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[SCA] war practice
New since last Pennsic: they finally put a traffic light at the end of the exit ramp from I-79N onto Route 422. Yay! That left turn (onto an often-busy 55MPH road) is the worst part of my drive to Pennsic. (The left turn out of the campground is the worst part of the drive home. No, I didn't get that lucky. :-) ) There seems to be some small amount of development along that stretch of 422; there is another (new) light before getting to the campground, at what used to be an open field sometimes occupied by a farmers' market, and now occupied by a gas station, a McDonald's, and a Subway. Hmm. If they add a beer outlet and grocery store, the two weeks of Pennsic business might pay for the rest of the year.
I attended part of the artisans' forum, where people display their work and are supposed to stay at the table so they can talk to folks about it. (This is different from most arts-and-sciences displays in the SCA, where you just leave your stuff and your documentation on a table all day.) The turnout was smaller than I expected, but there was interesting stuff.
I figure an artisans' forum has done its job for me if I learn about one new-to-me area. This time it was glass. The baron of Delftood talked with me about the stained glass he had on display, showing me the tools he had made to work with it and describing every step of the process. The way you get sheets of glass surprised me: to make a flat piece of glass, he said, the medieval glass-maker first blows something that looks like a bottle, and then cuts it lengthwise and flattens it out while it's still hot enough to do that. I had assumed that molten glass was poured into sheets. I had also assumed that when forming a leaded glass window, the lead was hot and maleable. In fact, the lead is cold; you place the glass and the lead and then solder the joints. The solder (an alloy) has a lower melting point than the lead, so this works without deforming anything.
At the end of the forum there was an apprenticing ceremony for a friend -- Hraefna, an accomplished scribe, was to become apprenticed to Master Broom, a Laurel. Her persona is Viking-age Icelandic and his is 14th?-century English, and they managed to use elements of both. The contract was his wording (she calligraphed it); the legal maneuverings were reminiscent of Icelandic law. Noted in passing: the contract calls for Broom to pay her five pounds of gold florins in a year. We'll come back to this.
Now, the big secret that most of us knew, but Hraefna did not, was that she was going to be served a writ to be elevated to the Laurel that night at court. I don't know which came first, that knowledge or the plan for the apprenticeship. In the last week there has been a fair amount of behind-the-scenes angst (which I eventually got pulled into) about the writ ceremony and the vigil to follow. (For non-SCA folks, if any are still reading: the usual pattern is that you are served notice that you are being invited into the peerage (highest award the SCA bestows), you have a vigil where peers and sometimes others come and give you advice while you mull it over, and you return at a later date to say "yes" (usually) or "no, thanks" (very rarely). Assuming you said yes, there is then an elevation ceremony.)
The usual way a writ is given is: the royalty call you into court, say "hey, you're good" (etc), and then issue a document (the writ). That's SCA-typical but not very consistent with a Viking persona, and one of the factors in her elevation is her Viking research, so people set out to do something else. I wasn't involved in that planning, so I saw it when everyone else did. (In retrospect, that was unfortunate -- I received an eleventh-hour request to be first speaker at the vigil, which was going to follow the form of a Viking Thing and which I was involved in discussing, and what I hastily prepared turned out not to fit the scenario, so I had to dump that and wing it.)
The court business was kicked off by another peer entering court and announcing a suit against Broom, Hraefna's (new) master, alleging (essentially) that he's taking advantage of her or holding her down, and she deserves to be a freewoman. Broom defended the apprenticeship; a funny part I remember went something like "apprentices are not like fresh bread; they don't just pop up after a few hours!" -- then, turning to Hraefna, "sit down!". The resolution was that the royalty would judge the case at a particular event next month, and people took Hraefna away to counsel her.
I thought this was an interesting idea that set the right mood but didn't quite work in some key ways. First, the challenge did not come from another Laurel and it really should have. (The challenger did not really have standing under either SCA or Icelandic law as I understand it.) Second, it sets up a situation where somebody has to, at least nominally, argue against elevating Hraefna; were I the candidate I would find that uncomfortable, since the usual meme is "we all agree you're ready; will you join us?". Years ago I was involved in another Viking peerage ceremony that was also built around a suit; in that case, though, the suit was brought against the king, saying he had been remiss in his duties to his subjects. That fits my SCA sensibilities much better. And third, this somehow ended up with Hraefna being charged to show up and bring witnesses, but she is not one of the principals of the suit, so that's a bit of a head-scratcher for me.
But other than that, it was a good send-off and, near as I can tell given that she was shell-shocked at the time, Hraefna either liked it or did not notice the things I thought were flaws. The elevation is in late June, so now that she knows, there is time for her to have input into the final ceremony.
The Thing was set up with group seating; people would come in, make public declarations (like at the Althing), and then (SCA convention) speak privately with Hraefna if either wanted that. Historically, what you did at the Althing was to discuss law and its application; the typical SCA vigil is more personal advice-giving and greeting. This approach worked well to separate the public and private aspects to the extent that people grokked that. Some did, some didn't, but enough did that I think Hraefna enjoyed it. Kudos to the organizers for pulling this off.
I used to have a Viking persona, before my current one, so the specific request I received was that Ellisif be first speaker at the Thing, to try to set the mood. So right after court I ran to change into suitable clothes, and then I got to walk into the vigil tent and say that I've been away and only just returned. :-) Another SCA convention is to have a book at the vigil in which people can write advice; I think that's a great idea, because I'm sure the candidate forgets 90% of what is said at the vigil in all the excitement. (I know that happened to me. There was no book convention when I became a peer; I wish there had been.) So, trying to stick to persona somewhat for the Viking stuff, I wrote advice from both Ellisif and She'erah. (I went for facing pages. I hope she notices and gets a laugh out of it.)
At the vigil, Dani pointed out to Broom that this was an expensive apprenticeship -- five pounds of gold florins is a lot of gold, and he didn't even get the full year of her services. His reply: "Did you hear 'florins'? That might have been what was meant, but an error seems to have crept in and the contract actually says 'fleurs'." :-)
In the afternoon I went, with an apprentice and camp-mate, out to
the trailer-storage area to inspect the Pennsic house. It was
raining, so we did not do as much as we had planned, but we checked
on the most urgent matter. When we got back to the main part of
the event we ducked into the "troll" (gate) tent for a while to
wait out the increasingly-hard rain; he had been working there
earlier, and we chatted with some of the folks who were still
there. The gate had closed mid-afternoon (this was well-publicized,
though I saw two unhappy people get turned away anyway), so they were
just hanging out and putting things away. It sounds like
war practice, like Pennsic, is reliably attracting tourists who
don't know anything about the SCA but have heard about the party,
or something like that.
When the rain stopped I walked back to the barn (where the forum
had been and court would be), where I ran into Rufina. Several
years ago Rufina came up with a brilliant fund-raiser for the
kingdom: inspired by the Harry Potter books (and I think the first
movie had just come out), she made up trading cards for some of
the peers, each card packaged with a chocolate frog and
sold for a dollar. This was a huge hit, complete with some
rare cards and people trying to collect the whole set. It was
also a ton of work for her (and remember, she's donating all
the proceeds), so she eventually stopped. Now, though, she is
back with new cards (and 500 pounds of chocolate for the frogs),
and she was selling them at the event.
(So, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
tangerinpenguin, if you did manage that complete
set, I guess it's not complete any more.)
Most events are held on Shabbat, when I don't do business. (Yes, yes, there are other Shabbat issues involved in going to events, including that I got into the car to get there. I am not perfect, but that's not a reason to be lax on things I do get right.) I had completely forgotten about this until she reminded me, but on some non-Saturday (probably at Pennsic) many years ago, I had given her a pile of money with the instruction "give me cards on Saturdays when you think of it, until this is gone". And, apparently, there was money left in the account, so I was able to get some new peer cards. :-) As a bonus, since my small card collection is always in my bag at events, I was able to trade duplicate of old cards for new cards when new buyers got dups. To the newcomers they're all new cards, but those dups are the result of my having already traded with my friends as much as I could.
I heard the by-now-widespread news from the Midrealm, that (through unusual circumstances) the king had let his corporate membership lapse for three days, so the Board of Directors ended the reign (per corporate law). I disagree with that law, but the text is clear so they were pretty much forced into it. (Now we will see if the BoD is interested in addressing this class of problem...) The king and queen had just stepped up and not yet held their crown tournament, so this left the kingdom with no one elligibile to rule, so they appointed a regent. Today I learned the solution they came up with: on the morning of crown tourney, an hour before the tourney to choose the people who will step up in the fall, there will be another tourney, the winner of which steps up immediately. The person who was briefly king, and who has since fixed his membership problem, is elligible to enter, as are any other original entrants who choose to do so. Presumably, no one else will enter, and his reign will be restarted. Clever!
There were people I expected to see at war practice and did not; either
they weren't at the event or the rain prevented the casual encounters
that otherwise would have heppend. I was hoping to see
rani23 (I know she was there) and dagonell.
Bummer.
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So it's actually five pounds of gold fleurs? That's a *lot* of daisies...
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