The survivors of Imperial Crown War Southwest gathered on a cool Saturday where the mist greyed sky was a pleasant relief from the blistering heat of summer.
As is our habit, we opened with our archery tournament. Our fresh and excited archery minister, Mew, provided our scenario and another exceptional target from Felix the Painter.
This fine day we challenged the cyclops of Odyssean fame where an arrow to the head earned two points, an arrow to the body 1 point, and arrows striking its limbs a negative point because "it just makes him angry."
During the tournament we took a moment to highlight our mounted division who are working diligently to perfect their seated archery.
At the conclusion of archery, we traversed the wilds of Yucaipa to our secondary location where, after a brief court, a collegium on medieval games was given.
Backgammon was addressed, being well documented in period with fairly similar rules. The variations of piece names and movement was addressed for chess along with a brief explanation of "four seasons chess" which involves four players and a great deal of chaos.
The construction of dice and how to avoid... or not avoid having dice weighted toward a specific number was addressed along with a description of several dice games. One of the youngsters proved quite adept in the gambling arts and rolled so well that she took away the Archduke's coin.
Alquerque/quirkat, a checkers precursor, was explained along with a game that uses the same board called "corner the rabbit" where we found that the rabbit seemed to generally have the advantage until Lunzie cornered the Archduke's rabbit. (In fact we seem to have learned that the Archduke is not particularly good at these medieval games).
With only two somewhat able bodied combatants we put a pin in combat and instead enjoyed a companionable lunch to complete our day.
The cyclops was alive and unblinded by the end of the event, though full of holes otherwise.