Ghyll:Bindlet Ball

Bindlet Ball

The national pasttime of Ghyll, Bindlet Ball is also pretty big business. The Ghyll Bindlet League, founded in -54 EC, consists of 27 teams, with most cities of any significant size having a team. The annual championship is held as one of the highlights of the Day of Champions.

Most people in Ghyll take Bindlet Ball very seriously, with team alliegances even influencing politics. The most famous example of this came in -38 EC, surrounding the Folktown Mayoral election. Although it was a foregone conclusion that the incumbent mayor, was going to win, three nights before the election, he was overheard expressing a preference for the Egron Eagles, the team from a neighboring city. Although he vociferously denied making the statements, his political opponent, a convicted felon, member of the Darvekian Party, and frequent puppy kicker, won the election easily, with 97% of the popular vote. Incidentally, although the man who claimed to have overheard these statements was later found to have been incarcerated in Egron at the time of the alleged incident, the former mayor was never able to win another political position, and the allegations haunt him to this day.

The rules of Bindlet Ball are confusing, at best, and downright maddening most of the time. Games can often last as long as 5 or 6 days, if a member of the Bureau of Forgotten Knowledge is not readily available to mediate disputes among the referees, and must be summoned.

The longest game on record started in -7 EC and is still in the 4th period. Since players are not permitted to leave the field during game play (the penalty being forfeiture of the game) a number of small homes were built on the field during the first of the Mediations of this now famous game. Although they were knocked down after this first Mediation, and after the second one, by the third Mediation it was becoming accepted that this game would last a while, and the homes were just left on the field, where, strangely, they don't seem to hinder play much.

The rules of the game are (roughly) as follows:

To be continued. I have to go somewhere

-- DrBacchus