Once again here I am. A long period of time has passed since I last posted. Between school and the SCA my life has been rather busy. Last quarter was horrible for me. School sucked so much energy from me that I had no desire left to write about anything. Basically I spent all last quarter with my nose buried in an algebra book. I still failed. Well actually I received a “D” for my Herculean effort but in regard to my degree, I receive no credit; so for all intent and purpose, I failed. This quarter is much better.

I had originally planned to not talk about the SCA here, but like every other person that engages in that particular form geekdom; I too will waste bandwidth and blather about my favorite hobby, although at this point I almost have to call it a lifestyle or perhaps at least a subculture.

At this year’s rather surreal Pennsic War, I received the accolade of Knighthood within the Society. Knighthood is the highest level fighting award one can achieve within the SCA. My knight, His Grace Logan delivered my buffet. HRM Sinclair dubbed me, and now I am a knight. (Right click / save target as http://ebonwoulfe.com/images/video/brian%20knighting.wmv ) What the hell that means I am not really sure. I am of very mixed feelings about the whole thing. It is a very big deal and yet at the same time it means absolutely nothing. To quote an old saw, “A peerage and a buck fifty won’t get you a cup of coffee.” To be a knight in the SCA means a lot of different things to a lot of different people and if you ask 50 knights what a knight is, you will get 50 different answers. I suppose my first step is to figure out what it means to me. I know this much though, I count myself privileged to be considered a peer by the Order of Chivalry of the Kingdom of Atlantia. One of the best pieces of advice I received on my vigil was “Just keep doing what you have been doing. You are being Knighted because of who you are now not what you might become. And above all have fun”

I find it very strange that I have been willing to sacrifice my body and invest so much time and effort, and will continue to do so, for a game that, at its most basic, is just a bunch of grownups dressing up in really out of date clothing and beating each other senseless with rattan. But somehow out of this strange hodgepodge of Victorian Arthurianism, historical reenactment, and Jugger ( Big geek points if you know what I am talking about, uber-geek points If you saw it in the theater http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094764/ ) We manage to create a place where the romance and Ideals of a bygone age can flourish. Where people can be inspired to be something more than themselves, Valhalla made manifest, and to paraphrase the Bard, where no man is ne’er so vile that he cannot be gentled and called my brother. In the SCA we tend to make our fantasies a little more concrete than most.