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[origamiscienceguy]

"I am the knight of the wolf. I stand for loyalty and justice." You say to Sir Ferant. He seems happy, "Ah! Perfect. Fits you greatly." After the feast was over, you spend the week preparing for the tournament. People would line up to spar with you, and you leave then all in the dust. Your armor was finished by the blacksmith and you put it on for the first time. It fits very well, but SirFerant was right about it being less than a full set. Your upper arms and your upper legs are uncovered, but all of your vital organs were well protected. Epona's armor was also completed, it wasn't nearly as fancy or awe-inspiring as you remember Sir Henry's barding was, but it would get the job done. Two days before the tournament, you and a small group including your family, Sir Ferant, who could now ride a horse, a couple pack horses to carry supplies and equipment, and the deceased knight's squire, who had offered to be your squire after your knighthood. You accepted his request, and asked for his name, "My name is Tolly." He answered, but he hadn't spoken since, he was a young man who spoke very little. You and your group had passed through 3 baronies and an entire county without incidence, but on the second day, while traveling, your group was ambushed. There were archers hidden in a nearby forest, and some swordsmen came charging down the hill. You don't have any armor on, but you have your sword at your side.

[vkiNm]

Look very, Very casual.

Ride Epona forward from the group a little, in a very casual way as we reach into our small pouch-o-pebbles.

Take out one of those nice, smooth stone that you'd throw down the lake to make it skip while we stand up on Epona.. then start throwing rocks at the bushes of hidden archers. Breaking skulls, blinding eyes and collapsing throat.

Then draw our sword as the Swordsmen got close, landing on one of them with out feet that knocks them over. Stab our sword down to his throat casually like one would poke a lit fireplace or a cooking hare, or poking something mildly interesting with a stick, looking a little bored in the process. If we have time, raise our blade to a lazy fencing position and yawn a little at the rest of the swordsmen. Eyes unfocused and uncaring even after we've murdered so many so short. Then wonder aloud "I wonder what we should eat for tonight.." Then shout back to our wife asking what we should eat for tonight.

[origamiscienceguy]

One of the swordsman comes up and says, "You are outnumbered. Pay us 50 ducats per person and we will let you continue on your way." You stop the party and say calmly, "I think I heard something over there." You slowly walk Epona forward towards the ambushers, looking left and right in the distance. The swordsman repeats, "Are you blind? Hand over 50 ducats per person or be taken hostage. You take some pebbles out of your pocket and say, "there it is again! I heard it somewhere over there!" You casually throw 4 rocks at once right into the archers "hidden" behind the log. The pebbles hit them either in the eye, throat, or scull, but all 4 archers fall over dead. The swords men can't see the archers, but the leader has clearly had enough of your shenanigans. "Screw this, take them all hostage." He leads the charge against you you shout, "There it is again! You point your sword right through his throat. He tries to scream, but can't. He simply falls over. The others stop charging and look at you. You let out a yawn and say, "I'm hungty. Allys! What are we going to eat tonight?" The remaining swordsmen decide that their life is not worth the capture of a blind maniac, and they leave. All of your traveling group looks shocked for a moment, then bursts out in uncontrollable laughter. You continue on you journey with no more issues. Finally, after a day and a half of traveling, Estana is in sight.

And what a sight it is. The city itself was surrounded by a massive wall, and the center of the town was on a large hill with the whole city sloping up to meet it. A small wall was slightly beyond the first, then yet another massive wall surrounded the citadel. Someone would have to bring a very large party to take Dalisia's capitol by force. The farms stretched for miles around and the children stopped working or playing to watch you go past, little did they know that a mere week ago, you were a farmer just like them. The entrance to the city was well guarded. since several nations had been invited to this tournament, security was high. You run into many other knights inside the city, all heading toward's its center. They each bore a different symbol, and many of them didn't speak your language. When you got to the center, you were brought to the arena where you were registered and then you found a place at an inn. The inn was almost full, but one room was recently vacated a mere hour ago. The tavern was filled with boisterous knights and squires, all talking about their achievements. You desire to join in those conversations, but know that you must not for fear of endangering your family. The stables were recently cleaned and Epona was comfortable inside of it. Once all that was finished, you bought food for your family and you ate in peace. Every once in a while, someone would ask you who you were, you always answered, "I am the knight of the wolf from twostone barony." never giving you real name. Once the dinner was consumed, you and your family went to the inn. Your children shared one bed and you slept with your wife on the other.

Come morning, you went with Sir Ferant and Tolly to the arena and practiced. A knight with a coat of arms of a eagle came and asked you to spar. You obliged him. The two of you once again circled each other. You notice no faults in his position. You are both in your armor and wielding swords and shields.

[germanyfrance]

Tell Sir Ferant that you will lose on purpose, then do so. But only barely. Draw out the battle for a long while, then make a mistake and let him beat you. You don't want to draw attention to yourself before the actual tournament starts.

[vkiNm]

^ That.

Let's pretend to be just average. Not so bad that it's obvious we're pretending to be bad, but obviously not our full potential.

Make panting noises to pretend that we get tired as thing goes on too.

After the spar, give humble thanks to the Eagle Knight for a good spar and compliment on his swordsmanship skill.

A man don't pry so much when he's talking about how awesome he is, after all. We'll save our real skill for the real tournament.

[origamiscienceguy]

You prepare to spar with the eagle knight, this time, you want to lose so that when the real tournament comes, you will be underestimated. You strike first, and he easily blocks it. He stabs at your lightly-armored leg, and you sidestep it. You two repeat blow after blow, and you discover that he is actually very good. You think that you could beat him if you tried your hardest, but you aren't sure. You are slowly backed into a corner when he manages to trip you and you land on the ground, he lands on top of you and pretends to stab at your throat. "Good fight Sir! I hope to engage you once again in the actual tournament. What are you called?" You tell him "I am the knight of the wolf from twostone barony. And I must congratulate you on your expert swordsmanship. I have never seen your equal, and I have fought many knights in my time." He replies, "Well, thank you. I am Sir Kennard. In the last tournament 4 years ago, I was the champion of Dalisia, but I lost to the champion of Bescal. His name was Sir Hector I believe..." "Was it Sir Henry!" You interject, "Yes! That was it. A fine jouster and even better at swordsmanship than I was, but after 4 years, I think I could have a chance at beating him." "Is he here?" You ask, Sir Kennard answers, "Of course he is here, he was the champion last tournament and it would be bad taste to not defend his title." Sir Kennard leaves after saying that, leaving you with your thoughts. Sir Henry is here, at the tournament. He probably doesn't know who you really are... yet. But if you two were to run into each other, he would recognize you as the one that made whatever nefarious plans he and Lord Morgom had with Twostone barony fail. And that would definitely endanger your family. It could be that this tournament had nothing to do with the events in Twostone barony, but something tells you that something bad is going to happen during the tournament.

You spar with a few more knights, both of which are pretty bad and you beat without even trying. Then you leave back to the inn. You go to your room and wait for you wife and children return from their excursion in the city. After an hour, your wife comes back in, wearing a veil to hide her face, and the two kids came into the room. You tell her while the children were playing about what you learned. You ask her permission to go out and check something. She knows what you are talking about and agrees, "but make sure you aren't followed." She says as you turn to leave. You exit the inn and make your way towards the outside of town, where the streets were unkempt, and it smelled like manure. You wander around for a bit to lose anybody that might be following you, and you go to a normal-looking cellar entrance. You open its doors and walk inside, closing the doors behind you. You light a lamp and walk past rows of aging wine and ale, and come to the far wall. You find the loose stone from all those years ago, and you take out just enough of the wall to see inside. You hold the lamp up and peer in... sure enough, it was all there. The polished, hardened steel armor and barding of your ages past. The emblem of a fiery red dragon carrying a woman was prominent on all the pieces. Your curiosity satisfied, you place back the bricks when you hear voices whispering. _{"It's him. Tell the Lord."} Then you hear a crossbow being cocked. and a single pair of footsteps running away.

[germanyfrance]

Grab a bottle of wine and throw it at the crossbow guy, have the bottle intercept the crossbow bolt in midair, shattering the bottle, covering the dude with alcahol. And splintering him with a bunch of shattered glass pieces. The bolt, meanwhile just goes somewhere other than you. Then run out and find the guy running away. Shout that he is a thief so people don't wonder why you are chasing him. Maybe some will help you too. anyways, tackle him, inconspicuously knocking him out in the pocess, then drag him out of sight and back to the cellar. People in this part of town probably won't care about somebod dragging an uncousious guy around. Put him in the cellar, kill him, and the other guy, then fix the hole in the wall and leave. You don't want to endangerr your family yet with whatever secrets you have.

[vkiNm]

Grab a bottle of wine and throw it at the crossbow guy, have the bottle intercept the crossbow bolt in midair, shattering the bottle, covering the dude with alcahol. And splintering him with a bunch of shattered glass pieces. The bolt, meanwhile just goes somewhere other than you. Then run out and find the guy running away. Shout that he is a thief so people don't wonder why you are chasing him. Maybe some will help you too. anyways, tackle him, inconspicuously knocking him out in the pocess, then drag him out of sight and back to the cellar. People in this part of town probably won't care about somebod dragging an uncousious guy around. Put him in the cellar, kill him, and the other guy, then fix the hole in the wall and leave. You don't want to endangerr your family yet with whatever secrets you have.

+1 Good plan. Or we could use a readily-reachable pebble to intercept the bolt, of course.

*Edit

Actually, we should save the pebble to throw at the leg of the one we're chasing so we can catch them easier.

[origamiscienceguy]

You reach for a random bottle on the closest rack. You throw it right in the path of the aimed crossbow hoping to deflect it off course, the crossbowman pulls the trigger, and the bolt streaks through the air and shatters the bottle into a thousand small pieces. The bolt flies helplessly off in a random direction, shattering another bottle somewhere, but the shattered pieces of glass, pierced him in hundreds of pin-picked locations, and a moment later, the alcohol splashed him, sending stinging pain all throughout his body. He stared in shock for a moment, then let out a scream of intense pain. He collapsed on the floor writhing around. You run back to the cellar door and leap out of it. You see the man running in the distance. You immediately sprint after him, shouting, "THIEF! STOP HIM!" Most of the people can't comprehend what you said before the man had passed them, but eventually, the man ran into a bit of a crowd and got slowed down while you ran though the gap of people left in his wake. Finally, somebody helps you and stops him. You grab the man, huffing with exhaustion. You pick him up and carry him into an alley. In this part of the city, this was not considered strange. You knock him out, and drag him back to the cellar, where you put the writhing man out of his misery and kill the other man shortly after. You pile them in a corner of the cellar, refill the hole in the wall where your old armor was kept, and you leave the cellar and shut the door.

You make your way back to the inn and tell your wife that your old belongings were still where you left them. But there was no way that you could don that equipment while nobody knew who you really were yet. You get a good night's sleep and have your squire don your regular wolf armor in the morning for the first round of the tournament. You and your family meet Sir Ferant in the inn's tavern. The town was extremely busy this morning because of everybody trying to get into the arena to view the tournament. Your family and Sir Ferant went with the spectators, while you and Tolly went with the competitors. There were way more competitors than you thought. Each barony of Dalisia had sent a knight, while some sent multiple. Furthermore, champions came from all around the land as well. The other nations only sent their best knights, and they generally stayed together. There was a group from the nation of Bescal in the back corner. You don't see Sir Henry there, however, and Tolly says, "he is the champion and he will only compete against the winner of these games. For the first part of the tournament, Sir Henry would be the guest of Honor, sitting with King Lowis and Queen Allys." You nod, that makes sense, even if it doesn't make you feel comfortable. Once you are completely armored (other than your helmet) Tolly goes off to get Epona saddled and armored which leaves you free to socialize. Your first match is not for a while. You see Sir Kenneth just finishing getting his armor on, so you walk over to him. You arrive right when he is finished. He notices you and talks first. "Ah! Welcome. Glad you could make it. Do you reckon you got a chance at winning? I think I do. Sir Henry certainly didn't look all that good when I saw him. Seemed a but frustrated. But no matter. If you do your best, I am sure that you could possibly win. Your swordsmanship certainly would be hard to better..." Sir Kenneth's squire told him that he needed to get to the arena. "Oh! hopefully we'll compete later. I have the first round. See you later." You watch him leave, and decide to go with the other knights to watch the competition.

The first section of the tournament was jousting. Sir Kenneth was facing off with another Dalisian knight with the emblem of a fish. You hear the trumpet sound and the two of them hurtle towards each other. Right when they impact, you hear a familiar screech of metal and both knights go reeling in their saddles. Both managed to deflect the lance with their shields, so another pass was declared. This time, Si Kenneth both blocked the enemy's lance with his shield, and maneuvered his own lance to hit the other knight square on the left shoulder. The knight tumbled backwards, tottered at the edge of falling off, then finally tumbled off of his steed. Sir Kenneth had won. The next matches went in a similar fashion, some knights lost on the first round, while one match took 7 passes for one knight to finally become unseated. After dozens of matches, it was you turn. Tolly brought you Epona, helped you mount, and brought you into the arena. You look in the crowd for your family, but cannot find them in the sea of cheering people. You look at your competition. It is one of the knights from Bescal. Once the trumpet sounds, Epona immediately accelerates to a breakneck speed. You look at your competitor's lance and match it's movement with your shield, and think about where to strike with your own lance.

[vkiNm]

It's a kite shield, right? then somewhere at his lower torso where the shield curved away. So we should be bypassing the shield entirely and hitting him while we angled our shield so that his lance doesn't break against our shield but slides away, exposing even more of him for us to smash and de-horse the man in just one pass!

[origamiscienceguy]

You feign high, as if you were aiming for his helmet, but once his shield covered his eyes, you aim low at his exposed torso. You thrust your arm to give the maximum force. Meanwhile, you angle your shield up so that his lance might slide off, putting him even more off balance, but both lances break upon contact, so that didn't work. However, your strike, even though it was low, had enough force to send him straight off his horse while you absorbed all the force on your shield arm. You had won.  The crowd cheered, but you heard some boos as well. It seems the people of Bescal did not appreciate you eliminating one of their knights. You chance a glance at Sir Henry, and find him a bit disappointed, but not angry, as you expect he would be if he recognized you. It seems you are still anonymous. You go back to the waiting room. As the tournament was set up, all the winners of the jousting portion would advance to the next round, which was a series of 6 men dismounted free-for-all matches. The final two men would advance to the penultimate round, which were 4 men dismounted free-for-all matches with one man advancing, then the finals, with a series of mounted 2-man duels until only one man was left. The finalist would duel sir Henry for the title of champion (and a significant reward provided by the King and Queen.) About a dozen more jousting matches happened while you prepared for the dismounted 6 man match. Your match was first, and Tolly led you to your entrance of the arena. Again, you look for your family, but you can't see them in the crowd. You look at the competition and see one knight from Bescal, one from another foreign nation, 2 knights you don't know the name of from Dalisia, and then Sir Kenneth right opposite you. Each of you are armed with kite shields and sharp swords, but all of the competition is better armored than you. (Your upper legs and arms are covered only by hardened leather.)

[vkiNm]

That's not a problem.

Once it start, we'll go straight for the Knight of Bescal, throwing our whole weight in a jump to smash into him, using our heavy iron armor to it's advantage. Again, hooking our shield with his and open him up to attacks, smash him with our sword a few time then sparta-kick him into the arena's fence.

We're the wolf. Ferocity and quick fights will be our thing.

[origamiscienceguy]

You go immediately for the Bescali knight. Sir Kenneth goes for one of the Dalisian knights, and the other Delisian knight goes for the other foreigner. You run towards the knight, who tries to stab at your vulnerable upper leg. You parry the lunge with your sword, then jump and throw your entire weight on him, locking shields as you do. You both collapse, and his shield falls off, but he rolls on top of you before you can make the "killing" blow. He himself now tries to make the attack at your throat, but you get your leg under him and kick him backwards off of you. He sails in the air for a second, and hits the arena wall. You then strike twice with your sword, both of them he fails to parry, but both his armor absorbed as is was designed to do. You then use your own armor as an advantage, you pin his sword under one of your greaves, then stab at his throat, "killing" him. The crowd around your section started booing, and you notice that the majority of them were Bescali. One of them starts throwing tomatoes at you, which you block with your shield, then you run to fight another combatant. Sir Kenneth had won, and the foreigner. You three meet at the center of the arena and examine each other.

[vkiNm]

Give sir Kenneth a nod and gesture with our head at the Foreigner, then move over to flank the other side for Sir Kenneth. Making it so that the Foreigner can't face us both at the same time, slowly drive him back towards Sir Kenneth with our attacks so that we both may win the fight today using teamwork and friendship!

[germanyfrance]

No! That is not honorable at all. Teaming up is not what a true knight would do. Go against the stronger foe, Sir Kenneth, and only attack the foreigner if he attacks you.