Life is about to change in a dramatic way at my house: we just closed on a new one. All the normal stresses and uncertainties that come with buying a new house and moving are in full tilt in our lives. In addition, my wife and I are also looking at a major lifestyle change, one that when it was originally pitched I blurted out. “I know nothing about any of that. I can’t image how that would work” Read More »

Lack of Control
by
Gebhard Rauten

Inspiration: Gebhard Rauten has only recently come to learn of Krampus. He has been infatuated with the demonic Santa counterpart ever since.

Krampus offers a rare gift, greater than any wooden horse, gold coin or any other present. Krampus offers something unique and special, a second chance. He cuts through poor life choices, arrogance and rationalizations to come to the truth of the matter and gives an opportunity to turn life around. If that makes him an angel or a demon I suppose will depend on which side of the fence you’re on.

Background: Captain Bran is part of a medieval reenactment group that has a tournament of some sort or another nearly every weekend. On the weekend of this story, he and his friend drove nearly 8 hours to take part in an event. Part way through, they stopped for some sleep. Overnight, someone stole his helmet out of his friend’s car who he’d been riding with.

Sometime after Bran arrived at the event without his helm, the following message was posted on Reddet.

“Last night someone broke into my mom’s car, rifled through her glove box and left a heavy, dirty brown knapsack in her front seat. Her first thought was ‘there’s a human head in there’ because apparently the bag smelled very badly.

When she finally opened the bag, she found an old Medieval helmet with chainmail. No one in my family knows what to make of this, especially considering they didn’t break into the car violently. Creepy!”

His helmet had been found a couple houses away on the same side of the street, in a similar car. Bran was able to recover it before returning home.

That is what we know. I will now fill in what we did not.

It was a cold, dark night as Ty walked along the side of the road between rows of houses. He could see his breath hang in the air, and he wrestled with the thoughts in his mind. He always had a lot on his mind these days. Read More »

Like most people a few years after they join the SCA, I decided I wanted my kit to look better. In asking for advice, I was asked “What do you want to look like?” I would say, “I don’t know for sure, but I know I want to look good.” I was putting a lot of time and effort into the SCA. I wanted to at least die looking good on the field.

It’s taken many years to get my kit to where it is, and it will likely take many more to get it to where I would like it to be. Read More »

A short time ago, two of my good friends got married. This week they are off on their honeymoon. For those who know Scott and Jennifer, this comes as no surprise, even a blind man could see how crazy there are for each other.

As I sat in my 3 piece suit waiting for the bride the enter, my thoughts turned to the most obvious thing to think about at a wedding, Is it an open bar? Then after that, I thought the next obvious thing, Vikings.  (I’m sure anyone in the SCA often thinks about Vikings.)

I wondered if I had giving them my Viking wedding pitch? Maybe by posting my idea here, I can convince one of my readers to one day have a Viking wedding. Read More »

What is it that makes an event work? How are they governed? What does the money they make go for? Why didn’t anyone check with me about those things?

These are all good questions to ask. I know when I joined the SCA, it seemed to me like it was a HUGE organization with vast resources and structure. I was told it was like the Boy Scouts but for adults but with a medieval theme. Somewhere after my first year, I started to see patterns in how things worked and I noticed flaws, and I had ideas that would fix all the problems. Read More »

Youth activities only happen, because we have amazing people how are willing to put them on. People who work very hard, and put allot of their own resources in without return to provide children with something fun to do.  As rewarding as it can be, we are always in need of more help.

I’ve gotten a number of questions recently about youth activities, and the rules around them. I’m posting answers to a number of common questions. Read More »

There is a fighter whom I shall call Fitz. Fitz is a figment of my own imagination, however Fitz’s story may sound familiar. At some point, we have all likely been Fitz.

Fitz attends a fight practice with 6ish fighters on a good week. There is a local knight who is semi-active.

On Fitz’s first night, he was taught the basic blows. In a short time, Fitz also picks up wrap shots. Fitz comes every week to practice and fights hard and wants to win every fight. Fitz has some natural speed and after about a year wins a novice tourney.

However, the next few years come and go without Fitz winning any other tournaments or receiving any other fighting awards. There have been improvements over the last some-odd years, mostly in defense since those are automatic responses gained from helm time. But nothing radical. Fitz has stalled, and it seems like Fitz’s skills will forever remain somewhere over novices and beneath GOA level fighters. Read More »

A few weeks ago, I was working with some of our new fighters.  While we were sparring, they seemed stressed and were throwing wild shots. I called hold, and suggested we take a deep breath. We’re all friends, and while we are here, we don’t need to practice winning. We are here to work on skills.

Shortly after I said this, memories came back to me of a time when others said the very same thing to me.  In a correspondence to a friend nearly 9 years ago, I had the following to say:

“Sir Diglach (Sir Dilan at the time) continues to advise me to “not try to win at practice” and to focus on building skills.  Winning or losing at practice doesn’t matter, he says. I respect Sir Diglach’s wisdom on this. This advice is all around perplexing to me, and I’m not sure how to interpret it.

I don’t understand how trying to lose will improve skills. I’m already good enough at losing. It’s the winning I need to get better at”. Read More »

Sometime ago, someone told me the SCA is no place for children, that they should be left at home, and the SCA was fun adult time, children get in the way and spoil the fun.

Someone else responded, “Maybe so, but if you have men and woman, then it won’t be very long until you have children.”

The SCA is one of the largest re-enactment organizations in the world.  I think this is because our rules are pretty abstract. We only require someone make an attempt at a period outfit to play. This allows to the SCA to be many things to many different people. To me, it’s always been something I could do with my children.

It is my goal to do what I can to make the SCA fun for everyone of all ages. Read More »

In digging around doing research for a different project, I ran into some old writings of mine. They are from what was my MySpace page from year I started in the SCA. For those who do not know, MySpace was once an uglier version of Facebook or G+.  Only we didn’t know it was ugly at the time, since nothing better was out yet.

Within the internets past, I found the words from my very first event, Ceilidh XIX. I wasn’t even authorized to fight yet (that happened at Baron Wars a week later). Read More »