Saturday was an Amtgard Kingdom Level Event at Silvermoon (Salem, OR). It was a very special event centered around an important issue, suicide prevention. It was mostly organized by Blargiest. It was broken into two parts.
The first part started at 9 in the morning at the Capital building. It was a walk to prevent suicide. The goal was to raise awareness of the issue as well as money for American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. You can find more about the event on their Facebook page here.
A group of Amtgarders, lead by Blargiest walked in the event. Sadly I was not one of them but I do support the cause. I don’t talk about it often but I’m a life long suffer of Major Depression and it’s a topic that directly affects me.
I got to the park on time. There were already people setting up for the day. The plan for the day was to have opening ceremonies, an althing, then the Pie in the Face auction ran by House Gravy, then a battle game and finally a quest ran by Blargiest centered around suicide awareness.
After garbing up and saying my hellos I went and helped Darb set up his battle game. It was a air pirate themed game. It had one large airship and three smaller airships. We only got the big airship and one of the smaller airships built before we had to go to the opening ceremonies.
King Akryn gave a heart felt and personal speech about the subject of depression and suicide before opening the floor to Blargiest to talk about the subject and the plan for the day. Then there was a brief althing, which new business was brought forward. There will be polls concerning Orders of the Crown and someone proposed that we up dues to $20 from $12.
After that it was my time to run the Pie in the Face Auction. We were raising money for Food Fight and initiating Darb and Fritz into House Gravy as Full Members. Along with those two we were auction off pies for Akryn, Torg and Blargiest. We raised $125 which I would call a success. You can see a video of the pieing on my Youtube here.
After the Auction I finished helping Darb set up the battlefield and then the feast was served. It consisted of bread, a pasta salad, a light coleslaw and beef brisket. The brisket was the star of the show, it was delicious and very tender. It was cooked very well.
After the food Darb organized the game, I was one of the reeves. The game was a take on a kill the captain mechanic. There were two teams, one team was the defenders, on the large boat and the second team were on the smaller boats, attacking. The defending team had a team captain which had three lives and the attacking team had three captains, each with one life.
The three captains on the attacking side were each in a boat and could not leave the boat. Once the captain died no one could spawn in that boat any more. If all three captains died there would be no more spawn points. The same went for the defending team, if the captain shattered out then the defending team couldn’t spawn either. The goal was to shatter out the opposing team.
After the first round the teams switched positions. Both teams scored a point as the defending team. There weren’t any overall winners. the game was just for fun. It went over well, although it was hard to keep track of of the boat lines because people kept accidentally moving them.
Right before the game Gustav surprised me by showing up. I didn’t expect to see him. He joined a side and played in the game. After the game we spared, rather than playing in the Quest. We did some short sword sparing.
He won more than I did but that was fine. I did something that I hadn’t done in a long time and actually moved and not just a little, but actively advancing with speed. It took some effort, my body really wasn’t used to it, but it paid off. I was able to get into Gustav’s guard and kill him. It took a toll and I got tired quicker, I also found that I was clenching my jaw when I was doing it. I need to learn to loosen back up when doing that.
Afterward Gustav, Darb and I visited for a while until the quest ended and then there was a ditch. I didn’t do to well in the ditch but I didn’t lose the tactics side and managed to maneuver myself into stopping flanks and to flank. I did poorly on the actual fighting though.
After the ditch they called for another battle game, but it was after 5 and I had other plans that evening so I opted out of the game and packed up. Overall it was a pretty good day and I believe everyone enjoyed themselves. We managed to do good things in the community and to raise money for some good causes. All in all a big win in my book.
Next week I plan on being at my local park. Next month I will probably be making a trip up to Green Wood Keep (Lacey, WA) in the Kingdom of Northern Lights. I also have another article coming out in the next few days focused on service households.