Happy April, Altavia! His Excellency and I want to thank all the Altavians (and associated shire folk ? ) that shared our pavilion last Saturday at Dun Or Anniversary. Having you all there made a good day better and I hope our shenanigans brought a smile to your face as well.This Saturday is Starkhafn Anniversay and His Excellency is planning on attending. If anyone would like to carpool to the event with him and keep him company on the long road to Vegas, it would be mighty appreciated!

Next Tuesday is the next (last?) planning meeting for Altavia Anniversary. If you would like to attend, please contact Countess Batista for the address and directions. We would love to have your input on all the fun things we have planned for the day!

Other events coming up in April include al-Sahid Anniversary, Nordwache Anniversary and Robin Hood Archery Tournament the next day. The week before Altavia Annivesary, our neighbors to the north, Darachshire, are having a Star Wars-themed anniversary event (May the 4^th) and I know that His Excellency and I are both very excited for this theme. Are you a Rebel or are you Imperial scum?

We also wanted to remind anyone who would like to camp with the barony for either Potrero or GWW (or both!) that registration is open for both events and to please land allocate with the barony.

Finally, please send in your award recommendations for both baronial and kingdom awards for Altavians that deserve recognition. We want recognize as many people as possible at Anniversary and we can only do that with your help. If you need help writing or submitting letters, please let me know and I’ll be glad to help.

Have a great month, everyone!

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

Greetings all. We have had a wet and wild month. Rainouts put a damper on a few practices and events this month, but it didn’t affect our festive mood. Those who braved Estrella this year, we salute you. You are true survivors! March promised some drier weather and some great events. Pentathlon/Art War was spectacular even with the wind. There was so much great art and fun competitions; we did not know where to start. We had some wonderful conversations with others on site and the SCA family feeling was spectacular. We left the event feeling closer to everyone and that’s the way it should be. Next was Kings hunt and Calafia/Gyldenholt Friendship Tourney. Isles was beautiful and Calafia was perfect fighting weather. Altavians flourished in the Rapier tourney and we all made it to finals (warlord). A great day and a great month! Crown tourney is coming up soon as well as Dun Or Anniversary and many others. Niko will not be at Crown. We hope as many Altavians can make it to these events and if possible carpool to save gas and space. Spring approaches and with that many wonderful events! Altavia Anniversary is just around the corner and 1001 Arabian Nights will need just as many volunteers to make it Magical! See the Event Stewards for details.

It’s February and love is in the air! His Excellency and I want to say how much we love our Altavian family and everything we get to do together. From attending tourneys, like last month’s Queen’s Champion and Unbelted to working on arts together at A&S nights to just hanging out at fighter practice and Guildhall, we couldn’t think of a better group of people to have as our collective Valentines!

We hope everyone had fun at last month’s events and we’d like to congratulate Master Colwyn for becoming her Majesty’s Queen’s Champion. Master Colwyn and His Excellency represented Altavia very well in the finals and it was a very fun fight to watch! We also had at least one Altavian, Vigulfr, fight at Unbelted and thank you to everyone who came and hung out with us at both tourneys. Black Oak Lodge/Festival of the Rose was last weekend and we had a small but mighty Altavian contingent. It was a lovely day full of arts and food. Particularly exciting to me was seeing the first performance of a new Commedia troupe in Caid (I wanna play!).

Coming up in February is Chiv-N-the-Chest in Nordwache this Saturday and Lyondemere Arts and Archery on Sunday. The first weekend in March is Pentathalon in al-Sahid and this is always a great event. The second weekend in March has a couple of events going on with King’s Hunt up in Carreg Wen and Gyldenholt/Calafia Friendship Tourney down in Calafia. We hope to see folks at all of these upcoming events. Looking further down the road, we have Anniversary planning (we’ll be talking about that later) and Potrero War. Altavia has a baronial camp already on the books for Potrero but we are looking for someone to take on camp master/mistress duties.

We want to leave everyone with something to ponder as we start getting ready for our Anniversary event and other events throughout the year. What is something new that you’d like to see Altavia or Caid try or something that we haven’t done in a while that you’d like to see us try and bring back? Master Giuseppie started an awesome thread on the Book of Faces this week on that topic and, as your Baron and Baroness, we want to help you make your SCA dreams a reality. If you have an idea, no matter how small or large, feasible or pie-in-the-sky, come talk to us or bring your idea here to this council and let’s see what kinda magic we can make, together.

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

Happy New Year! His Excelleny and I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and are looking forward to this year as much as we are. (Mistress Meliora is unable to be here tonight so His Excellency and I will be running the meeting. We’ll try to move things along as smoothly as possible)

Angels/Altavia Yule this past December was a blast as always. I loved seeing everyone’s inventive costumes and table décor and how much everyone was having so much fun. Niko and I want to thank everyone who put in hard work to make it success including Lynnette for stewarding, Meliora for her decorating magic, Elle for GETTING RELEASED FROM THE HOSPITAL to come run gate and everyone else who helped with set up and tear down. It was truly a Mythical Yuile

We want to thank everyone who joined us at Coronation/12th night. There were so many Altavians who walked up with the Barony for the presentations and the awesome heralds we had leading us (Adam Lindsey Greg Wylie ) that their Majesties has to comment and commend us. You all make the Barony look Great! In Addition, Many wonderful awards were given out including a Dolphin for Eadric the Younger and a court Barony to our own Cassandra de Lorrain! Congratulations and so well deserved. Your commitment to service is truly amazing. Those who stayed for feast made it fun and enjoyable. We had a blast!!! Thank you Altavia for being so Excellent!!!

Coming up this weekend is Angels Melee which is always a fun event. We always see a lot of Altavian participation in the rapier scenarios at this event and we hear there may be an Altavian team entering the heavies competition. Come out and watch the fighting or have some fun with string at the Fiber Playday or just hang out in the baronial dragonwing.

Next weekend is Queen’s Champion n Al Sahid, with the armored, rapier, unarmored, and youth combat tourneys taking place on Saturday and the archery and thrown weapons competitions happening on Sunday, We hope to see many Altavians out there in the lists and we look forward to cheering you on.

Rounding out the month of January is Gyldenholt Unbelted Tourney and we hope to see our newer armored fighters enter the list for this great event.

Have a great January, everyone!
Your Baron and Baroness,
Niko and Briana