[Bards] No sugar why the college was killed

[Cisco Cividanes]

>I know Duke 
>Seamus told me that he thought the College should not be under the 
>Queens, but under the Kings.

How very...period,  sadly enough. 

>Willow 

To Willow and all the bards out there who are keeping up with this, allow me to speak from my relatively new perspective.

The conversation of late leads me to some important questions, thoughts, and ultimately desires. While these may have been covered before, please, I beg patience, there IS a lot of information out there anmd I cant recall all of it with 100% clarity.

Questions:

1) What will the college change for me as a day-to-day bard in the north? 

At the moment I research material on my own, I practice on my own (though this is of my choosing, we have several great bards up north who have offered to help me with that), and I perform what I choose based on my research.  

Will such a college provide me with more resources, opportunity or source materials? Will it help me stay in contact with other bards in any way different from the current E-mail list?

2) What power would the college have? If the kings did indeed argue for control of it, there must be value to it's assistances, even if only symbolic.

3) What type of administrative weight are we talking about? Will costs be trivial or considerable? How many offices will were they before?

Thoughts:

1) I too am skeptical of the suggestion that the simple existence of the college was the reason for high attendance major bardic events.

2) I am hesitant to resurrect a model from a decade or more past. The kingdom has changed considerably since I arrived, I seriously have to wonder how well the current crop of bards and potential bards would deal with an administrative system that existed under different circumstances entirely. 

3) what type of knowledge base do we have left. Willow has made it clear that she remembers the times of days past when the college was in existence, but who else does. Is there enough written information and personal experience to revive the Bardic legacies each of you are talking about? And of that group of people, how many can travel and teach and lecture? 


Desires:

1) I do want to see some structure built as a support system for bardic.

2) I do want to learn skills like better Persona play, which I was told, rather directly, was NOT the charge of the bards by an individual. 

3) I want to see a system where Bad bards are allowed to practice before other bards, and given the chance to improve, rather than unleashing themselves on a competition cold.

4) I would like to see a common online, centrally available, depository of both bardic pieces and reference materials, a bardic library if you will.

5) I would like to see some system set up where bards, even if only on an unofficial, unrecognized level, are offered regalia that would denote them for their strengths(story, song, poetry, history...)

6) I want to see a resurrection of inter group bardic challenges where the champion bards face each other in a friendly but public settings.



That about covers it. I know some of my things are pie in the sky, and some of my things are pretty off the wall, but thats my mindset at the moment. I'm not saying that we have to do all this now, or online, or even officially, some of this can be handled by talking to local admin. by ourselves. But still, these are what is on my mind.

Ivo Blackhawk