Week 5 Storytelling: Tournament of the Lotus

Welcome to the Tournament of the Lotus!!

Lotus Flower from Spritual Journey Guide

I am your host Ali and let me tell you the prize is INSANE this year for the winner of this already prestigious tournament. What is this prize you ask? Not one, or even two, but THREE princesses!

The prince to beat in this tournament would have to be Shawn. He is the regions best archer and no one could pass him in a chariot race. However, we do have some new faces. Representing the kingdom of Shantanu, we have Brayden. We have yet to see his skills for the tournament but he does not look like a guy to be ignored or messed with.

The chariot races are the first event. The princes are all lined up. Shawn waves at the crowd and blows the princesses a kiss. The flag is waved and they are off! The race this year is just one lap around the rest of the tournament activities. The lap itself should take a total of 10-12 minutes for our contestants. They are rounding the first corner and Shawn is in the lead with Brayden not too far behind! Brayden cuts the corner a little too sharp and almost loses control of his chariot! That is going to set him back a bit, I don't know if he will be able to recover from that. Shawn is already half way through the lap, it looks like he is going to be our winner and he knows it! You can see that smile for miles, he stood up a little straighter to give the audience a good show. Wait! What is that? That is Brayden! Somehow he has been able to make up for his sharp turn at the beginning of the race and has now caught up to Shawn! Shawn is still racing for show he doesn't realize that he is about to be passed and he is! Brayden just passed Shawn and has gained a lead before Shawn could recover! Folks this is hard to believe but I am seeing it with my own eyes and Brayden just passed the finish line! He has won the chariot race! Brayden is a true contendor for these princesses! I am interested to see how he will do in the other competitions!

Now we have come to our final event of the tournament: archery. Today has been a true battle between Shawn and Brayden for our victor. Brayden surprised us in the chariot races as well as winning the ax throwing event. However, Shawn has kept Brayden on his toes. He has won the swordsmanship event and horseback riding event. That's right folks! We are all tied up going into the last event of the tournament!

The way this works is each contestant gets a chance to shoot at a target. They are attempting to shoot an arrow into the very middle of the target and get a "bullseye". This is very difficult to do so the winner is the person who can get the closest to that in three shots. Since Shawn won the last event, he gets to go first. His first shot is no good. He got a piece of the target but is far from the center. The second shot is better but is to the right. His final shot is GOOD! HE GOT A BULLSEYE! Brayden still gets his turn but Shawn set the bar high for this event. If Brayden does not get a bullseye then he will lose the tournament and Shawn will win the Tournament of the Lotus and win the three princesses! The crowd is silent as Brayden grabs his bow and three arrows. You can feel the tension as we all wait to see what will happen in these next three shots. Brayden shoots his first arrow. He is close, within a couple inches of the center. It is a good shot but not good enough. He shoots his second arrow and.... I don't believe it. It is a BULLSEYE!! Now Brayden has a chance to end the archery event and this tournament right now. It is a long shot, but if he mangages to split his arrow and hit the bullseye he could win it all. Brayden takes a second to compose himself and gets his final arrow ready. He takes a breath and let's the arrow fly. The arrow cuts through the previous arrow like butter and finds its mark.

Splitting a Wooden Arrow from Cardio Trek

BRAYDEN DID IT! The entire crowd is on their feet cheering on the new Tournament of the Lotus Champion. This tournament came down to the wire, but in the end it was a new face that won the whole thing and is taking home the three beautiful princesses! Man what a warrior! I have never seen anyone with his skill! No one could ever say that he did not deserve this win! This is a day that no one here will easily forget!

This is your host Ali signing off! See you next year at the Tournament of the Lotus!

Author's Note: I decided to write my story this week based off of the tournament that Bhishma went to in order to win brides for his half brothers. In my story Brayden is Bhishma and Shawn is Shalwa. I chose to change the names because the original names are so uncommon and I wanted to make it something easy to read. In the original story, there was not a tournament in the more common sense. Instead, it is all the contestants fighting each other until there is one victor that has all three of the princesses. Whoever has them at the end gets to keep it. In the original story, they talked a lot about how great of an archer Bhishma was. Because of this I decided to make archery the deciding factor for who would win the princesses.

Bibliography: Bhishma at the Swayamvara from Myths of the Hindus and Buddhists by Sister Nivedita (1914).