2016 Duties and the Reasons I Didn’t Make Much Stuff

The first 7 months of 2016 had me exceedingly busy with the last quarter or so of my position as Lochac Historian. For the first 3 months, I was the Baronial Chronicler for Politarchopolis. For the first 6 months, I was Skrifakona (writer/documenter) to the Crown.

From January to July, I was working on six primary things:

  1. Publishing monthly newsletters for Politarchopolis,
  2. Drafting and publishing missives on behalf of King Gilbert and Queen Bethony,
  3. Co-Stewarding Great Northern War,
  4. Finalising Lochac’s History Report,
  5. Rowany Festival History Display, and
  6. SCA 50 Year.

The SCA’s 50th anniversary was very important to me and I wanted to ensure Lochac was adequately represented despite geographical challenges in getting there, and as such I diverted most of my creativity and energies into delivering that representation. The other roles were also relatively high-demand and certainly kept me out of trouble.

Let’s not even talk about how I heralded for both Crown Tourneys (including setting up and improving on the heralding system for each), helped other people finish various projects, and how I’m now the bookings and annunciator (comms/advertisement) officer for Lochac’s biggest event scheduled for 2017, Rowany Festival 😉

As such, I have admittedly produced way less arts and sciences related things than I usually do in the SCA during this time. Having said that, boy did I do all the things and this is the recap (for the first 7 months, anyway).

My fingers are twitching for projects, that’s for sure, so I’ll hopefully get back to our regularly scheduled programming of making all the things ™ again in 2017 🙂

Publishing monthly newsletters for Politarchopolis

Overall, I served as Baronial Chronicler for 12 months. The final 3 months were Jan-Mar 2016.

In this time, I published one Griffintayle publication per month and made them available on the Baronial website.

I am very proud of what I achieved in this time – I re-designed the newsletter inspired by the first two documented newsletters, and later received a commendation for my hard work in the Society-Wide Newsletter Awards.

Drafting and publishing missives on behalf of King Gilbert and Queen Bethony

From January to July, I served as Skrifakona (writer/documenter) to King Gilbert and Queen Bethony.

During this time, I:

It was a fun role, I must say.

Co-Stewarding Great Northern War

Great Northern War had somewhere in the vicinity of 250 attendees for a 3.5-day weekend event. It is one of the biggest events in Lochac, it’s held in early June each year in the Northern Reaches (Brisbane), and it’s my favourite Lochac event to date.

As such, I was more than happy to work with Baroness Josseline to Co-Steward the event.

My role in this involved:

  • General administration,
  • Officer co-ordination,
  • Website updates,
  • Responding to general enquiries,
  • Timetable Co-ordination,
  • Advertisement, and
  • Steward on duty for a full day.

Also, as is tradition, I helped cook one of the breakfasts.

It was a lot of work by a lot of people, it took up a lot of my time, and I think it went well.

Finalising Lochac’s History Report

I spent the first month or so of 2016 editing the 20,000+ words I had written about Lochac’s history down to around 10,000 words (as requested by the co-ord team) and edited the two page summary. I also enlisted a team of different people to help edit the content, order, and logic of the report, which was ridiculously helpful.

Deadlines were met and the Lochac History was published in the SCA 50 Year booklet.

Copies of these documents are available here:

Rowany Festival Display

At Rowany Festival, which was 2 months prior to SCA 50 Year, I put up the 50 Year display for Lochac for two purposes; as a trial run for SCA 50 Year to see everything that had been made and collected all together, and to show the history of Lochac to the populace to marl SCA 50 Year in-Kingdom. The display was coupled with Mistress Katherine Kerr’s work in getting the Knowne Worlde Tapestry to travel to Lochac, which made a beautiful addition to the display at Festival. The display was rather well received – I initially had the display open for 2 hours but extended it another hour due to popular demand. I also had people lament missing it.

rowany-lochac-display

Lochac’s 50 Year Display at Rowany Festival 2016.

SCA 50 Year

At SCA 50 Year, I had such a wonderful time that words are barely adequate. Every minute I was there, I was filled with the contagious enthusiasm of everyone in attendance, and I got to meet some of the most thoughtful, sweet, hard-working, and talented people.

Some Lochac-related highlights for me were:

  • Baron Sir Callum and I representing Lochac with a giant banner in both opening and closing ceremonies of the event, decked in our finest.
closing-ceremony

Baron Sir Callum Macleod and myself (Ceara Shionnach) at SCA 50 Year (Indiana, USA) Closing Ceremonies, representing the Kingdom of Lochac.

  • The reactions to the history display at SCA 50 Year in Indiana (USA). I was so worried that I wouldn’t have enough items to fill a stall or show off Lochac adequately, but boy was I wrong. Thanks to Baron Sir Callum and Mistress Rowan Perigrynne, between the three of us we transported enough things to cover the entire display in finery. The crowd reactions were priceless – many couldn’t believe we had gotten so much stuff across the sea in our luggage and enjoyed finding out about the unique traditions and history of Lochac.
sca-50-year-display

Mistress Rowan Perigrynne and Baron Sir Callum Macleod at the Lochac Display at SCA 50 Year (Indiana, USA).

  • During the Queen’s Equestrian Competition, which involved the Known Worlde Queens in attendance competing in chariot games, I was invited to represent Lochac in lieu of present Royalty (as they were unable to travel so far). I had the privilege of riding a chariot from the Kingdom of Caid, driven by a miniature horse known as Angel of the Tiny Hooves (now, Primis Equiis Caidis – First Horse of Caid). The Mighty Stead and I managed to place SECOND in the competition, and it was ever so much fun to represent Lochac that way!
horse-games

EQUESTRIAN GAMES!!! 😀

  • Mistress Rowan Perigrynne and I were invited to sing songs on behalf of Lochac for a Kingdom Anthems video. To represent Lochac I chose to sing Uislenn by Dona Silfren the Singer, Squires by Llewen the Unruly, The Foxy Song (made popular in Lochac by Llewen the Unruly and Bethan Daniels of Brockwood), and You Should Never Push a Laurel by the Hermanites.
  • By permission of the Crown, I had the honour of serving as Lochac’s ambassador at the event. Conveniently, I was also Skrifakona to the Crown (writer/documenter) and Kingdom Historian. As such, I passed on missives and gifts I prepared or had commissioned to the Crowns of the West and Caid (in honour of Lochac’s Parent Kingdoms) and the Middle Kingdom (as hosts of SCA 50 Year). The missives and gifts were well received and appreciated by all, and I got to bring back gifts from several Crowns to the Crown of Lochac (presented at Midwinter Coronation in Rowany in court – which was also a bunch of fun due to the awed responses from the populace).

Historian Reflection

I had *the best time* as Lochac Historian. It was probably evident by my prolific writing and publishing of articles, but I enjoyed finding out about the roots of our Kingdom and felt so privileged to represent Lochac for such an historic occasion. I stepped down because my warrant was up and, also, I needed a break from the intensity and enthusiasm I was inflicting on myself (it can’t go on indefinitely). I enjoyed the role so much that I am even considering taking it on again sometime in the future (after a long break) – who knows!

I’m exceedingly proud of everything I accomplished, including:

  • Raising the profile of Lochac’s history within the Kingdom and the Knowne Worlde,
  • Added over 130 web pages to the Memories of Lochac website, and significantly updated the content of a further 68 existing web pages (I had to apply to increase storage capacity of the website twice to keep up with content). This content was well received, as evident by the website traffic statistics; Traffic to Memories of Lochac has increased from an average of 90 hits per month (over the 22 months prior to my tenure), to an average of around 1,800 hits per month during my tenure as Historian,
  • Manually backed up key webpages from Memories of Lochac into the Wayback Machine, and began the process through masonry to have some kind of auto-backup applied to the website,
  • Liaised with the West Kingdom Historian Baron Hirsch to help him complete the Lochac-related history of the West Kingdom for his submission to the SCA 50th anniversary (and to correct inaccuracies on Lochac’s history on the West Kingdom History Website),
  • I photographed the vast majority of Lochac’s regalia (current and old) and award tokens (and tracked down photos of some of the older stuff I couldn’t get access to), making them available on Memories of Lochac,
  • I enthused others to submit history items for publication, such as older Reign summaries, the Drachenwald Ambassador information, the Meet the Chivalry information, etc,
  • Actively represented Lochac on two Chairs for the SCA 50th anniversary activities – the written history publications and the Kingdom display,
  • For the Kingdom display, I:
    • Commissioned Mistress Branwen, current Provost of Scribes (from Aneala) to design and create (with a team of her choosing) scrolls depicting the arms of all royalty of Lochac (including pre-Kingdom), as well as all Peers they made up to that point. The result is a 12 foot Crown Principality and Principality scroll, and an 8 foot Kingdom scroll that will be used in the Lochac display.
    • Wrote successful funding bids and sought designs for creating a banner to headline the display (currently under creation by THL Elizabet Hunter).
    • Commissioned Mistress Bethan to put together a 50th anniversary of the SCA
    • Started gathering physical historic items of Lochac (such as the second and currently unused Sword of State) for the display.
    • Actively been working with the Rowany Festival 2016 stewards, and Mistress Katherine Kerr, to dedicate some time and space to Lochac’s historical display/activities in honour of SCA 50.
    • Have been writing copious funding bids (two of three successful so far) to fund the creation and delivery of Lochac’s 50th display.
    • Engaged Mistress Katherine Kerr and Lady Isabel Winter to create woodprint style and leather bound versions of Lochac’s written history (three copies – one for Lochac and one as a gift from the Kingdom to the West Kingdom and Caid – our two parent Kingdoms).
  • I was head chair in two displays – one at Rowany Festival in Lochac, and one at the SCA 50 Year event in the Kingdom of the Middle. I enlisted three others to assist in the display at SCA 50 Year. I received much positive feedback and engagement during both displays.
  • Proactively sent photos and updates to the SCA wide Facebook media to ensure Lochac was represented in their weekly updates and Throwback Thursday posts. I devised these posts for three primary purposes – to keep track of current history in the making, to share the current goings on in Lochac with the sparse geographic regions of the Kingdom (to enable everyone in the Kingdom to engage), and as another backup source for Lochac’s history uinformation. These posts were well received (I had *many* comments to that effect) and live (or near-live) updating from events is now becoming a relatively normalised way of sharing information in Lochac.
  • I was able to use history research to actively update *many* entries in Canon Lore (through the Rocket Herald) – including missing dates, event names, Baronial Tenures, etc,
  • I compiled and made publicly available various statistics on Lochac Crown Tournaments, Royalty, Membership, and Authorisations.

I wonder what adventures 2017 might bring!