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You would like Pennsic. I’m sure that any of you could find something to enjoy about it. Pennsic, or The Pennsic War, or just “The War” as some of us call it, is not a war in the traditional sense of the word. Yes, large amounts of people have been known to be killed at Pennsic, but then they stand up, crack a joke at their opponents and get some Gatorade. Most of them go out the next day to get killed again. And the loser of the war gets Pittsburgh as part of it’s territories. Yes, the loser. If you’ve ever been to Pittsburgh, you’d understand. It is not in any way a normal war.

The Society for Creative Anachronism is officially called a Medieval Reenaction Organization, but it is better described as a bunch of loons dressed up in silly clothes. As part of our medieval reenactment, many of us recreate medieval-style battles in medieval-style armor. However, it did not take the creators of the SCA very long to figure out that using live steel in these battles was a really bad idea. Since then, we (what do I mean, “we”? My parents hadn’t even met yet!) have been using a clever substitute known as duct tape and rattan. The basic construction of these rattan swords involved a rattan core wrapped in open-cell foam secured by several layers of duct tape, shaped into a vaguely sword-like object, which you then use to beat on someone else with one of these swords. Not the most dignified manner of combat, but a great deal of fun. So much fun that large armies of these fighters, some of them knights or “White Belts” renown for skill and chivalry, and some just average psychos who can pick up a piece of rattan and feel ready to take on a bear. You laugh, but at one of these wars security actually found some nut bear hunting with a duct tape sword. While this is not the only thing to do in the SCA, it is a defining characteristic of it. On any given weekend, somewhere in the world, though probably in America, as it originated on the west coast, there is a war going on in some normally peaceful campground. One of these wars, since renamed the Great Northeastern War due to certain issues with land and children, was the S&M War. That’s right. The Stonemarch (New Hampshire) and Malagantia (Maine) war. Barony of the Bridge (Rhode Island, I think) and Dragonship Haven (Connecticut) would also have one of these wars, and that was the B&D War. Then, old foes joined forces against another pair of old foes, and that was the S&M and B&D War, and no one visited each other’s tents that war.

North of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, there is a campground called Cooper’s Lake. This campground has been home to the greatest party/freak show/war in America for many years. This, as I may have mentioned, is the Pennsic War, an ineffable event involving thousands of people sharing, and living a single dream for a blissful ten days a year. The chances are, if you can drape a tabard over it and call it medieval, Pennsic has it. It is wonderful. In fact, so many live purely to go to Pennsic that the rest of the year is often called “a fifty week town run for food and beer” Every night, in hundreds of camps across the campground, there are people drinking, partying, singing, and (okay, this mostly happens in the barn across from my camp) dancing. Oh, yeah, and doing other stuff not crucial to this story. Alot of it. Basically, if you can’t get laid at Pennsic, you can’t get laid. That’s not exactly on my top ten list of fun things to do at Pennsic, but it is definitely on the top five of what people like to do at Pennsic, so I figured I ought to mention it. I’m still not sure how people find time for sex at Pennsic, what with the various other things to do there. I spend the time that I am not working (as it is the ten days a year where I work full-time) watching buskers and busking myself, even though I suck. Another big one is dancing in the barn. This is not normal dancing at all. All of the dances which take place in the barn are actual medieval dances reenacted with the appropriate music played live. Most of the time, the music is played by a band called “Sir Robin’s Minstrels”, whose leader, one Rude Crude McFreud, looks and acts like a cross between Capt. Jack Sparrow and “Weird Al” Yankovic. Two of the best dances are tangle brawl and “Toss the Wench”, which involves the female of the dancing pair being tossed from partner to partner. I also spend far too much time gaming, because what would life be with D&D? Whenever I can get away from that, I go shopping at one of the thousands of shops which take up almost half of Pennsic, watching plays and ad-libs (“Whose line doth it be?” and the burlesque “I Sebastiani, the Greatest Comedia del Arte troupe in the entire world!” are two particular good ones), playing Amoeba ( which involves getting as many people in cloaks in a huddle as you can, and then absorbing others into this mass) and lying in a field at night with people you don't really know, or groping those you do know as a joke. My second-favorite thing to do at Pennsic is going to bardic circles (the Barony of the Bridge had particularly good ones), which involves singing bawdy songs, telling stories, accepting strange drinks from strange people, and listening to other people do the same things. However, in my opinion, the best thing to do at Pennsic is forcing adults to surrender in a battle of wits to a seventeen-year old with a lisp. They usually do so when they find themselves unable to pronounce my SCA name, ᴁlfthryth. It is anglo-saxon for “Elven Strength”. My entire family has or had, in the case of my brothers, both of whom left the SCA, anglo-saxon names like that in the SCA, with the exception of my mother, Arastorm. In fact, most of our household, Stormgard, had unpronounceable names. Willow is
ᴁlfwitha, which means “Elf Willow”. Diana, now Dan, was ᴁlfgifu, “Elf Gift”, Alva Jonathan was ᴁlfred, “Elf Advice”, and my father was named Earl Sir ᴁlfwine Dunidane before he died. ᴁlfwine means “Elf Friend”. Dunidane means “Your father thinks he is Aragorn”. Not without reason, you understand.

If you hear nothing else about the SCA or Pennsic, you need to hear about one particularly historic event, the legendary Pennsic IV. I was not present at this event, as it was my parents’ honeymoon. You know it’s a good sign for a long and healthy marriage when the honeymoon involves the groom going out into the woods to get hit with sticks. In a lighting storm. Wearing a metal suit. There are various interesting antidotes which came out of this situation, many of which are very much improbable. First you have to understand the ground which they were fighting on. It was raining, and it had been raining for two solid weeks before the war. The ground has been described by Pennsic War Veterans as “a bog where the road should be”, “runny peanut butter”, “proverbial polyunsaturated yuck” and “ten inches of s**t”. Try sword fighting on this stuff. In the woods. In a lighting storm. No good can come out of this situation. The two armies were headed by King Merriwald of the Midrealm, now known as “Bozo the Count”, and Crown Prince Angus of the East (that’s us), now known as “The king the East forgot” (they won’t admit to being ruled by him anymore), or “That transsexual in prison for accessory to manslaughter who’s dead now and was a major dork while he was alive” (which is why they won’t admit to being ruled by him). Now, at this time, “killing” one of these two was a war point, which, along with the war point battles, could determine who won or lost the war. This becomes important later. Now, there was an epic confrontation between Angus and Merriwald, in which Merriwald struck Angus with such force that he ricocheted off of a sapling and landed face-first in this muck. There were several problems with this. One was that he was wearing what is called a Pig-Faced bassonet. This would be a helmet resembling Mighty Mouse’s head. As such, he was pretty firmly wedged into this mud by it, and as he lay there, he saw water filtering through his eye slots and coming towards his face. There is some dispute over what happened next. A bard by the name of Michael Longcor, an excellent singer if historically inaccurate, is spreading around that two squires pulled him from this muck, which, in his defense, did happen once in Merdias (Florida) with the same helmet. Sir ᴁlfwine Dunidane swears that he saw his friend’s predicament, rushed over, and “nudged him with his foot, breaking the suction”. Angus says ᴁlfwine kicked him in the head. Now, this is not to say that back at the camp, the ladies where having a peaceful little sewing circle. It is almost as hard to sew during a lightening storm as it is to fight during one. They were busy trying to keep the tents from blowing away. Lady Arastorm the Golden (now Countess Arastorm the Gray, but don’t say that to her face), newlywed bride of ᴁlfwine, found herself wrapped around the centerpole to their tent, trying to keep it from blowing away, when she realized that she was hugging a metal pole during at lightening storm. At this point she more or less surrendered her wedding pictures to the rain. Also during a lightening strike, one gentle, who for pity’s sake will remain nameless, felt the need to relieve himself, and no where near a port-a-throne, decided to crouch and do his business. As luck would have it, that’s when lightening stuck. Sky to mud to stream of liquid coming from out of a large conductor. I was never able to get any more details on that story, except that it hurt. Alot. Meanwhile, out in the woods, an incident occurred best described in the song Ballad of Pennsic IV: “We found the (eastern/middle, depends on who’s singing) army drawn about there in the mud; we closed with them, and fought it out and turned it red with blood; the fighting it was vicious as we closed in hand-to-hand; and then we hit the beehive and the corpses jumped and ran!” The story, as I understand it, involves one knight of the Eastern army being pursued by a large group of midrealmers. As he is running, he sees this beehive lying on the ground and decides to play kickball with it. His logic was if he kicked it into the midrealmers, they would stop chasing him. It worked, to an extent. The midrealmers stopped chasing him, but the bees were a different story. The bees chased him, the bees chased everyone. You may figure, “hey, when there are a dozen or so people trying to hit you with sticks, what’s a couple of bee stings?”, but that entirely depends on where they are. One knight had a beautiful gothic helmet, which took assistance and several minutes to remove, who got them in his eye slots. He decided the best way to get them out was to knock on his temples with his gauntlets while running, screaming, through the woods. Another unfortunate individual had a nasty incident with the bees caught in his armor. His cup, to be specific. He was last seen stumbling through the woods, moaning, “...I’ve been stung...” Meanwhile, the now dead Angus was stumbling back home, after being killed by Merriwald. As he did so, a young member of the Midrealm army found the prince alone and decided to kill him. Again. This isn’t important, usually, but as Angus was crown prince, it meant that killing him was a war point. Due to this, there is some dispute over whether or not killing him twice counted, and who won the war. It is said that the final figure for this war stood as follows: Midrealm: 3 (or 2) East: 2 Mother Nature: 48.

Due to the incident with Angus’ head, among other things, many of which are disputed to be physically impossible, Sir ᴁlfwine Dunidane became a famous and intimidating figure. This presents a problem in the lives of his daughters when they reach that age. One year, the big fun thing to do at Pennsic was to get kidnapped, and the young lady (at this time) ᴁlfgifu decided that she wanted in on this fun little game. So she went out, and she found a group of people she could bribe into kidnapping her.
“Okay,” they said, “Where do we send the ransom note?”
“To Sir ᴁlfwine Dunidane.” she replied.
“ᴁlfwine?! There’s no way we’re pissing him off!” they protested, and refused to kidnap her. So ᴁlfgifu went off in search of new captors.
“Okay,” said the second group, “Where do we send the ransom note?”
“To lady Arastorm.”
“Arastorm?! Isn’t she Sir ᴁlfwine Dunidane’s lady?!”
So ᴁlfgifu needed to find someone else to kidnap her.
“Sure, we’ll kidnap you.” agreed the third group. Who do we send the ransom note to?”
“Baroness Megan.” said the crafty little ᴁlfgifu.
“Baroness Megan of Stonemarch?! Isn’t that where Sir ᴁlfwine Dunidane lives?!” protested her horrified would-be kidnappers. At this point, ᴁlfgifu gave up hope of having fun at Pennsic with a father with such a reputation. I never had that problem, but I never tried to get kidnapped.

I am a souvenir of Pennsic XIV. I have been going to Pennsic my whole life, first arriving as a three-month old baby. Over this time, I have collected a clowder of now-teenagers, the most prominent and permanent members being myself and Alex, (yes, that Alex) also known as Rosemary’s child. Usually there is two to five young women aged 12-16 with us, (known by my sister as the gaggle of giggles), including Hattie, a bisexual who is actually thirteen but can and does pass for eighteen, one or two male gamer nerds, usually heavyset gentlemen who take their Magic Cards and D&D books into bed with them. We tend to hang around the back of my or Alex’s shop, offering help whenever someone comes in, or the barn, or at night, we tend to swarm the bathhouse. The bathhouse is a large campy building housing the only flush toilets in the city of Pennsic. However, where our story begins, we weren’t there. No, our story hasn’t begun yet. That was all exposition. The story doesn’t actually start until Pennsic XXX. I had a disturbingly bad sunburn that year. Have you ever had a third-degree sunburn? Don’t. We, us being the nerds of Pennsic, forced out of the bathhouse by adults, decided to relocate to the large wooden castle which overlooks the battlefield. It isn’t much of a castle, mainly gate, no keep, but still, it was a cool place to hang out. As we were hanging out atop that castle, we noticed a strange figure walking across the battlefield. Actually, considering the situation, there was very little strange about the character, as most people at Pennsic own a sword and a long cloak, and wear them in conjunction as they wander around at night. Alex called to him. He looked up at us, but we couldn’t see his face, and he replied, but we didn’t hear his answer. The figure made his way to the castle, and began to scale the back of it to talk with us. This sounds more impressive than it really was, because there was no back wall to the castle, so what he was scaling was about a flight and a half of stairs. He turned out to be a young man, very pale, blue eyes, a blond ponytail, rather skinny. We began discussing anime, and somehow he wound up saving me from Alex, who had apparently become a tentacle monster. Alex then made an astute observation.
“Hey, you’re both Aryan! Hitler's master race!”
“It’s not my fault.” I grumbled.
“You should breed!” Alex pronounced shrilly, grasping both of us by the ponytail and smacking our faces together.
“Ow...” moaned the young man.
“Hang on,” I asked, rubbing my nose, “What was your name again?”
“Me?” he asked, “Nik.”

You would like Nik. He’s one of those people who you would want to beat on, but like him anyway. He was, and still is, I imagine, a Celtic vampire samurai. And yet you laugh. It’s just more proof that fact is stranger than fiction. He wore one of his swords everywhere. Over his tartan. Over pants. This may not seem strange to you, however, tartans are traditionally worn without pants. Or underwear. I don’t know about the underwear, but Nik definitely wore pants. Baggy plaid ones. And a torc. It was the torc that made me think he was trying for Celtic. It was brass and turned his neck green. I didn’t see him again that year, and I’m fairly sure he forgot about meeting me because he didn’t seem to remember being forced to kiss me when we met the next year. It was Pennsic XXXI, and I had just dealt with one of the hardest fifty-week town runs of my life. Sir ᴁlfwine Dunidane had finally been defeated. Not by a burly midrealmer, not by some dark knight, but by the invisible opponent leukemia. They say that the shunt in his head created some internal bleeding, which ultimately killed him, but his squires, his daughters, and his lady agreed that he died because he had missed Pennsic. His death wasn’t as hard as dealing with his father, Reverend Grandpa Alva, who didn’t seem to understand that his son was pagan. I was really needed a vacation. So getting back from our fifty-week town run, we found that while we had found some people to help us set up our campsite, Alex and his mother, the nice but annoying lady Alazaunde Alucard didn’t. There is something you need to understand about lady Alazaunde Alucard. Imagine the person with the worst luck you ever met. Double their bad luck, add hip-long black hair, glasses, a grating voice, and add Alex, which makes the bad luck triple. That’s Alazaunde Alucard. After she got back to Pennsic, breaking down about five times on the way, it was dark, and she needed help setting up the campsite. She had brought help. A hyper three-year old, her whiny mother, and a one-armed man with a good singing voice and a mustache. And she needed to set up camp. This doesn’t sound too bad until you realize that her camp consists of a pup tent, a pavilion, and a plywood Tudor house. Yes, a house. Have you ever seen those playmobile houses that lock together? It was something like that, only the walls where seven feet tall and plywood. The roof was made of red and yellow striped canvas that looked like she stole a sail from a Viking longship. Setting up this house involved getting someone to hold up a wall, screw it to another wall, repeat all around for the first story, bring these four three-inch pillars inside, and then put up the floors for second story. That’s were it gets tricky. First, you get a couple of spry young things up in the loft to pull up a pair of walls for the second story. Then, you repeat the process of screwing the walls upstairs, and get the poor saps you got to hold up the wall upstairs to hold up the ridge pole, as downstairs, someone climbs a free standing ladder, usually two non-freestanding ladders clamped together. Some idiot, usually my father, then takes a polearm (that’s a weapon which is mainly a long wooden shaft) and balances a third piece of ridgepoles until it is in position and then hangs off of it to get it wedged in. This whole business is called “The Flying Zambini Brothers” for obvious reasons. Then you throw some ten foot killer nunchucks over the ridgepoles, and throw the sail over that, and ta-da, you have a house. Depending on the competence of the workers, the number of screwdrivers, and when you last charged the battery to the screwdriver, this takes anywhere from two to six hours. Remember that one-armed man? He was the most able worker on this project. Around ten, Alazaunde relented and let her son run off to the bathhouse to find more workers. Two came back with him, “Flannel Man” and “Plaid Boy”. “Plaid Boy” looked very familiar. I don’t think he remembered having our faces smashed together the year before. Try to get this image in your head. I’m standing in the loft of a half-built Tudor house wearing a medieval tee-tunic, bouncing slightly as I play the air guitar and sing, “All your base base are belong to us!” to the tune of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. Suddenly, Nik grabs Alex’s arm and grins.
“I could kiss her!”
“Her sister’d kill you.” Alex replied, horrified at either the image of me and Nik kissing or Willow bearing her wrath down on Nik. Willow and Alex have always been half a word from a fight, and Willow is about twice Alex’s size. Three times Nik’s.
“I’m sure I could outrun her.”
“No, you couldn’t. You haven’t seen her angry.” Alex retorted skeptically. I’m not sure when during my fifty week town run I had gotten into my head that I was ugly, and stupid, and had a speech impediment so horrifying that no person in their right mind would want to be near me, much less kiss me. I was convinced that this would be the only time in my high school career when I would have a boyfriend. I was right, I suppose, but it also turned out to be the only time I my high school career when I wanted a boyfriend. Sometimes, during the fifty-week town run, someone would ask someone else out “for me” without my knowledge, much less instruction, and I would only find out about this scenario after the fact. This humiliated me to the extent that I would not talk to the person who had been asked out for a year. This happened every year of my high school career. In fact, I think it happened to the same person twice. This did not do much for my self-image. I figured anyone who could be used to make fun of people by making them think they wanted to go out with them was not a desirable figure. I figured that it was my only chance to have a relationship. In retrospect, I have to wonder what drugs I was taking at the time that might have induced this thought process. Anyway, somehow in the middle of the next night, while us geeks were shoved around the “Gauntlet Legends” machine in the corner of the bathhouse, I wound up in Nik’s lap. I’m still not sure how this happened. I remember that I was breathing on his cheek, because we were both staring at the screen. Well? I thought, You said you wanted to, Nik. Here’s a perfect opportunity. Are you going to kiss me or aren’t you? I suppose that if I continued this thought process, I would have kissed him myself, but he then turned to me, smiled, and did it first. I couldn’t help wondering as he turned away whether that was really a kiss at all. It wasn’t the whole fanfair bit that I had understood kisses to be. He said a single word before this, one of the few words which either of us either said.
“Yes?”
Sure, there was the lip contact part of a kiss, but not the rest of it. It stirred no emotion whatsoever. I did not flutter, my heart rate actually slowed after the kiss, it filled me with no joy, or confusion, or even disgust. As he pulled away from me, I couldn’t help but wonder, Was that it? Was that what all the fuss is about? The second-greatest thing in the world? That little thing? Nik didn’t seem to notice, though, as he tightened his grip around me and turned back to the game. That more or less summarizes my relationship with him. That and the word “yes”. I’d put more of our dialogues in here, but that would just make the story more boring than it already is. (“Yes?” ”Yes?” “Yes.”) When alone with him, I became nervous, and more often than not, strangely concerned with Hattie. Hattie always needed comforting right now because Alex had just molested one of her alter egos or something. It was very convenient for me.

One night, as I was gaming and sitting in Nik’s lap, some random person made a very strange mistake.
“Are you guys brother and sister?”
“I’m sitting in his lap,” I replied in horror, “as he feels me up, and you think we’re related?”
“Yeah, that is strange.” joked Alex, “You guys don’t even have Alabama accents.”
“It’s okay. The same thing happened to my parents.” I sighed.
“What happened?”
“They had to make out all the time so people wouldn’t think they were related.”
“What a great idea!” grinned Nik.
Pennsic is only ten days long, though it usually feels much longer, as one year runs into the next. You tend to find you have two minds when you get there, the mind which went on the fifty-week town run, and the one that stayed at Pennsic, which takes control when you return and find yourself referring to the last day of last Pennsic as “yesterday”. While my town run was not as eventful as the one before it, I returned to Pennsic XXXII with alot on my mind. I had firmly decided that I had absolutely no interest in having a relationship with anyone, even if I was in love with them, and certainly not Nik, who I wasn’t. Nik, however, had intended to pick up where we left off. I was nervous when he came around to hang out with me, but I comforted myself with the thought that now that that silly kissing business was over with, we could just hang out like I hung out with Alex. Besides, if I wanted to avoid him, I could just work the shop, or so I thought. I had forgotten that Nik worked at the merchant who was now next to us. But that was okay, it would be nice to have a friend to talk to. After we got off work one day, early in Pennsic, Nik asked, “You wanna hang out?”
“I would,” I half-lied, “But I was just about to go see I Sebastiani, the Greatest Comedia del Arte Troupe in the Entire World.” I didn’t have to go yet, but I couldn’t figure out whether he thought we were still a couple, and being around him made me uncomfortable.
“Great! That sounds like fun. Mind if I join you?”
“Okay, I suppose.” I lied again. We talked a little as we walked, and some random guy in a camp we passed offered Nik some food.
“I’m a teenage boy. I never turn down food.” he laughed, accepting a plate of cold spaghetti. When we got to the performance tent, the act before I Sebastiani was still on. Michael Longcor. He had grayed significantly since he sold me his first two CDs, but it still was definitely him. I intended to correct him on his historical error regarding “The Ballad of Pennsic Four”, but I wasn’t able to get up to where he was standing. As he sang, Nik’s hand crept into mine, and I tried to make it look inadvertent when I dropped it. I stared raptly at the performer, and Nik waved his fingers in front of my face.
“Yes?” I asked. I then realized that I had said our word. The word whose reply was always a kiss.
“You look fascinated.”
“I am.”
“Imagination can put a lifetime’s love into a single sigh,” sang Michael Longcor, unaware of how very little that phrase helped my situation, “It can make the girl a princess, it can make the dragons fly... Imagination...” That was the last song he sang, and we were able to get better seats for the play. That is to say, I Sebastiani was able to hear it when Nik got my attention mid-play.
“Yes?” I hissed. He gave me a slightly frightened look.
“Yes?” he replied timidly.
“No.” I replied firmly, turning back to the play. It was a good play. The play was called Harlequino's Ghost, which involved many bawdy jokes, the fool Harlequino trying to haunt someone while he was still alive, and a bet between the scholar and the banker, like all Comedia del Arte plays. It was great fun. We started to filter out of the performance tent and go home, after throwing coins into the performer’s caps. Harlequino hadn’t even taken his off yet. Nik turned to me.
“May I have a kiss?” he asked expectantly. I shouldn’t have kissed him, he was just my friend now. It had been a year, he can’t expect to pick up where he left off after a year. What if I had gotten a boyfriend in the previous year? Even if that was the case, I reminded myself, which it isn’t, you would have told him that by now, wouldn’t have you? I suppose it was Hattie’s fault I kissed him, though. She was just a friend, after all, and if I could go “cleavage diving” with her, then why couldn’t I give my other friend a kiss. Nik laughed, and turned my head a click.
“On the mouth, silly.” he laughed. It was strange. He kissed me, but I don’t think I kissed him. His lips, puckered as they were, were too small for my mouth. I decided that I should stay away from Nik until I had figured out the appropriate way to tell him to back off. Easier said than done. As I mentioned, Nik worked at the merchant who was now next to us. Which meant I, usually assigned the left wing of the shop, wound up facing him all day long. Have you ever tried to convince a customer that you are not hanging over them like the sword of Damacles, but are ready to help them if they need anything while pretending that someone trying to get your attention just over their shoulder doesn’t exist? Don’t do that, either. It’s more trouble than it’s worth.

I had made it to the last few days of Pennsic, treating Nik as I treat all of my friends, trying to ignore his fascination with keeping an arm around my shoulders. I didn’t really feel that he was actually doing anything wrong, most people like to be touched. It’s weird, I don’t really mind random people grabbing my breasts and sticking their face in my cleavage, but one guy puts his arm around my shoulder and I start twitching. My sides, too. I always feel like someone’s about to rape me if they touch my sides. Nik was going to leave the next day, and probably wouldn’t have time to say goodbye to anyone. He really wanted to kiss me goodbye.
“I’ve been good. I haven’t touched you, and I’ve been very nice.” he protested, putting an arm around me. It was true. He had accepted pats on the head as my only sign of affection, and he left me braid his hair. He frowned slightly, and it stuck me what a pretty young man he was, as he leaned forward to kiss me. Then my instincts took over. I struck him in the chest, making him release his grip on me in shock, then fell instinctively into a crude fighting stance, feet apart, hands raised. Nik looked at me with his wide blue eyes, and I could see that he didn’t understand. He saw the look of horror on my face, matched with how ready my body looked to attack him if he came closer, and he could see I didn’t understand, either.

The End

“...I’ve been stung...”
“Busking” refers to street performance.