Forget Quidditch! Hussade: A Real Man’s Imaginary Sport

As you may be aware, “real” quidditch has become a thing.

Weep for humanity.

To be fair, I thought quidditch was a pretty cool sport in the Harry Potter universe. But that’s mostly because the players were flying around dodging magical murder balls while one guy tried to catch a little golden orb with wings.

But as far as the real-life version, I think I’m going to have to go with little big boye from YouTube.

For my money, the fake fantasy sport I’d like to see as a real thing is hussade, from Jack Vance’s Trullion: Alastor 2262. Or if we’re talking about after the impending Great Collapse, maybe I’d vote for The Game.

Hussade is described as follows:

The hussade field is a gridiron of ‘runs’ (also called ‘ways’) and ‘laterals’ above a tank of water four feet deep. The runs are nine feet apart, the laterals twelve feet. Trapezes permit the players to swing sideways from run to run, but not from lateral to lateral. The central moat is eight feet wide and can be passed at either end, at the center, or jumped if the player is sufficiently agile. The ‘home’ tanks at either end of the field flank the platform on which stands the sheirl.

Players buff or body-block opposing players into the tanks, but may not use their hands to push, pull, hold, or tackle. The captain of each team carries the ‘hange’ – a bulb on a three-foot pedestal. When the light glows the captain may not be attacked, nor may he attack. When he moves six feet from the hange, or when he lifts the hange to shift his position, the light goes dead; he may then attack and be attacked. An extremely strong captain may almost ignore his hange; a captain less able stations himself on a key junction, which he is then able to protect by virtue of his impregnability within the area of the live hange.

The sheirl stands on her platform at the end of the field between the home tanks. She wears a white gown with a gold ring at the front. The enemy players seek to lay hold of this gold ring; a single pull denudes the sheirl. The dignity of the sheirl may be ransomed by her captain for five hundred ozols, a thousand, two thousand, or higher, in accordance with a prearranged schedule.

So essentially you’ve got a bunch of dudes with padded sticks swinging between platforms and knocking each other into a pool while they try to get to the other end of the field to denude the other team’s virgin cheerleader. The successful players get a bunch of cash.

Tell me that doesn’t sound awesome. Oh, apparently some Star Trek fan fiction has, ahem, borrowed hussade.

-Bushi