I am a squire to His Grace Duke Thorin .

Back during the Winter of 1990 some friends of mine, that I met while I was attending community college, thought that I would love to try out a game that they both were involved in. They took me under a bridge that was near the University of Washington.

Much to my suprise I saw about 20 men and women dressed in armor wearing sheilds and hitting each other with sticks. Standing above this melee of people fighting was a man who was dressed in black and was watching the fighting intently. I later found out that the man that I had seen was indeed the King and his name was Thorin. This at the time did not mean a whole lot to me. All I saw were people fighting each other and I knew that I wanted to play too.

One thing led to another and soon I too was in armor and learning, the hard way, how to swing a sword and how to try and defend myself against others. The fighters who were there on my first night found some "loaner" armor for me to wear and I had, by this time, bought a helmet to use. Some of the assembled helped me into armor. I mistakenly thought that they were excited that a new person wanted to fight. In truth I was fresh meat!

So I stood on the practice field waiting to fight somebody. Soon enough there were plenty of people lined up to see how they compared to the "new guy". It turned out that all of them compared quite well! After about thirty minutes of beatings I decided to sit down and rest. About fifteen minutes after that a call was heard, MELEE, which was a call to all fighters to assemble on the practice field and prepare for a fight to the finish. There are no friends in a mele, it is every man and woman for themselves. The order to "lay on", which is equivilent to Start, was given and I stood there looking for a person to fight. All that I remember is that I saw a face suddenly appear in front of me smiling. I, shortly there after, took off the armor to find that the smiling person had effectively beaten me black and blue. Both shoulders, my back, under my arm, and both of my legs felt as if they wanted to fall off. I went home that night and, fortunately for me, soaked in my hottub for about two hours.

That was my first taste of SCA heavy fighting.

Since then I have had many fights, I have had many bruises, and I have loved it all. I now reside in the Kingdom of Artemisia, in the Shire of Crystal Crags. I just recently became the Heavy weapons Champion for the Shire. The one thing that I have found over the years is that it is good to have some sort of anchor to give your life a point of reference when all else is in chaos. The SCA gives me that anchor as I have found good people throughout the many lands and it gives one hope that there might still be a future.