The Holidays are upon us. We hope everyone had a great and safe Thanksgiving Holiday. We know left overs are good for days and no one ever gets tired of turkey… It is sad that we could not celebrate like we all want too, but there will always be next year and we can all make the best of what we have. Reveling with the immediate household, and/or friends and family on line is a treat and we all should be thankful to have the opportunity. People who love us and whom we love should be cherished and celebrated. We are thankful to have you in our lives.

Angels/Altavia Yule is Saturday. Preparations have been going on for months and soon we will be together… virtually. So many people have worked hard to set it up and get it running. Games, contests, bardic, food, drink and companionship are waiting for us in just a few days. Our Baronies had some great ideas, and we know we will all have a great time . We would like to thank everyone who has helped and will continue to help. See you all on the 12th. Let’s a have a Cule Yule!

The end of the plague is near. There is sunlight at the end of the tunnel. Stay at home orders and other restrictions will soon come to an end. However, we still must be cautious and keep safety on our minds at all times. Until, we all get a vaccination, there is still a danger. As they say, don’t stumble so close to the finish line. Be careful. Be safe. The Board has extended the ban on in face, group events until May 31, and Caid will follow that edict. We will see each other face to face again soon, and when that happens there will be hugs and tears and laughter. We will get through this together, and we will be an in person Barony once again. LONG LIVE ALTAVIA!!!

Baron Nikolaos Phaistos and Baroness Briana MacCabe

Our Dear Altavians!

We want to start off by thanking everyone that helped make Dreibergen Anniversary and Altavia Agincourt Tourney a success last month.

• Many thanks to Mistress Cecilia and Baron Christoph for running fun and engaging archery and thrown weapons tournaments, to Lord Arioch for designing cool site and champion tokens.
• Congratulations to our winners, Ramvoludus Kroll (live shoot), Adelais de la Jupe Cramoisie (archery game), and Niall Mareschal (thrown weapons game)
• Thank you to everyone who joined in the fun and help wish our cousins in Dreibergen a very happy anninversary.

In other news, we are looking for your stories and tales for an upcoming edition of the Crown Prints kingdom newsletter. The Kingdom Chronicler is asking baronies to take over an edition of the CP to let the rest of Caid know our tales and what it is to be an Altavian. Milady Sibylla de Haze has cheerfully taken on the task of gathering up your stories, songs, poems, art and other remembrances of Altavia. Please send your content to her at tanyayvette@gmail.com no later that November 30. If you have ideas but want some help putting them together, please reach out to His Excellency or I and we’d be happy to help.

We’re so excited to be planning a joint Yule once again with our cousins of Angels and look forward to a cozy and comforting holiday celebration. With Yule coming up, we’d love to read your Altavia award recommendation letters so we can recognize all those that are contributing to the barony through art, service and fighting in new and unique ways during the pandemic.

As always, Niko and I are both here to listen and to support the barony in anyway that is needed. If you need to talk or if you have ideas on fun things we should be doing as a barony, we are all ears. Email, message, text, call, send smoke signals…whatever your chosen medium, just please reach out if you need us.

We love you, Altavia!
Baron Nikolaos Phaistos
Baroness Briana MacCabe

Sorry, we’re a little tired right now but thank you so much for all the work everyone has been doing, especially Cristof and Cecilia who have been working so hard on Agincourt. Yule planning is going well, A&S classes have started back up again. The Kingdom’s events are really slowing down and no one is doing archery except for us! It’s great that everyone is continuing to work. It is tremendous. Griffith, thank you for volunteering to work with people on their pells. Sibylla, you have been volunteering for everything and we’re so glad you’re back! Damien and Matlens, you don’t have much to report but thank you Altavia, you guys are great!

Happy August, Altavia!

His Excellency and I hope that you and yours are doing well and are continuing to navigate this new world successfully. Here are the latest updates on what is going on in SCA, Caid and Altavia.

              State of the SCA

As you may have read in the Board of Directors’ (BoD) statement on August 8, the SCA is facing some financial challenges relating to COVID-19. While we may not have expenses relating to events and insurance for those events for a while, the Society still has annual operating expenses, which are usually covered by membership fees and non-member surcharges (NMS). With membership inevitably dropping and no NMS fees coming in, this is leaving a bit of a shortfall. Fortunately, there are many ways we can help cover this, including:

• Renew or extend your membership – https://members.sca.org/apps/#SignIn
• Donate a membership to someone else – https://www.sca.org/news/gifting-an-sca-membership/
• Donate directly to the SCA – https://www.sca.org/donate-to-the-sca/

If you have other ideas for fundraising (at the baronial, kingdom, or Society-level), please bring them up here at Council or feel free to contact His Excellency or me in private. We would both like to thank all those that reached out to us with ideas and requests to help. The generosity of Altavia and Altavians never ceases to make us proud!

State of Caid

Another recent piece of news that has come down from the BoD is the suspension of all in-person SCA events in North America until January 13, 2021. His Majesty also confirmed this information in the latest and last (more on that in a moment) Royal Thursday last week. While of course this is not a happy thing to hear, it is the best and wisest decision at this point in time. We have also learned today that our neighbors in Atenveldt have made the difficult decision to postpone Estrella War 2021 to November of next year.

Caid will still maintain a schedule of online events until we are able to safely meet again. Going forward Caid will hold an online court once every other month with the next one scheduled for Saturday, August 29. “Live from Caid!” will continue to run every Monday evening, ably helmed by Altavia’s very own Master Laertes. Any information that needs to be passed along from the Crown outside of online court will be communicated through “Live from Caid!” as well as on the Kingdom of Caid FB group. Finally, right as of now, the next Coronation will happen as soon as we are able to meet in person, keep your eyes on all of Caid’s digital channels for information as it becomes available.

Baronies are still able and encouraged to hold online events and later tonight we’ll talk about what we might want to do for Agincourt as well as Yule.

State of Altavia

We hope that you have all been enjoying our weekly Zoom gatherings! We know it’s not an actual replacement for hitting our friends with sticks, but I know I am really enjoying getting to know current and former Altavians as well as old and new friends from throughout Caid and the Knowne World better! If you have any ideas for changing up our Monday nights (themes, contests, artisan showcases, or anything else), please let us know. OR if you have ideas for other online fun we can have outside of Monday nights (baronial gift exchanges, largess-ins, what-have-you), please speak up or at least let His Excellency and me know so we can help make your ideas into reality. Being isolated from all of you really, really sucks but we do have the opportunity to expand the Dreams in new ways we never considered before.

As always, please reach out to us and your fellow Altavians if you need a hand or need cheering up. Niko is ever ready with a bad dad joke or inspiring meme and you know you can count on me for a tune or two or a brain-storming partner. We love you, we miss you, and, to quote some notable fictional Angels, please remember to “Be Excellent to Each Other!”

Yours in Service to the Dream,
Baron Nikolaos Phaistos
Baroness Briana MacCabe