Slings away!
Like the day before, the second event was started after the spectators returned from their lunches. The lizardlike kirshani had swarmed the field while the flying races were being had and had set up multiple targets with which to test the Sylvans slingers. The first series were simple enough. Very thin mats woven from wool were draped over sacks of hay and nine squares were painted on them. The goal was to strike the center square and points would be deducted the further away the mark landed.
The slingers had their choice of either handheld slings or slingstaves, whichever they were more familiar with. The kirshani provided them with their ammunition and let them choose which hay sack they wished to target. Being a static target, the sack attack portion ended with very competitive scores.
The kirshani then directed the slingers to the woven mats with weighted bottoms they had dangling from rope lines and strung up by a few armoured dwarves on pedestals. When given the signal, the dwarves began to vigorously shake the ropes, making the mat bounce and bob wildly.
"Don't be shy. It doesn't bite!" a kirshani said cheerily.
This served as a much more difficult challenge, and of the five shots each were allowed to take only one or two were lucky to hit. One of the slingers slipped on their footing and their bullet pinged off the side of a dwarf's helmet.
"Looks like we're safe from your aim!" giggled the kirshani referree. "We're even faster than those mats when we're in the trees!"
"Speak fer yerself!" growled the assaulted dwarf.
Notes & Commentary
June 15, 2017, Thursday
Slings away!
Couldn't resist bringing back the little mini-slingstaves shown in the prologue. They don't have stretchy cords like the modern rubber-banded slingshots. It's the same old string-and-pouch setup that's existed for millenia. Dunno how well they'd work though. (I did manage to make a good bit of noise using my fingers, a sock, and a plastic ring with fairly decent accuracy.) I'm also aware slingstaves are potentially more useful for great distances and something of a barrage attack. I'm not overly concerned about it. Kurach wings are no where near capable of real flight beyond maybe a clumsy glide and I don't reckon handheld slingin' sticks are gonna hurt physics any more than I already have. 
Bow and arrows haven't quite made it into the forests yet, but the prairie kurach will teach them in time.
Added a transcription link in the author notes. Basically it just links to the related part in the "novelized" version. Chapter 11 still isn't one of my favorite chapters to go over. Sending Newbury, the captain, and Fancy Clancy all to Davey Jones locker wasn't exactly one of my favorite scenes to do.
Well, I got a nice scare this week! One of my kin was in a nice t-bone wreck. Smushed up the front of their vehicle pretty good. You'd think a white car would stick out like a sore thumb because of how well it reflects light, but I dunno. Everybody tends to ignore that car for some reason, like changing lanes too early and nearly hitting it, or in this classic example of pulling out in front of it, and its bad luck finally caught up to it. In an area known for frequent wrecks (and deaths), some dunce decided to slowly cross an intersection where oncoming traffic has the right-of-way. Pulled right out in front of the little car. Luckily, the worst injuries is my relative getting some decent bruising from the seat belt, the offending person potentially having a broken arm, and then the poor little car plowing all over a stop sign before buggering up a ditch. Couldn't help teasing them about that part. "When you run a stop sign, you run a stop sign! 
" The police report and eye witnesses all clearly say the other person should have yielded, there was no time to properly react, and that my relative was doing the speed limit. Pretty cut and dry. I've been a bit shook up about it. It's been nearly a year since we last had a major death. 2016 was really bad. So many people died in 2016. Five in my circle alone! Sweetpea must be one helluva gal for such a tradeoff. But I'm not ready to bury anybody else, much less the one who had a wreck. I'm glad it wasn't worse than it was, for all parties involved.
Characters - Rhedyn - Grey - Niall - Nalin - Kori - Ara - Ivor - Esme -
Tags - Just Another Day -
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