Tournament

A tournament (or tourney) is a great social event featuring competitive contests of martial skill, often thrown by a noble house to celebrate honor and chivalry or mark some event such as a wedding or birthday. They also allow a noble house to flaunt their wealth and status, as tournaments are enormously expensive. It can take a smaller house years to pay for one tourney.

Events of a Tournament
A tourney may consist of one or more of the following events: Tournaments also attract large numbers of side-events, including puppet shows, mummer performances and so on. Vast quantities of food and drink are consumed at a tourney, and blacksmiths can find plenty of work repairing damaged armor or buying the armor and weapons of defeated knights.
 * The jousting: mounted knights charge one another with lances, with the aim of dismounting one another. The knight who remains mounted the longest is the winner.
 * The melee: a number of men engage in combat using swords, maces and axes. Opponents have to be knocked over and made to yield.
 * Archery: archers compete with one another to show who has the greatest accuracy and consistency.
 * Axe-throwing: similar to the archery contest, but with axes.
 * Horse-racing: Unarmored riders compete in a simple horse race around a track.

While tourneys are non-lethal and some safety precautions are taken, accidental deaths or injuries at a tournament are not unusual.

Format and Rules
Tourneys in Trost vary according to the region in which the tourney is held, the desires of the hosting-lord, and the rules devised by the lord's master of the games. Many forms of competition are known, including jousting, mock battles between teams of knights, archery competitions, or the melee, in which many warriors fight individually in one large battle. Tourneys can be small events focusing on one competition held on a single day, or they can be large events that take several days and may include several different competitions. The central event of many Trostan tourneys is jousting, in which two armored knights aim to knock each other off their mounts with a jousting lance, continuing on foot with a variety of blunted weapons. The loser of a joust must often forfeit his horse and armour to the winner, thus jeopardising a considerable part of his possessions.

Many tourneys pit pairs of warriors in rounds, where the loser is eliminated and the winner proceeds to the next round. The winner of the last round is declared champion. This is similar to how many tournaments in real life were performed, with exception of the best-of-three rule. Some ladies allow contestants to wear their favors during a tourney. The queen of love and beauty can be chosen from the ladies by the competition's victor. Another format of tourney is seen in Ortinbras, where the entire tournament is devoted to melees. No horses nor archery competitions were present, only a duel between two men equipped in armour and armaments they chose.

Volaenis have a form of tourney that consists of horseback-duels. The duels on horseback can be vicious and primitive, the duel would end as soon as the horse dies or the rider yields.