My Early Life

At the risk of sounding vain, the story of the Wardens begins with me. When I founded the Wardens, my experiences helped shape my vision of the group. Thus, an understanding of my story will help to explain the Wardens.

My first memories are of Caerleon, my childhood home. From family stories I know I was not born there. My family held some land in the east, but it was overrun by Saxons during the chaos following the death of Uther Pendragon. We fled to Caerleon, where my father established himself as a merchant. There we lived comfortable lives.

Map of southern Britain
Caerleon (also spelled Carlion) is circled in red

I was a young boy when King Arthur Pendragon established his capital at Caerleon. This was early in his reign, before the glory days of Camelot, when a coalition of kings denied his claim as High King of Britain (Arthur was young himself, only a few years older than I was). Civil war ravaged the land, and the conflict came to our doorstep. The king was besieged in our fair city. As a boy, it just seemed like high adventure to me. I would climb the city towers to get a look at the enemy army and to watch the skirmishes when King Arthur sent out sorties to disrupt the rebels. I watched from the walls as the king sallied forth, attacked the besiegers, and drove them away. I was particularly impressed by the king's knights, clad in shining mail and riding majestic stallions. I began to dream of serving as a knight in King Arthur's service. Alas, my family, although successful, was not of knightly birth so it seemed a hopeless dream. Perhaps one day I could perform some valuable service to the king such that he would reward me with a knighthood. Anyway, that would be my dream for many a year.

OOC Notes:

• Technically, the Wardens are a company within Amtgard. However, as I am the only member, it serves more as a role-playing device than an actual LARP unit. I set up the Wardens as my vision of my ideal unit.
• The map comes from Pendragon, a pen-and-paper role-playing game. While I have never played the game, I love the background material it provides. I've read a few Arthurian novels (though I haven't completed the original Le Morte d'Arthur). Greg Stafford, the creator of Pendragon, has distilled the information from the old Arthurian sources into a coherent timeline and geography. I highly recommend his The Great Pendragon Campaign. I got the electronic version of the map from this site.
• I like to use my real-life experiences in my backstory. My father was an airline pilot; in my LARP life history, I re-imagined him as a merchant that captained a ship. In real life, he was also a former Air Force pilot (he flew B-57s). His service and career inspired me as a boy; I dreamed of becoming a fighter jock (a knight of the air).
• The labels for this blog will designate where (and incidentally when) the story takes place. Britannia refers to my invented backstory before I arrived in the lands across the sea (i.e. the various LARP organizations). There will also be tales of my adventures in Scadia, Adria, Dagorhir, and Amtgardia.