"Sometimes someone will give you one of theirs. Because if you've got something that was a gift from someone you care about, it'll mean more to you, and they'll be better able to teach you how to work with it. And sometimes you kinda get assigned something because it's recently ownerless and we need it on the field."

"We do do the thing where you touch lots of objects and see if any are shiny, but - that's the collection of objects that aren't currently being used. And usually there is a reason nobody is using them yet - I mean, we really kind of put everything to use that we can put to use."

Nod. "Presumably it's better to eventually be able to use something nobody else was using because that increases the total amount of stuff in use but starting out with a gift makes sense. How much of what we have is weapons people fight with directly versus other things?"

"Weapons are the most obvious but honestly usually the least interesting. It doesn't take that much to get a sword over the threshold where you can at least hurt a monster with it - I'm like the third person to own mine, it got forged by a Laurel with a magic anvil like twenty years ago and my knight gave it to me and that's enough of a lineage that I can hurt things, and that's enough for me." 

"Let's see... in terms of the real power sources, I've got my cloak and my shield, Roger has some saintly martyr relic type stuff, Cináed has a magic sewing needle and a pretty serious sword and a banner... but there's a little magic in all the things that were passed down to us, like my helmet is extra protective because my knight's knight made it for me. You still have the newcomer token you were given at your first ever event, right?" 

Sergia smiles nostalgically. "My first ever event I was too small to know what objects were, but I still have the mug I got at the first event where I realized I could walk up and get one, yeah." She doesn't actually remember getting it but has been reliably informed that she said 'thank you your maggie' and that it was adorable, and she has a lot of fond memories of using it at feasts over the years. "Does that make it a tiny bit magic? Do all newcomer tokens do the same thing?"

"Yeah, they're luck tokens. We give all the newcomers luck tokens because it makes it a lot easier for them to avoid stumbling across things they shouldn't, like, we don't want them stumbling into a faerie ring in the dark while they're drunk or something. Your mug is probably turning everything you drink from it into a luck potion, just - an incredibly mild and weak one. It'll get stronger if you pass it on to someone, and stronger again if they treasure it for decades and pass it down again."

"Almost all magic stuff is mostly just - really good at being stuff. Like Tolkien's elven craft. My shield doesn't let me throw fireballs or anything, it's just a really good shield that deflects evil real well. I don't know what Sir Nicole showed you but she's - on the spectrum from a sword of magical sharpness to a magic ring that lets you set stuff on fire with your mind, she's unusually far on the fireball end."

"That makes sense. And something you said earlier made it sound like demons can only be hurt by magic weapons, so a magic sword is more useful than a regular gun and a very magic sword is more useful than a slightly magic one?"

"Yeah, there's a lot of monsters that are straight up immune to non-magical attacks. And the problem with a magic gun, even if you had one, is there's absolutely no way you are going to have a supply of magic bullets and even if you did, it would last you one fight and you'd be done. Some of our archers get away with this by having archery related things that are so obscenely powerful that they can put a bit of magic into non-magical ammunition, but that works because archery is like sixty thousand years old. And some of them have very very old arrowheads and will use them on things that really, really need shooting from a distance and then we'll try to retrieve and repair the arrow after. I've seen a twenty thousand year old arrowhead used once."

"Woah. That's so much responsibility. Did they get the twenty thousand year old arrowhead back alright?"

She almost asks 'is there a problem where our supply of ranged firepower is diminishing faster than we can replace it' but keeps her mouth shut because it might be the sort of question Lucia is not supposed to think about.

"Um, I was sort of distracted at the time but I'm pretty sure they did."

Lucia finishes scarfing down her breakfast and starts tidying and washing up. 

"I don't know how important this is for other people, but for me an important thing is to think about everything in more... everyday terms? Like yes, sure, I got the explanation for how it works and why we're doing it, I'm sure that what we are actually doing tonight is using the magical power of chivalry gimmicks to defeat a sort of really old ghost demon thing that is powered by medieval church vices or something, but I don't feel good about that framing. I'm a squire who is going to go slay a dragon because my Crown gave this quest to my knight and I'm in fealty and helping him slay dragons is the sort of thing good squires do. And I'm not carrying artefacts that work using some sort of arcane spirit-realm time-accumulating magic I don't understand, I'm wearing a cloak that was given to me by my Crown, and bearing a shield I won on an honourable quest. I have the whole demons thing written down in a notebook, I know enough about it to explain it to the newbies who always understandably want to know, but.... it's so much less good for me."

"I don't think that's how my brain works? I'm definitely going to keep an eye on my mental health over the next couple months and make sure I end up with a mindset that's sustainable in the long run but I don't think that in particular is the way to go for me. So far I've been thinking of it as sort of, there's a problem, I'm going to work together with my people to fix the problem, our moral principles and relationships and shared history are part of what makes us strong enough to do it and some of that is the regular way and some of it is more direct. But I'm happy to use your way of framing it while I'm talking to you if it helps you."

"I'd definitely appreciate you using that framing for me - I mean, I think that is one of the things people around me do to help protect the purity thing. So I don't have a good sense of whether it's really vital for magic or if it's just vital for my magic, and me being a hopeless romantic - like, in the Arthurian romance sense not in the Twilight sense, I know you know what I mean."

"Yeah, I get you. It's a beautiful way to see it."

Lucia finishes tidying up her own dishes and starts washing up some of the cooking pans and spatulas in the 'sink', which is actually a makeshift plastic bucket hooked up to a hose and suspended over a big hole in the ground. There's a big pile of dirt in the ground behind it, ready to refill the hole once the crew packs down their kitchen tent. The whole space smells slightly musty - old canvas and dirt and a hint of smoke underlying the fresher, more pleasant smells of bacon and coffee - and the rough metal shelves around the one half of the canvas pavilion are piled untidily with ziploc bags and rusty spare parts and filthy greaserags. The other half of the shelves are Cináed's domain, and are neatly arranged with tupperware boxes and totes in alternating blue and white and yellow.

"So, erm, I'm really sorry for not telling you about all this before? I'm not sorry in the sense that I was wrong, I was keeping an oath, but I'm sorry in the sense that I wish I didn't have to and I'm going to keep trying to convince people to let me tell them sooner the next time we have someone who is obviously clued in and just - ought to know already." 

"Thanks," says Sergia as she does her own washing up. "You definitely didn't do anything wrong and I appreciate you arguing for me to get to know sooner. It's going to be nice being able to be more candid with each other." Though apparently not completely candid because Lucia's magic runs on scary mental gymnastics. "It's about time for me to go talk to Sir Nicole, but with luck I'll see you this evening and if not I'll see you at practice."

Sergia heads over to the Rosemary camp; if Sir Nicole isn't visible from the gate she'll catch the eye of whoever is and ask to come in. It's an effort not to pull her notes out of her pocket and read over them again.

One of Nicole's campmates greets Sergia enthusiastically and shows her through to the common tent, which is a nice canvas pavilion with banners draped around the edges and a richly painted ceiling. In one corner two Roses are having an animated discussion of a piece of Elizabethan needlework over thin pancakes stuffed with strawberries and raspberries and chocolate sauce. 

Nicole is perched on a nice wooden folding bench in the corner, drinking green tea with one hand and looking at her phone with the other. She's in modern clothes for packout day but still somehow looks like a duchess; a dark ruffled blouse, silk scarf tied in a perfectly neat knot, and a flowing patterned floral skirt tied with an elegant white ribbon as a belt.

"Excellent, you're here. Have you eaten already or would you like crêpes?" 

"I had coffee and bacon but the crepes look delicious and I wouldn't turn one down if there's plenty. And if it wouldn't delay our conversation, I don't know if you want to go somewhere else for it."

"There's plenty. Let's grab one and go chat. Want to come on a town run? Turns out we all forgot to bring trash bags and hand sanitizer, so I'm going to have to go get some before cleanup really starts."

Nicole finishes her tea and tucks her phone away inside an elegant little satchel bag, making ready to go. She could've asked someone else in her camp to do the town run, but if they try and find a private place to sit quietly in camp, before long they'll be in somebody's way while everyone tries to pack things up. Talking in the car will be more comfortable, and involve no risk of someone trying to dismantle whatever tent they're in and dropping it on their heads. 

"Fine by me." She'd hate to try to have an important conversation while having to look at the road instead of someone's face, but being the passenger is easy enough. She gets a crepe and a paper plate and follows Sir Nicole to the car.

Nicole has a vintage pale blue convertible sports car which people keep telling her not to bring to events in fields. She keeps ignoring them because sometimes she gets to have fun with her aesthetic, damnit. It handles the grass fine. (She's not fussy about Sergia eating in the passenger seat so long as Sergia is very careful about crumbs.)

She really likes the car, so she's already in a good mood when she turns out of the campsite and gets on the road. It's improved even more when the heating kicks in and the morning air starts warming up inside. 

"So, you've slept on it and had plenty of time to come up with questions. Ask whatever you like."

She will not get crumbs on maybe-her-future-knight's very fancy car seat! She will instead pull out her notes.

"So, overall I'm excited and I definitely want to join the fight, and I think there are a number of historical virtues I can work with. But also lots of questions. To get the downer stuff out of the way first: how likely am I to die? I kinda figure there's a learning curve where if I die it will probably be soon while I'm less experienced but the risk will never be trivial."

"I will do my absolute best to not let you die, and I'd hope that if you intend to promise me any sort of fealty, it's because you trust me to protect you in return. That's the deal." Nicole is watching the road and that actually makes it easier to show significantly more emotion than anyone normally sees from her (though she still doesn't raise her voice at all - if anything she's a little quieter, as though her lungs suddenly are slightly short of air). She would normally do more thinking before she speaks, about the difference between the things she wants to say and the things Sergia needs to hear - and Nicole isn't certain whether her assurances of protection will actually reassure Sergia, because it isn't like she's the scariest knight on the tournament field or like she could singlehandedly slay all the monsters in the world - but she needed to say it for her own sake. She's a little surprised by her own fire.

Huh. Yeah. She supposes she really wouldn't tolerate Sergia dying on her watch.

But that's not the thing Sergia asked about. Her possible-future-student probably wants the actual data on the learning curves. So she takes a single calm breath, thinks carefully, and says, "I'm not sure exactly what the data on mortality over time looks like, but off the top of my head, I think the risk is actually highest with new peers. When people are recognised for their skill, that's a time they feel encouraged to attempt harder things and take more risks, and simultaneously they're no longer under anyone's specific protection and people are more likely to assume they can handle themselves without help. That's a bad combination. On a similar theme, I wouldn't worry about your first few weeks, when everyone is hyper-aware of having a newer fighter along and feeling very protective about you. The danger zone is if the novelty is wearing off and people are starting to think you can handle yourself, and simultaneously you're thinking you're getting used to this and can start doing more dangerous moves. I suggest that if you're going to get cocky and try something dumb, you do it while people are still watching you like hawks, and not right after they stop doing that." 

"That makes sense, and it's definitely a temptation I'll need to watch out for. Next downer question: are we winning or losing? Are there more fighters and fewer demons every year, or the reverse, or is it more complicated than that?"

"We are usually mostly winning until we're suddenly not. There will be stretches of years where, while I wouldn't say everything is fine, everything is quite possible for us to deal with without making unacceptable sacrifices. Every so often, a much bigger threat will come along and we'll suddenly be in true crisis mode and often we'll lose someone or something important trying to handle it. There's never certainty that the next true crisis isn't going to be the one that gets us."

"I don't want to make confident conclusions about whether the world overall is getting much worse or much better, because we're certainly not the only group that handles demons and I don't have an overview of the entire war effort. I'm going to try and never tell you I know something if I don't."

Sergia nods thoughtfully and asks a question that wasn't in her notes. "Is there anyone with an overall view of the strategic picture? Someone who can notice problems and maybe help different kingdoms or different conspiracies coordinate resources? I guess there'd be difficulties getting the SCA to work with a group with a different aesthetic without compromising everyone's mindsets, but--it's a global centuries-old problem, I figure there's someone with a giant world map and a pile of spreadsheets and a book of phone numbers and a plan for the next hundred years."

"Not to my knowledge, no. Quite possibly they exist but they're not interested in speaking to me. The groups in some parts of the world are descended from old orders like the Knights Templar, and they like to look down on us for being a twentieth century medieval reenactment organization instead of some centuries old noble family lines. Unfortunately, European colonizers killed a lot of this area's original guardians in the seventeenth century, so here we are, making do. Though there's still Native American groups doing just as much work as we do, and sometimes there's understandable reasons they don't want to talk to us either. Then there's the literal language barriers between some of the conspiracies, and the very different sorts of virtues and threats and magic we deal with - the metaphorical language barriers."