The first official 'Battle Practice' of the summer began on a woeful note. While all members were able to show up, none were dressed for battle. The problem, it appeared, was that none had very battle-worthy clothes. So, the battle practice evolved into a sewing and costuming session.

Admittedly, there were occasional displays of physical prowess: Cas showed off his ability to do one-handed push-ups, Nightshade demostrated the ability to not quite fall on one's face while failing to do one handed pushups, and the rest of the crew practiced their jeers of mockery (to later demoralize enemies with, of course).

Once most of the crew had acquired costumes, it was unanimously decided that we needed someplace to go in them. Alas, we all had prior plans - going to the Thursday night LARP club meeting. But, plans being as they are (Haha!) they quickly mutated into plans for an invasion of the club meeting (which is held in the party room of a local Boston Pizza restaurant).

We arrived in full force, and in full costume. We sang bawdy pirate/mercenary songs (with many an "Arrr!" tossed in, for effect) and started a bar-brawl within minutes.

Well, okay... it wasn't quite a brawl. Captain Nightshade managed to offend a French Canadian by saying frenchmen sounded like ducks, and was challenged to a duel. After much posturing, our fearless leader graciously allowed the frenchman to recant, and grovel for forgiveness. He did grovel - almost - but instead of kissing a boot, stole it and ran off. Nightshade ended up having to chase him down, holding the other boot in hand and 'kicking' him with it whenever he got close.

Eventually, Cas managed to get involved... but instead of brawling, engaged the fiend in a vicious polka dance, which wore him out thoroughly. As he dropped to the floor, cheers went up, and the Ravens settled down to a feast of Carrion! (well, Pizza and chicken wings. Close enough.)

More transpired, which is only worthy of telling in the form of a proper ballad. To whet your interest, though, we shall hint that it involved very sharp blades, an exposed neck, and a small crowd of onlookers. Later on, we took yet another victim out back, and made him kneel (Hmm.. does that look an awful lot like Sodom? And is it just my imagination, or is Foxglove preparing to flog him?)