great to drop out of my life into someone else’s and imagine that I was in fact wandering around a camp and saying “M’Lady, M’Lord” to the lords and ladies that crossed my path. In this modern day saying “hello” to a perfect stranger (or 10) on the street would be viewed as very strange, but in such an environment, it was completely commonplace, and not that hard to do. A shy person such as myself was completely left behind as I assumed my new name and persona.
A lot of the good time and interesting things I learnt there are due to our gracious hosts (many thanks to all of you whose names I don’t remember) and the “beginners introduction to the SCA” and “introduction to medievil chivilry in the SCA” booklets. These proclaimed things like “Chivilry is basically another way of drinking lots of someone else’s booze and having sex with strangers”. Sounds like my kind of party, not that I did much of that of course. It’ll be much more fun next year or next event when I have better clothes, training, and maybe will be able to participate in the war.
Speaking of the war, it was fucking awsome. Imagine 200-500 people per side, all in full armour, weilding swords and shields, with the light fighters behind them with bows, crossbows, and as hammer-throwers. They march togeather and amid shouts of “wheel right!” “wheel left!” they collide in a mass of dust and sweat and thrash at each other, the guys with pole lances trying to reach through the wall of shields protecting the knights. Wow. Part of what appealed me is I’ve never been involved in that sort of mass organized combat. Maybe something like football is like that, but I never played football. I also like the idea of the rapier fighting, with it’s gentlemanly attitude and skill with the sword required. However, after seeing the knights go at it, I’m not sure. I guess you can do both eh?
Anyway, to make a long story short…. “had fun, bought a sword”.