[Northkeep] They changed the mission statement again

[Robert Fitzmorgan]

Greeting from Robert Fitzmorgan

Duchess Willow as asking about the vision or theme for Castellan,  Here is
how I remember things, ask someone else and you may get a different
version.

  Many years ago Northkeep did not have a recurring event.  In part this was
due to not having a good site.  There had been ongoing discussion about
starting a regular event and eventually Faucan and I volunteered to be the
autocrats, locate a site and out together an event.  We spent a lot of time
at Gwen and Richart's dining room table figuring out what we wanted to do
and what we wanted to call it.   While Gwen was not officially one of the
autocrat team, she was in on all the planning discussions and had as much
influence as anyone in the planning.  We were not sure at first what we
wanted, just that we wanted it to be different that all the other events
that all the groups around us were doing.  We decided that we wanted a
combined Martial, Arts and Sciences competition and that the winner would
have to excel at both.  I think that Faucan made the actual suggest of the
name Castellan but I may well be wrong about that.
  Now this sounds like the three of us came up with everything, but we were
discussing this with the Officers and Populace all the time and
incorporating their ideas into the event.  After all this time I do not
remember who came up with what.
   We had located a site, figured out the over all plan for the event and
were working on an event bid when the whole thing blew up in a great big
ugly mess.  The details are not important to the discussion.  The event was
put on hold till things calmed down.  About a year later William Blackfox
was chosen to autocrat the event, and he kept most of what we had come up
with and made a few changes where he thought they were needed.  He also took
the time to teach me how an event should be done, which was not particularly
important to the event, but was very important to me personally and my
future in the SCA.
   We had a general idea of a combined A&S / Martial championship, but it
lacked details.  If I recall correctly it was Livia and Talana who actually
figured out how to make that work.  I think Kevin might have been involved
in that as well as others, but memory fades.
   I believe that it was my suggestion that we require the Bard to compose a
new piece as the final of the Bardic competition.
  That event has a lot of meaning to me.  Learnign form William, entering my
first bardic competition and being chosen as one of the finalists, receiving
my AoA form Mikal and Rebekka,  Watching that amazing fight between Mikael
and Duke Jonathan, and receiving a piece of largess form Duchess Willow that
I treasured for many years.  That was the event where I figured out what my
niche was to be in the SCA for may years, I realized at that event that I
was a Bard.

   As I recall we had to tweak the event over the next few years till we had
worked out a few bugs, then it remained stable for a while.   After we
became a Barony Thorgrim and Sigen made a few changes that they kept in
place during their reign as Baron and Baroness, the biggest one being that
in order to be Castellan someone had to win at least three categories, at
least one each Arts, Sciences and Martial.  The result was that during that
time we had only one Castellan, Toniette.    After Ainar and Mercedes
stepped up as B&B they changed this so that we would have a Castellan each
year.

 I'm afraid I haven really kept up the last few years, so someone else will
have to fill in how things have been going lately,

Robert Fitzmorgan

-- 
It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we
do not dare that they are difficult.
Seneca

Fitzmorgan at gmail.com
AIM: fitzmorgan
Yahoo! ID:   robert_fitzmorgan