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The Vintage Tales of Viking Vinyards

Where is Pennsic V?

by Finn Normansson

  • Originally published in A Sealion's Tale

As you know from Brother Svein's History of the Canton of Seleone, Isolde and I got started in the SCA in Eastrealm. Specifically we got our start in the Shire of Morgana, which mundanely is Morgantown, West Virginia. Morgantown is the site of West Virginia University, where Isolde and I were both students.

One weekend, a little over a year after I had joined the Society, I traveled to the Shire of Ridrich Hael (Freedonia, NY) for an event. At the event, I chanced to strike up a conversation with a charming young lady from Midrealm, (this was before Isolde and I became amours). Eventually the lady asked "What group are you from?"

"The Shire of Morgana," I replied.

"Oh, Morgana," the lady said with an intonation that sent the room temperature plummeting about fifty degrees.

"You say that in such a way that suggests that you have something against Morgana," I said.

"They were the group that dumped Pennsic V on my group, Cleftlands, with less than two weeks notice," she replied. (At this time, Pennsic was still a weekend event and it did not have a permanent site).

I do not recall how the rest of the conversation went, only that I decided to cut it short and not mention that I had just become the seneschal of Morgana.

When I returned to Morgana, I sought out the previous seneschal, Lord Stephen, and asked him what he knew about all this. Lord Stephen told me Morgana's side of the story which is as follows:

One Saturday morning, two weeks before Pennsic V, Stephen received a farspeaker call from the King of Midrealm. His Majesty Midrealm explained that he had come to town with his Earl Marshal to look over the Pennsic site. Stephen called his herald, Evart of Bangor, who was going to be autocrat for Pennsic V and together they met the King and Earl Marshal and took them on a tour of the Pennsic site.

After the tour Stephen and Evart took the Midrealmers out for pizza and discussed their plans for the war. The King and Earl Marshal thanked Lord Stephen and Evart and departed for Midrealm.

On Sunday night, Lord Stephen received a farspeaker call from the King of Eastrealm. His Majesty informed Stephen that he had just finished a farspeaker call with the King of Midrealm. His Majesty Midrealm was totally unsatisfied with the Pennsic plans and site and refused to fight in Morgana. Instead, the King of Midrealm had proposed to move the war to the Barony of Cleftlands and to this the King of Eastrealm had agreed. Pennsic V was not so much dumped on Cleftlands as it was ripped away from Morgana!

This was nearly twenty years ago and the Shire of Morgana is now defunct. Having seen the proposed Pennsic site myself and knowing the people who would have been in charge, I can see why the King of Midrealm may have had some misgivings. Still, I can not help being irked that my old shire was cast as the villain of the piece when clearly it was a victim.

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