Friday, April 16, 2010

Greetings to Our Wonderful Barony!


We would like to thank everyone for helping make our Investiture such a memorable day. We will strive to be worthy of representing Nottinghill Coill as we travel abroad these next few months. During this next month we will be attending Coronation, Feast of the Dragon and Crown Tourney. May will find us at Hawkwood's Baronial Investiture, Feast of the Saints and Hidden Mountain's Baronial Birthday.

With two events in the Barony, we are looking for award recommendations so we may recognize the fine work of our populace. We are also looking forward to meeting with the scribes of Nottinghill Coill at Feast of the Saints and their work in the Scribal Blanks Competition.

As the weather has improved, our fighter practices have grown in quantity and quality. Our strength as a Barony will surely be seen at War of the Wings this fall. We will look forward to organizing and training at the Baronial War Practice in Ritterwald this September. Fight safe and have fun!

Yours in Service,
Geldamar and Etain, Baron and Baroness of Nottinghill Coill

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Baronial Populace Meeting 2/27

Greetings to the Populace of Nottinghill Coill, from the Baronial Seneschal, Baron Takeda Yoshinaka,

Notes from the Baronial Populace Meeting held on Saturday 2/27 at BB&I.

1. The need for MORE sites.
We need to explore Our Barony and Cantons and find suitable sites for Events. Please send Site finds through your local Seneschals.

Idea: Site Directory:
I will speak with the Baronial Webminister about setting up a list of all known
sites that are currently used in the Barony.
Example: (this is the current site for most events held in St. Georges)
Site: Pickens County Shrine Club, 831 Griffin Mill Rd., Pickens, SC 29671,
Contact the St. Georges Seneschal, Lord Brandon Caiside: bcaiside@yahoo.com

2. Baronial Activities:
a. Newcomers Demo (ie the Demo hosted by Elphin and Delia last June)
b. Fall Collegium (Need a suitable for site with Classrooms)
c. Try It days (try NEW activities, foods, A&S, etc.)
d. Fighter workshops
e. A&S workshops and classes

Please feel free to contact me with any and all ideas or questions.
Contact: barontakeda@yahoo.com

I will try to hold Baronial Populace Meetings at Canton Events through the coming year as schedules allow. As always I remain......

In Service to the Dream,
Baron Takeda Yoshinaka
Seneschal, Nottinghill Coill

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Luminaries Illuminated: Lord Ivar Ulfsson


I came into the world as the son of a dancer named Keomi Boshengro of Kumpania Ari Bosh, and a Scandinavian lord-turned-rover named Turin Ulfsson. The Rom are usually exclusive, keeping to their own kind in such matters, but sometimes these things do happen between people. I do not know how they came to meet, or how they came to part.

I do remember peering out of the wagons at night after bed time, watching my mother and the other women and girls dancing in the moonlight at the fire, and falling asleep listening to the music and the drums. I eventually learned to drum too, as many of the older boys did, because then we could stay up late on party nights.

Maybe I should have told her I was leaving, but we'd had yet another fight. Our tribe was getting too large and quarrelsome to miss unwanted notice easily, and I was not favored among the relatives, being born out of wedlock as I was; so I left as soon as I had my first beard hairs and could claim to be a man and go my own way.

I set out to the North, more or less, in the Spring to find my father's people, and by Summer I met the chieftess Dulcinaya and her small clan. She said she knew my father from long ago - indeed I seemed to remember her as well, but as a younger child who I did not notice very often - and she recognized the Norse medallion that I wore, and still wear, that was his. She told me that Painted Wheel could use more defenders, and she offered to hire me on. Fall was coming and my progress North was too slow, so I accepted. The pay is a joke - barely enough to afford a pint at the Chalkman now and then - but their food and wine and company is always plenty and good, and what is gold anyway but one more step toward these, the finer things in life? Even by Romany standards I am not large, and I am only a fair swordsman on the best of days; I think she just wanted me to have an excuse to stay with them because I make her laugh, and because I would have probably gotten myself killed before I ever reached the north sea.

We were friends almost at once, it seemed very natural. At first, I thought to care for her, but her heart was elsewhere. I heard news that Ari Bosh was close by, and so I left again, to the West this time, to learn what I could of my mother, and perhaps my father. My clearest memory of him is his teaching me how to move the chess pieces in the shade of the wagons when I was a very small boy who could barely walk, and his booming laugh when I would get it right. He smelt of elderberries.

In my travels I discovered that he was some kind of noble, who took to the road when court life at home got complicated for him, and that there may be a claim of arms for me, perhaps even some land, or at least some kind of citizenship, should he return and recognize me as an illegitimate son. This I pieced together from some I met who knew of Kumpania Ari Bosh, but they had moved on and I never caught up with anybody.

I returned East and did catch up with Painted Wheel, knowing them as I did. Dulcinaya hired me back on immediately, but it is more than a job now. They have become my adopted family, and it has grown larger. (She calls me cousin, and in fact it may well be.) We have taken to performing "music" for the gadje, which makes us more welcome to them than when we used to just try to get through towns as fast as possible without being noticed. Though we do still have to sweep floors sometimes.


I fear I may be more valuable now as a drummer than as the bold young fighter I once thought myself to be.

Either way, I have been one of Painted Wheel ever since Dulcinaya found me that long ago Fall, and there is gray in my beard now. They feel like family more than Ari Bosh ever did. We have taken time to teach each other things, and even our music has improved a bit. Vosh is helping me to learn letters and numbers, and Kazimir and his brother Geldamar have been teaching me courtly manners. These things are useful when facing bailiffs and constables and sherriffs and the like. Even when unarmed and outnumbered, an educated man has more choices still than one who is not.

My father did return to his home and to his court, and I am now recognized as kin to his heirs. We were approached by Russians while busking somewhere in Italy, and I was presented with my Arms from the Czar himself! Perhaps my mother joined him. Perhaps she told them where to search for me. Perhaps he became sentimental in his later years and did it all on his own. Soon we will go to the Northern lands under his protection and find out, and that will be another story. I never hid my feelings about the nobility over the years, and I am now the butt of many good natured jokes within the Kumpania. Meanwhile, my rapier grows rusty and my arrows grow fewer, and Dulcinaya pretends not to notice.


By Lord Ivar Ulfsson
Kumpania Painted Wheel

Saturday, April 10, 2010

The New Baron Was No Fool: Fiction by Vincent




The new Baron was no fool.

Had he only been told the toys were created by some of the talented artisans of Painted Wheel, and left at that, he would have been satisfied enough to believe it. It was the last bit, almost muttered, that gave him pause. “and Vincent”.


So there I was, called before Court, to defend myself from yet one more accusation of questionable acquisition practices. I asked to plea to the populace, my tongue being far too crude to taint the ears of the most noble wealthinesses before me.

“Who?” I stalled.

“Who among you would leave your cherished possessions unguarded for me to claim? Not one of you? Who would abandon their valuables with none but the most minimal of servants to lay watch upon?

Surely, finding this trove of toys in the hands of a mere child, toys I too was charged with providing for this Barony, mind you, was I to think it was not my right, nay my duty, to bring them forth where they could be properly protected and distributed to those more deserving, more cherishing, the good people here before me?”

I was on a rambling roll.

“And this most pathetic of guards, with their tiny little fingers clinging tightly, was no match for my superior strength, let me tell you.

‘Please m’ Lord’ they whimpered, ‘do not take away my toys’.

I pulled harder against their pleas, feeling their hands beginning to tremble under the strain. Unhand them said I.

‘These are the only things I have in all the world.’ they further cried.

Their grip was failing as we struggled on. Give them to me, demanded I.

And then…

And then,

They gave them to me. Yes. It was a gift. Given freely, as I have now given to all of you. A gift!”

“With only hope of but the most meager of tokens of appreciation” I muttered.

The new Baron was no fool.



© 2010 Vincent