My Soul, Sword, and Honor: Day 71: Blademaster Already?

As I said in my previous blog post, I was not able to post last weekend as I attended JordanCon in Atlanta. It was a great weekend of fun with wonderful people, and is something I look forward to attending every year.

For the second year in a row I attended the sword forms class, where they demonstrate the movements associated with the sword form names that Robert Jordan uses during his sword fights. Unlike last year however, they also had a Blademaster tournament on Sunday afternoon.

In the world of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, Blademasters are formally recognized as such when one of two things occurs: either they defeat a known blademaster in single combat with appropriate witnesses, or they are judged by a sufficient number of blademasters (5), via unanimous vote, to have demonstrated sufficient skill.

Using bamboo practice swords, this tournament would pit any person willing to take part against each other first. The first person to win two rounds by striking the other person (not in the head or on the hands, mind you!) won the round. In the cases where each person struck the other at the same time, each person gets a point. If it happens again on the second round then they continue on until one person landed a hit.

The people who made it through all of the rounds of combat undefeated would then get to challenge one of the three Blademasters. The first two people to defeat any of the Blademasters would then become a Blademaster, and receive their very own heron marked sword (the mark of a Blademaster) in foam version, of course.

I was late in arriving and missed out on the first round of fighting, so I just watched and learned what was going on. At the end of those rounds two people had the opprotunity to face a Blademaster. The first to win their challenge against Blademaster, Bao Pham was Brannon Cristholm. Sophie Decaudin then attempted to defeat Jimmy Liang, but was unsuccessful. Since they still had another Blademaster Sword to give away, they decided to have another round.

This is when I took part in the tournament. My sword training helped tremendously, and I was very focused as I defeated five opponents before being given the opportunity to choose which Blademaster I would fight. Being that I had seen Bao, Brannon, and Jimmy all fight previously, I decided to pick the only remaining Blademaster, Ben Gunderson. I did this because I wanted it to be the most challenging, and in some way felt that if I could defeat him then I would have earned my Blademaster title in truth. As soon as I picked Ben, I was told that I had just picked the only guy who hadn't been hit all day.

In the first round I got lucky and landed a strike on Ben's leg. In the second round we both hit each other's legs at the same time. So I won the bout 2 to 1.

It was a good battle, and I am glad I won, however after it was over and I watched a video of it I saw all of the things that I had done wrong. I was leaning forwards too much. My back should have been straight. My footwork is sloppy. But I won.

As Sensei Urso said yesterday during sword lessons, on any given day a novice can beat a master with a lucky strike at the right time. It was probably luck, but it still counts the same.

In the terms of JordanCon and the Wheel of Time, I am a Blademaster. In the reality of my learnings of the sword however, I am still very much a beginner, and I still have so much more to learn.

Click the image below to see a picture of all 5 Blademasters at the end of the tournament.