Captain's log
5th day of the 9th month
So yesterday evening Cove were invited to attend a Guardsman Games Evening I was hosting in Stonekeep.
I wasn't quite expecting such a dramatically large turnout, not that I was complaining - it just made my planned games rather difficult to implement.
We began properly with my first team-based attempt at 'The Gauntlet'.
I say 'first' I also mean probably my 'last'.
Apparently the rules were too complex for the simplistic minds of the men and women attending and after allowing both teams to whitewash one another, I called it quits and moved on.
Now we would try a team-based version of
'Survivor' or
'The Streak'.
Team leaders would send in combatants to fight one another as soon as their own member fell. There should be no restbreaks, the key to defeating the tougher fighters in this environment was to never let up.
Unfortunately it seemed Hoagie Grayner was more than a match for most of the opposing team and it required the sacrifice of nearly half of the team to down him. By the time he was felled Salick's team had barely anyone left. Wilkes' team was victorious that time.
Next up we would change the rules a little, allowing both teams to send in up to three men at a time with various stipulations attached.
Mela Arkay and Grayner would lead the teams this time around, with Arkay's team emerging victorious in a hard-fought battle.
Still, I had planned to play
'Yewish Bulldog' and with so many competitors I felt it was the perfect opportunity.
Eventually Verity Sands won, rather surprisingly. Hardly the most athletic guardsman in the Militia now is she? Verity seems to have a habit of winning things though. I remember she managed that streak of 10 or 11 once upon a time.
Anyway - We would try
'Denial of Death'.
Sets of three would run with the rest of the assembled guardsmen and Covians chasing them like rabid dogs. Most of the men showed a bit of spirit and avoided doom for a brief while but inevitably they all fell. Eventually I got bored of watching the men chase Katrine Astendar around and shot her a few times. Which was vaguely satisfying based on the fact that she'd been whinging
(as Kat always does) all evening.
A '
Last Man Standing' would conclude the evening's events, by then most people had sodded off so the Last Man would in theory be over rather quickly. Wrong.
Tanya, Cordelia, Verity, Elizabeth and Lance fought valiantly against the Covian hordes for as long as possible but with Tanya bravely ducking out to save her own skin and all but Verity being felled it seemed to suggest Cove would emerge the victors. Lance wasn't quite aware of the fact that he works for Yew now and started attacking Verity, then attacked a Barmaid. So I fired a bolt at his head from point-blank range... well two of them. Hopefully said bolts will deter him from future violence towards civilians.
Despite Verity fighting three Covians she managed to weasel her way into the final two against none other than Sergeant Hoagie... and then won.
I think it was more down to a complete fluke than actual skill but I'd stopped caring. I called an end to proceedings only to be accosted by Trainee Cordelia Cade asking if she could give me her 'wool'. At first I thought she was being dirty but it soon dawned upon me that she actually wanted me to take her grubby sheep wool.
I'm pretty sure there was a memo about looking after any wool handed in but I couldn't remember for what purpose, so I dragged it off to the Workshop to try and fathom how to turn it into cloth and then bandages.
I hadn't done this since I was a Trainee and even then most of my bandage orders were completed by me running around for about half an hour and then returning with fifty from my own supply.
Tanya came by to mock my yarn spinning abilities, so I roped her into helping me and together we managed a substantial sum of bandages. Which wasn't quite what I'd envisaged doing in my spare time.
Bah!
- Dart