Greetings all.
The 9th Great Southern Gathering will be held by the Barony of Ynys Fawr this year. As usual, there is a time slot set aside on the Sunday morning (the first of October) for prizes to be fought under the auspices of the Lochac Royal Guild of Defence.
If you are attending and considering fighting a prize, whether as a heavy combatant, a rapier fighter or under the cut and thrust rule set (or even across all three), now is the time to start planning.
Firstly, you should look to find a sponsor for your prize. If you are looking at trying for a free scholar or journeyman prize, anyone at provost or guildmaster level within the guild can sponsor you. If you would like to try for a provost prize, you will need either a guildmaster or two provosts to sponsor you.
Next, you and your sponsor should look at the numbers and types of weapons forms you may be looking at; one form for a free scholar, three for a journeyman and five for a provost.
After that, your sponsor should contact the Lord Guildmaster, Master Emrys Tudur (Matthew_Mole at yahoo.co.nz) to seek his permission you to try for your prize. The contact should be at least 30 days before the date of the prize fight (ie by the first day of September), as required by the rules of the Guild.
Finally, you need to contact me, the Prize Arranger for GSG IX (viscount99 at optusnet.com.au), as soon as possible after the Lord Guildmaster’s approval, to let me know of your intentions. I need to know this to arrange a timetable for the morning and to make sure there are enough examiners present to test you for your prize. Particularly if you are intending to try some exotic, almost unknown form…I will need time to try to find suitable examiners.
If you have further questions, please ask. If you need further information about the guild, it can be found here:
https://www.sca.org.au/rapier/index.php/Guild
In service
Aylwin Greymane