Award of Arms

On the weekend I had the honour of receiving an Award of Arms along with my lovely fiance Cinara. From now on I shall be known as Herr Bechtold Vollarc. Huzzah! While I've heard the theory that by the time you receive an Award of Arms you should be so indoctrinated in the SCA that you need no awards, I wanted to post a couple of awesome things about being armigerous in the SCA.

1. Explicit acknowledgement of belonging - I guess the best thing about being given an award of arms is the knowledge that at least someone in the region believes that I am making a significant contribution to the barony and that I'm likely to hang around for a while. It's bizarre but receiving that award has done so much to dispelling any feeling of being an outsider in the group.
2. Right to bear arms - Okay so I could have previously born my heraldic device with impunity but it is so much cooler to have the right to display your "coat of arms". I've wanted a coat of arms since I was about 7 when I saw the Disney Robin Hood movie!
3. The Title - Ok so I'm vain but being called Herr Bechtold is just awesome. Now I just hope that people realise that the word "herr" has nothing to do with Nazi's.
4. Being called up in court - Yep, I'm really vain but there's nothing like being acknowledged in front of the group for your contributions. I've also realised that you can tell a lot about what people think of you by the number of spontaneous Huzzah's generated from the crowd as you are acknowledged by the B&B.
5. Presence in the Lochac Order of Precedence - I've got a Kingdom award! Now I feel like I actually exist in greater Lochac. So I might be X thousandth in the order of precedence but I'm there damn it :)

And so ends my entirely self-indulgent post on my award. Yay me. Aren't blogs great?

Bechtold (who REALLY can't call himself a newbie to the SCA anymore).