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Aethelmearc War Practice, AS XXXVI Good event that day; pleasantly mellow party-mood that night. But as I wandered amongst the campfires---from the Eastern Highway, to Runestone Hill, and back again---dreaming of what the place would look like, three months hence....and sighing over the absence of friends, who were not there on account of it not being Pennsic-tide just quite yet----I decided I was getting worse than bored. I was getting downright melancholy. By lucky hap, there was a party going on in the Serengeti (gee, how likely is THAT??) that I decided would distract me with some fun. As I approached, I saw the firelight flash off the points of a metal roundel. Looked for all the world like a ducal coronet. It was resting on the brow of a grinning 30ish fellow---jolly, sandy-haired, handsome, with a neatly trimmed beard. Immediately the devil leaped into me. "It's a rare Duke that doesn't deserve a good tweaking," I thought. "And he's kinda cute...seems to have a good sense of humor too. What would His Grace's face look like, I wonder---if I whipped out my card, and told him he'd been kidnapped by the [Mongol household which shall remain nameless] ?" As I crept closer to the fire, though, my cover got blown. A good friend, Frederick the Bald, spotted me and boomed, "HULLOOOoooooooooo, [unpronouncable Irish name]!" He waved me over. "Come, I want to introduce you to someone. This is King Roak of Ealdormere!" "Oh, schist." My heart leaped into my throat. "I'm about to tweak a frigging king. " But in my mind, I felt a stubborn committment to the prank. So I managed a cheeky grin, thrust out my card, and delivered my kidnapping schpiel. At that precise moment His Majesty turned, flashed me an equally cheeky grin, and thrust out a cloven fruit. Silently, I snarled. "Curses. He's good." Forty-five minutes later, we came up for air. (Not an exaggeration. We went WAY beyond the standard time alloted for this game, and were tiptoeing into "get a room, already!" territory.) I'd diskappeered completely inside His Maj's cloak by that point. The snogging was interspersed with chatting, and that was how I found out Roak, like myself, performed Middle Eastern Dance. (Neither of us was up for shimmying that particular night, though.) I also found out he was one of the Rozakii---a household which shared ties of alleigance with mine, the [Mongol household which shall remain nameless]. "Drat," I grumbled. "You're family, then. That means I'm going to have to release you on your own recognizance, doesn't it?" His Maj assured me that actually, he was rather digging his captivity. He was pleasant company too; and minute by minute, promised to get a lot pleasanter. But alas. I was tired and buzzed, and my wits were not about me. In that state, I feared, if things got any more amorous, I was likely to get clumsy and make some sort of faux pas. Besides, I had no intention of ruining the potential for such lovely schtick-to-come, by trying to act madcap when I was quite, quite bombed. With great regret I decided that the only graceful thing to do, would be to withdraw and take a rain-check. So, at the end of the night, I got genteelly walked back to my tent by the king of Ealdormere. Roak and I parted ways, with a stern wave of my finger, and the admonition: "Don't forget. You're still kidnapped." Groggily, the following morning I staggered out of my tent. That was when the magnitude of what I'd done, fully hit me. " "...AND YOU LET HIM GO!" 
Most of what followed, resulted from the burning shame of not having thought better on my feet that night. Once home, I consoled myself by crowing of the deed to my brothers in the [Mongol household which shall remain nameless]. Most of them rolled about and cackled merrily. Gleeful suggestions were volunteered, about how to get some more mileage out of the stunt. Plans began crystallizing. I prepared a ransom-note in mock scroll format ---gosh, it was pretty---and sent it to THL Tabitha Dearval, the Kingdom Exchequer of Ealdormere. In it, I informed her that, since no one was watching him, we'd taken her King into protective custody. A caveat was included for the Ealdormereans to keep a better eye on their stuff in the future. After all, just because the [Mongol household which shall remain nameless] has a long history of faithfully guarding careless Kingdomers' property, that doesn't mean we can be EVERYwhere---and it doesn't mean we work for free. For services rendered, I listed some "standard" fees, to be presented to the head of my household by Pennsic XXX: something edible, something drinkable, something shiny. (I figured that was plenty of leeway for them to get silly in return.) And as a final condition, Roak was to dance for his freedom before the women of my household. I cc'd the whole schmear to Tabitha's email address. I ALSO cc'd it to the entire kingdom mailing list of Ealdormere. (Beforehand, I'd prepared several stealth-email addresses, each with a more sneaky and sinister sounding name than the last....so that I could post multiple cloak-and-dagger messages to the list, and make it look like a REALLY big conspiracy.) Then I sat back, to watch the fun unfold. Reaction was immediate. "wwwwwwwWWWWHAT???" roared the collective voice of Ealdormere. Outrage only barely disguised delight, at being invited to play such a fun game. AND to razz the merciless living hell out of their own monarch for getting "buttnicked" by the Mongols. (They have SUCH respect for royalty in the Great White North.) The resulting flurry of emails which zinged back and forth, are a tale in and of themselves. Suffice to say that, online, I really grew to know and like the Ealdormereans. They displayed every ounce of the keen wit and wickedly satirical sense of humor, which they as a kingdom are famous for. In particular, THL Arnora Dunestan (described by one of her countrymen as "so evil, the holy water sizzles when she walks by") who immediately began posting gleeful "Newsflash Radio One" bulletins, with wildly fictitious updates about the kidnapping. And every time Baron Auguste Valizan posted his dry observations, you could almost see the single sardonic eyebrow hitched up into his hairline. I decided I simply HAD to meet some of these folk in person. Also, it was right and proper for me to execute a stealth-mission into Roak's kingdom, just long enough to keep an eye upon my charge. Even if it meant travelling to another COUNTRY to do it. After all, he had yet to pay us off. Luckily, the largest event on the Ealdormerean calendar was coming up in several weeks: "Murder Melee in the Meadow." |
