BARONY OF STERNFELD, THE MIDDLE – Shocked and horrified onlookers were forced to witness a spectacle never before seen in a Crown Tournament final this past weekend: Both competitors fought to what they decided was a “Draw” and mutually agreed to decide the outcome by increasingly harder cup shots, with only one left standing at the end, though likely irreparably damaged.
The finals, to be decided between Duke Fritz von Schmetterlingstrosse and newcomer and baby knight Sir Malcom Blakehalloc, were fought to an ugly draw when neither combatant could hit the other with a shot hard enough for the other to accept, with each claiming the other “just wasn’t getting there”. After a brief pause in the action, the two met alone at the center of the list and, after a short discussion, they threw down their shields and announced their intent to the marshals and populace. When the marshals approached the Crown, King Steffan Panzerschreck declared “I’ll allow it,” and the grim spectacle went on.
Each competitor hit the other firmly in the cup with increasingly more powerful shots, and more than a dozen spectators either passed out, vomited, or both, during the match. Local EMS was called, not for the finalists, but for the populace forced to witness the terrifying display. When asked for comment, the general consensus among the populace was something along the lines of “I mean, we really don’t want either of them reproducing, but this might be a little extreme, even for the Chiv.”
No word yet if the variance in the determination of the winner was allowed per the community standards.
RIDING OF HOLLEKE TOR, KINGDOM OF AETHER – When we came up with Good Garb Bingo, we had a discussion in the newsroom that we should make it the first in an occasional series. This week, we have the next installment: Tournament Bingo!
As it’s a long weekend for much of the Knowne World, with the first of the Large Events of the Summer, we hope you will enjoy this offering to keep you engaged with various types of marshal tournaments. We tried to not make it exclusive to either the rattan or fencing fields, but looking at the commonalities of both.
At the link below are 30 randomized bingo cards, with positive things to spot at a tournament. Just like Good Garb Bingo, we’ve made sure that you have spaces to write names, and we encourage you to use this when writing your award recommendations or at least familiarize yourself with the fighters in your area. Please feel free to share this post, download and print our bingo cards, and take to your next big tourney event.
Whatever you do, though, don’t shout “bingo!” in the third bout of the finals – the marshals may get upset at you.
BARONY OF HIGHLAND FOORDE, ATLANTIA – In a moment that stunned the Knowne World, a Laurel has entered and won Crown List in Atlantia with the weapons form of a center-grip shield and three-ring binder of poetry documentation.
Her Highness Isolde, OL, presented herself at the field prior to Crown list and was told that she could both enter and use her documentation as a weapon by the Kingdom Earl Marshal, a giraffe with a 12th century Welsh persona. She then proceeded to wield that documentation flawlessly, coasting undefeated to the finals, where she bested Sir Ourri d’Atainville to become the new heir to Atlantia.
“I don’t even know what happened,” Sir Ourri told us. “How do you just show up one day for your first fight ever, and be allowed on the field with a weapon that looks like a phone book. It’s not in any rules I know.”
One bystander was more excited. “She entered and just cleaned up,” we were told. “Every time ‘lay on’ was called, Her Highness walked up to her opponent and just started beating them over the head with her documentation until they called it. It was beautiful.”
Sir Ourri plans to contest the results based on the nonstandard weapon and unusual authorization, but The SCAllion (and Mistress Isolde) can find no violation of the rules and policy interpretations recently laid down by the Board of Directors and Society Earl Marshal.
Mistress Isolde said of her victory:
Shall I lambast thee on a summer day? With just a binder full of notes and songs? Woulds’t thou prefer a troubadorish lay For me to give thee all of thy kabongs?
Sometimes too hot the poet’s eye doth shine As scorn it heaps upon its fearsome foe So call your shots, man up, and do not whine And by a poet’s rhymings be laid low.
My blows shall rain upon thy helm like rain For nothing is so like itself as rain. And now you find yourself in dreadful pain Since rain,rain, rain, rain, rain is this quatrain.
So long as one can breathe or eyes can see Fall down, you’re dead, at least please take a knee.
The SCAllion shall continue to track Princess Isolde’s upcoming reign with great interest.
Atlantia has recently seen a succession of Crowns all belonging to a single household, with three of the five couples achieving their duchy. We sat down with the original duchess of the household, Her Grace Emmeline Neuburg, OL, to ask her how the household has managed seven consecutive reigns.
The SCAllion: Your Grace, the Neubergs have had seven reigns in a row, and today the seventh steps down from the throne. Duncan and Rhiannon are both members of the household, correct?
Emmeline Neuburg: Yes, they are. Duncan was my late husband’s squire, and Rhiannon is my apprentice.
S: How does it feel to be at the end of a four year run of your household supporting royalty?
EN: I think it has been very helpful to everyone in the household to understand exactly what it means to sit on the thrones before they fight in Crown, because we’ve all been very involved from the beginning. I’m just sorry that Michael passed away last spring and didn’t get to see our plan through.
S: Your plan?
EN: Of course. In many ways, this has been a culmination of both his training methods and my A&S project into appropriate period performance-enhancing supplements.
S: Can you explain further?
EN: I’m a Laurel now, but when Michael and I were first getting serious about Crown Tournament, I hadn’t found where I wanted to focus my research. Now, being a Queen is disruptive to actually getting research done, but after the first time, I decided I wanted to look at the work of women herbalists and midwives. I found one “recipe for soldiers” that I thought looked interesting, and made a batch to enter at Pennsic A&S. Well, Michael, bless his heart, grabbed the wrong bottle just before the field battle. He came back in sucha good mood and not at all tired!
S: So, the effect was to give him more energy?
EN: In so many ways. He’d fought in the front of every battle and said it was like he’d just finished warm ups. Of course, now I didn’t have an entry, but we’d found something worth knowing.
I kept refining the recipe, looking at other similar examples, and he used it before every Crown he fought in and won.
About 5 years ago, his former squires were starting to get really serious about Crown, so he stepped up the household practices and we talked about what it would look like to have a solid bloc of royalty with the same philosophy about reigning and the continuity we could bring. We had also never tried “Duke Juice” on anyone else!
S: This is when you brought the rest of the household in on your secret?
EN: it wasn’t really a secret, most people just didn’t believe it was a period recipe, or if it was, that it did anything! Getting the correct dosage such that someone gets the benefits but not the side effects has turned out to be a little trickier than we thought, but we experimented first at fighter practices, then events and war. It was at war when their ladies started coming to me too – it let them party half the night and still be up to go to 9am classes or volunteer all day.
At which point, the household got together and decided that we were going to see if we could put together a ruling bloc for long enough to effect real change in Atlantia.
S: What were your goals, then?
EN: Oh, making sure that most of the household got their peerages as soon as possible, and that we had fewer restrictions on the marshal orders. Some minor changes in law and policy- I can’t remember all of them now, we changed them over 3 years ago, and people have become accustomed to the new ways of doing things
S: I take it your entire household is on “Duke Juice”, then?
EN: Yes! At different dosages and concentrations, that’s a lot of what my research has been! I’ve refined the recipe, now it’s about the effects on a wider group! And, really, we wouldn’t have survived four years of always having someone on the thrones without something.
S: So, what’s in your Duke Juice?
EN: I mean, my research is entered in Kingdom A&S tomorrow, so I can tell you that it’s an alcohol extraction of arctic root, Siberian ginseng, hemp, valerian root, rose root, and willow bark. It helps with anxiety, pain, energy, and the ability to get things done! I am looking forward to seeing what the rest of the kingdom does with it!
CANTON OF MEADOWMARSH, DRACHENWALD: The SCAllion has received breaking news out of the Kingdom of Drachenwald: the kingdom populace has voted overwhelmingly to form a Parliament in response to a wildly unpopular knight winning its most recent Crown Tournament.
In the immediate wake of Sir Basil Thromby winning its most recent Crown Tournament, Drachenwald’s populace came to the unprecedented-in-the-SCA conclusion that the only way forward is to diversify the governing structures and form a Parliament.
Master Roderick Charles Uffington, the Kingdom Seneschal, elaborated: “Well, almost no one likes Basil, and frankly, he’s just not good Crown material. Let’s be honest, his reign would be an unmitigated disaster, and none of us want to be a part of that. So, the peerage circles all got together and discussed it, to try to find a way forward. We thought about forming an Icelandic style Alþingi but figured we’d need a variance for that, so we decided to use the later examples of the Swedish Riksdag and English Parliament. We already have a step up over the East Kingdom’s Runnymede, in that the Crown has to have read and agreed to follow Kingdom law. Now we’re having the changes we need read into law, and moving forward from there. We’ve already got a number of nominees from all ranks and disciplines, and we’ll be holding kingdom-wide elections in the coming weeks. We will likely meet virtually for a while, until we can all get our feet under us, then we’ll work toward in person meetings. The Kings can sit on their thrones, and give out awards all they want, but we’re not going to allow them to run this kingdom into the ground.”
Maistresse Alisoun du Calais, a spokesperson for the Masters of Defense, agreed with the Seneschal. “It is among the rights and duties of a peer of the realm to defend it against incompetence. This is why many of us will stand for election in the coming weeks, to counteract a King selected by right of arms.”
The SCAllion will continue to observe this rapidly changing situation, and will report on further developments as they emerge. Sir Basil couldn’t be reached for comment, and his household has made it clear they do not recognize any efforts to form a Parliament.
BARONY OF CALAFIA, CAID – Following recent scenes at Caid’s Crown Tourney, the Kingdom of Caid has decided to add a Television Match Official Marshal to future Crown Tournaments. A notable Caidan peer opined, “This change will allow future tournaments to be held without fear of missed shots or on-target unblocked shots. The TMO Marshal will be able to identify and encourage correctly shucked shots and thereby restore faith in the high honor and calibration of a Crown Tournament final.”
It is surmised that this knee-jerk response will do much to reassure members of the populace who have felt that Crown Tournament has become too soft in recent years.
It is reported that at least three Atlantian dukes have demanded an immediate ban on all video at Atlantian Crown Tournaments in reaction; however, none could be reached for coherent comment by press time.
ROYAL PROVINCE OF OSTGARDR, EAST KINGDOM – The East Kingdom has been split up, thanks to the divorce of a power couple from House Wombat and a modern judge who has had enough of their divorce proceedings.
Court documents obtained by the SCAllion show that Judge Roderick Vale ended their ruling with the statement, “I don’t know what this group is, and I don’t care. You are directed to split the group up between you in whatever way the group agrees to. I have enough contacts in non-profit law to force a division of this kingdom-thing, so make it happen. Now get out of my courtroom.”
Dame Rowan Langholm was happy to consent to an interview. “F that household. F the Southern Region. F that dirtbag. Actually, don’t. I want his d*** to fall off! What? Right. I’m so happy to be back in my home Barony of Carolingia! I’m also pleased that the SocSen was so expedient in dividing the kingdom per the court’s order. I’ll be queen by right of arms within a year. YOU HEAR THAT, YOU PIECE OF S***?! YEAH, F YOU!”
“It sort of reminds me of the bad blood between Æthelmearc and the East when Æthelmearc went kingdom. I think I am getting flashbacks,” says Thrune Oakhammer of Æthelmearc, “Oh no, wait, that’s my blood pressure medication.”
Johnnes Schwartzwald, a squire to Sir Michel Fernandez, both from Panther Vale, was ecstatic. “My knight might actually be able to make the final 16 in Crown! This is amazing!”
Members of House Wombat refused to comment directly, but we heard one comment as he walked away, “I’m just glad we don’t need to leave the Southern Region anymore.”
Miryam bat Avraham, seneschal of Tir Mara, didn’t find out about the change until sending quarterly reports: “What? Someone could have bloody well told us this was going on!”
An event is being planned to determine which half will retain the name and heraldry of the East.
SHIRE OF COLDEDERNHALE, NORTHSHIELD: The SCAllion was made privy to the Kingdom of Northshield’s plans to move forward with some various experimental, non-martial Crown Tournament formats over the next several Crown Tournaments.
Northshield’s Kingdom Seneschal expanded on this concept: “So, we’ve decided to try out a few new things in the selection of our next Heirs here in Northshield,” they said. “Their Majesties came to me and asked to put out some feelers and maybe come up with some alternatives to a fighting Crown, all theoretically, of course. We asked the Stallari Council for their suggestions, and their input for alternatives ranged from lawn darts, to blackwork, to Texas Hold ’em, and my personal favorite, cornhole! We’re still looking into other options, of course, but I’m pulling for cornhole, not gonna lie.”
None of Northshield’s Chivalry could be reached for comment, but liquor stores kingdom-wide were rapidly selling out of anything on the shelves.
the SCAllion 
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