I don’t care that my fingers are bleeding. I don’t care that my retinas are in revolt from the unrelenting focus. I don’t even care that my vacuum is cranky with me for all the metal she now has to suck up. I have become a chainmail-making fiend. There is nothing that can be done about it, and it’s all Kingdom Come: Deliverance II‘s fault.
Late last year, GamesHub had the opportunity to pop over the bridge and attend a preview for the game. During this preview, we were treated to four things: a presentation from Warhorse Studios Global PR Manager Tobias Stolz-Zwilling, an interview (which you can read about here!), a medieval feast complete with a throne to sit on, and a station where you could learn to make chainmail.
Now don’t get me wrong, I was excited for all the activities presented to us. But when my eyes laid rest upon the chainmail table, something in me stirred, and I haven’t been able to get it to go back to sleep ever since. I’d thought about giving chainmail a crack before. As a fantasy nerd who loves a task, it seemed like a whole lot of fun. A finicky little task that occupies your entire attention and has good hand-feel? Sign me right up!
Until that very moment, I hadn’t had the chance. I’d always (incorrectly) assumed it was a fairly expensive hobby to pick up, that the learning curve would be too steep, that it wouldn’t be worth the risk of starting something that I may never see through. After all, as an ADHD gremlin, I’ve had my fair share of hobbies. I start one, purchase enough ancillary products and resources to practically make it a full-time job, get hyperfixated for a few days, then inevitably abandon them to the growing pile of forgotten projects in my office.
But this? This felt different. I spent a solid half hour at the chainmail table, learning how to construct a standard European 4-in-1 with practice rings beside GamesHub’s Content Lead, Leah J. Williams. And we struggled. We struggled a LOT. Both of us are reasonably crafty people, but even still, we managed barely a few loops together before the urge to rage-quit began to swell. Was my new life’s purpose over before it had even begun?
No, dear reader. I persisted, and in the end managed a decent string of loops before it was my time to head to the interview room. They gave us a small pack of (tiny!!!) rings to take home and practice with, and my mind swelled with arrogant dreams of making chainmail coifs and garments. Until I got home, opened the packet of tiny rings, and realised I was way out of my depth.
I disposed of the tiny rings, resigned to the fact that they were beyond my skill level, but the process still stuck in my mind. For months, I found myself thinking, “man, I don’t have anything to do, I want to make something…” and every single time, I had the floating image of a sheet of perfectly uniform chainmail drift into my mind.
Chainmail in the mail
In mid-January, I said “screw it” and bought a box of 1000 pre-cut, medium-sized rings online, as well as a couple of chainmail-specific pliers. I didn’t want to lean in too far to the ADHD resource hoarding trope, so I got the bare minimum (and everyone should be very proud of me for this, actually). When they arrived, the rings still looked pretty small, and I had to cop to the fact that this was just a skill issue.
I’ll be honest with you: that box lay dormant next to my couch for a while. Things looked dire – it seemed like they would go the way of the tiny rings, and the chances of the hobby being abandoned before I’d even begun had risen. I even started using the pliers for non-chainmail related plier duties – which, as it happens, is completely fine and not at all like a fabric scissors versus real scissors kind of issue.
But then a night came when I was sitting on the floor, stuck for something to do while I finished off my semi-regular re-watch of Gilmore Girls, and without thinking, I reached for the box of rings. With a hope, a prayer, a bucket of stubbornness, and a tab open on Google of “easy chainmail for beginners”, I got stuck in.
Making chainmail is hard. It requires a steady hand, clear vision, and an unrelenting patience because you WILL stuff it up repeatedly and it WILL drive you crazy. I went back to the European 4-in-1 pattern that Leah and I had learned originally, and set myself the goal of making at least two decent lines of consistent chainmail. At that point I didn’t care about turning them into sheets, or really turning them into anything – I just wanted to prove that I could do it at all.
After some intense fiddling, I made it work. Gradually, it began to make sense to both my head and my fingers. Where at the beginning I had to almost completely tune out Lorelai yapping to Rory in the background, by the end I was comfortably connecting loops while staring wistfully at Jess (objectively the best Gilmore Girls boyfriend, and yes, I am using my power for evil to say this in print).
I made two lines. Then four, then six. I made enough lines that I felt quietly confident that it was time to move on to bigger things. Granted, it still didn’t come easy at that point, but I’d managed to get myself into a solid rhythm – and as with any craft, that is the first step in developing consistency. Over the following days, I pushed the envelope, trying to do bigger pieces and learning how to properly connect them all to become the floating sheet that I’d imagined.
Okay, in fairness, it was perhaps not quite like the one I’d imagined, given that my mental image featured a sheet big enough to shield a fully-grown man, whereas my (still very impressive) attempt would perhaps shield the kneecap of a middling-height teenager. But it still counts!
Would you just look at that thing of beauty? We don’t need to go into how many hours of work it took to get me to that point, or how many times I swore, or how many times I dropped the entire thing and had to painstakingly lay it back out to sit in the exact working position I required.
Whenever I’d leave the house for work or activities, I found myself feeling excited to get home and work more on my little project – a feeling that I haven’t had with a lot of the other crafts that I’ve tried and abandoned. I spent my work days feeling motivated with the knowledge that I’d be able to reward myself with a fun activity in the evening. I sent an excessive amount of progress photos to my group chat, who were very supportive about the whole thing, despite my newfound inability to discuss anything else.
It’s safe to say I didn’t expect to find my new favourite hobby at a Kingdom Come: Deliverance II preview event. But despite the fact that I wasn’t immediately good at making chainmail (which is usually a mandatory element when I try something new), I’ve stuck with it, and can’t help but feel like I’ve stumbled upon something that is actually meaningful to me.
Read: Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 preview – Life in a medieval town
Famous last words?
I realise now that I’m painting the very image of a person who has hyperfixated so hard on something that burnout seems around the corner. And maybe it is! But whether it’s working on my piece or researching new patterns and techniques, this silly little hobby has brought me so much more joy than I anticipated, and the usual signs of slowing haven’t yet begun.
So now, despite the very real chance that my distracted brain might move on to the next big thing on a random Tuesday in April, I am resigned to the fact that (at least for the time being) my acrylics will be a little bit damaged on the edges. My fingers will be a little bruised. My lounge room will be littered with tiny loops of steel. I accept my fate, and who I am becoming.
Did I mention my ongoing New Year’s resolution was to make a knife? It’s funny, whether it’s a knife or armour, apparently my soul simply yearns for the blacksmith’s forge. And when the credits finally roll on Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, rest assured, I’ll still be working on my chainmail.
