[The_herald] Household question

[Bert Garwood]

I stole this from the Jararvellir newletter "The Skein" and found it 
both enlightening and entertaining.

Berwyn

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Dear Trystan,
What is a household and how do I start one?

-An orphan newbie

Households are an interesting phenomenon- in these modern medieval times 
it is no longer the case that families breed and exist within the same 
isolated village for generation upon generation. While this throttles 
back the inbreeding a bit, it does leave a perceptible vacuum in the 
social lives of your average globe-trotting SCAdian. Thus the concept of 
the SCA household, offering community, a sense of belonging, and further 
sub-dividing the social framework of our society as a whole into groups 
that can distrust and make war upon each other. This innovation 
furthermore affords the advantage of allowing one to "pick one's own 
family," a huge bonus in light of the relationships many of us endure 
with the useless, revolting siblings and rarely lucid progenitors 
assigned to us by the almighty. Anyway, in simplest terms, a household 
is an aggregation of individuals with mutually complementary skills and 
interests who agree, for a time, to pretend that they don't despise one 
another.

There are several different sorts of households: There are fighting 
households (sometimes referred to as companies), which are usually made 
up exclusively of gentles with a martial bent. These households gain 
great advantage on the field of battle by practicing fighting alongside 
one another, and often attain admirable levels of expertise in melee 
combat. Their most noteworthy characteristic, however, is the fact that 
if a percentage of their membership did not drag their spouses into the 
SCA with them they would all starve to death at their first war and most 
would be naked.

There are households founded upon mutual, creative endeavors in the arts 
and sciences (which are similar to, but should not be confused with, 
guilds). These households pool their resources such that inexperienced 
and unmoneyed members may have access to the tools and talents of the 
older, more experienced members. This approach maximizes the advancement 
of skills and improves the quality of projects that the household 
embraces. Intelligent, sensible, and an unimpeachably fine idea. I know 
of absolutely no one who has actually done this.

There are exclusively social households, for those who are too, shall we 
say, careful to fight and too, oh. reserved to possess appreciable 
talents- or, for that matter, any kind of social skills whatsoever. 
Deplorable though they may be, these folk tend to stick together through 
thick and thin and share both good times and bad. If one of them 
contracts a venereal disease, for instance, then by gum the rest of them 
are liable to share it by week's end.

Finally, there are the eclectic households, which try to draw members 
from each facet of SCadian life: marital arts, various arts and 
sciences, service and the odd poxy peasant. These households are decent, 
in theory, as skilled technical assistance in an array of fields is 
available to each member. They DO tend to be better dressed, better fed, 
and have some of the best toys around. On the other side of the coin, 
each individual member has nothing in common with anyone else in the 
household and this can make effective communication quite challenging. 
Just ask the herald who informed the fighter that he had too many 
"conflicts," had no business being "embattled," and that he had a 
suspicious "orientation" anyway.

As to how one initiates a household, nothing could be simpler. Simply 
select one of the above varieties, concoct a household badge that 
exemplifies the mores and purposes of your household (see my own noble 
and storied household badge: A dead Frenchman, dormant upon a field of 
dead Frenchmen), and then gather to your cause and banner a group of 
easily lead sycophants whose chief recommendation is that they are 
significantly less intelligent and discerning than yourself. If you lack 
the leadership skills to pull this off, worry not. It is yet possible to 
found a household by coercing members of your own family into signing 
on. Should said family prove to be too small, you may have to reproduce 
a few times to round out your membership, though this stratagem may 
delay your ambitions by 15-18 years.

In service,
Thee Most Wyked Sheriff in all of Jararvelir,
Trystan der Fackeltrager