A civilized society

Barons, sword masters and the Pied Piper gather at Timber Park to escape the Mundanes

By Nolene Triska

The Estacada News, Sep 6, 2006, Updated Oct 30, 2009

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Head, throat, hands, elbows, knees, kidneys and groin: The retired traffic engineer listed seven places on a fighter’s body that must be protected, even with blunted weapons. “Anybody who fights in minimal armor,” he said, “is either very good or very foolish or both.”

It sounded as if injuries are usually limited to enormous bruises and occasional broken fingers. But, for authenticity’s sake, the velvet-and-silk-clad students in the healer’s tent learned medieval surgery. Grisly clay models, beautifully crafted, of severed arteries were on the low table, along with herbs and plaster skulls.

Everyone was sewing up “rapier wounds” in sausages, using wooden pins and animal sinew, under the direction of healer Carol Mosely, Her Ladyship Marguerite de Moseleia.

Tristan O’Shea–Matthew Workman, from Olympia, Wash.–bent over a smoky link, sinew in hand. “If there’s a terrible explosion at the sausage factory, we’ve got it covered,” said Workman, laughing.

Conveniently next to the medical tent, a nother class was practicing with real swords on watermelons. Then Chris Sheeran, Lord Sean O’Sirin, who works in real estate development, handed his pupil a schiavona, an Italian sword akin to the Scottish claymore, and told him to swing at a hunk of ballistic-gel-on-a-stick that simulated human flesh and bone.

The youth easily slashed through the target, half of which landed with a thump in the red-stained, fruit-littered dirt. The schiavona was very sharp. “Nice job, m’lord,” It was rapier cadet Chrestien de Valois speaking–chef Christian Stephenson, who was assisting Sheeran. The chunk was carried next door for treatment.

Sword master Sheeran passed out papers that describe, in graphic detail, damage the weapons inflict on various parts of the body. “What we do,” said Sheeran, “is re-create an extremely bloody, extremely violent and extremely deadly activity that people used to do. I want people to know how really dangerous and lethal it was.”

Vincent Stewart–Court Baron Yusuf–reinforced the idea. A student of master bow maker Gerard Pero, the baron spoke to me about weapons as the bow maker, a Portland electrician and retired Oregon National Guard scout known as Henri Fleche, helped students hand-carve longbows out of ash wood.

Tall and barrel-chested, archer and heavy fighter Baron Yusuf is “retired” from ruling Blatha An Oir, or Pierce County, Wash. He said that the edge on a medieval blade had to be just right. “You couldn’t have it too sharp,” he insisted.

“Why not?” I asked. As keen as possible seemed best to me. It turned out that if the sword was too sharp, it could lodge in your foe’s bones, and you’d be slaughtered before you could jerk it out. That made horrible sense.

“What a gruesome thing war was,” said Baron Gawin.

And is, he added.

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