Illuminated Fealty Oath

So, in this, the days of the panda's panini pandemonium, life in the SCA has continued. We have a new set of royals in Calontir, but because this is indeed the panda's panini pandemonium and also January, my partner and I decided that we could not really afford to travel to coronations. Now, if you …

Breaking Byzantine: building a Byzantine persona for the SCA

This originated as part of building a basic persona guide, written for the Midrealm Pursuivant's Handbook (located here). Within that guide, I discussed the basic history of the Eastern Empire, as well as basic points of clothing, weaponry, literary references, political groups, religious information, as well as people within the Empire of note. This guide …

Broke Byzantine: making a sartorial riot happen on a budget

All too often, when the term Byzantine and the Eastern Roman Empire are brought up in re-enactment and recreationist contexts, especially in a clothing context, we think opulence and splendour. We think “guess I’ll have to mortgage my house” or “time to rob the bank to afford this look.” I’m here to say that no, …

Pomp and Splendor: what to do with your heraldic device once registered

Once you've registered your arms, there are a multitude of ways to display them, all which add to our game. While I'll be using my arms as an example, keep in mind that different shapes may work better (or worse) with your arms. When you work on your own ideas, sketch out your own arms …

Making Choices; or why Konstantia wore one outfit over another

Seriously. This is pretty close to what we had. I live just north of the green circle. Calontir Coronation was this weekend, and as is often the risk with midwestern kingdoms in January, we had the prediction of some pretty heinous weather. So not kidding - we had a winter storm warning issued that morning …

Byzantine Monograms: a heraldic practice

As an early-period Byzantine within the Society, I have come to grips that my arms and badges as registered with the College of Arms are perhaps not the most period for my persona, and so, this concept of trying to find a way of marking things that were mine or even blinging out things further …

SCA Philosophy Question Ahoy!

Since November 28, 2017, I’ve been asking my social media friends list (which, yes, comprises mostly of SCA folks) questions about SCA philosophy, SCA personae, and the like. Sometimes, the questions may have been a bit pointed, and sometimes, well, it’s curiosity. I know I’ve repeated some in my questions (as I’m going through the …

And after you ditch the donut. . . the bling!

My Byzanbestie, Anna of Anna's New Rome, just made a post about how anachronistic and frankly, terrible, the fabric donut is with Byzantine clothing.  You can read about it here, with this another part of our collaboration.  (TAG TEAM GO!) Of course, this led down the rabbit hole of what to do to further ornament …

Super-duper-humerals

One of the more puzzling things I've been researching have been superhumerals.  In the SCA, we have a tendency to make them out of fabric (because affordability), but I've now run into a second data point of what could be a superhumeral. For those who don't know what a superhumeral is, it is a collar …

De Ceremoniis

So, I sucked it up and decided that I could be poor a couple of weeks.  And so I purchased Byzantina Australiensia's new translation of De Ceremoniis so I could start building Byzantine ceremonies and researching things from the primary (or close to it) source document.  For those not in the know, De Ceremoniis is the book …