AKA: Aeisha McKenzie, a 31-year-old marketing executive from Northern California who’s been playing in the SCA for two years now. Special spell: Hospitality. “If you’re a jerk, other people aren’t going to join. For this dream to continue, you gotta have other people coming in. That’s the lifeblood. So it becomes important to be welcoming to other people so they can help support your dream.” Armor class +3: She also explains how the standard for costuming has changed as the group grew up. “From the old-timers, it used to be the 10-foot rule (if you looked authentic from 10 feet away, that was all that mattered). Nowadays people do that less. People are more concerned with making sure their garb is made with linen, instead of something that just looks like linen. We’re talking
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about 45 years of research that people are building on. Now, when I want to go make a Viking dress, I can go online and find authentic patterns that someone else has already drawn for me.” Authenticity +7: “After I graduated from school I got a normal job and I got sucked into ‘real life’ and corporate life.” The theater major says she couldn’t convince herself to do the “artsy stuff” because, “I wasn’t going to sell it, I wasn’t going to use it for theater; there was no purpose. With the SCA, I’ve taught myself to sew, because I need clothes. I’ve gotten to work on period recipes, which fulfills me because I’m a big old history geek and I love the research, but I also love to cook because there are people to cook for and reasons to do it. If there’s a reason for it, if it’s useful somehow, then it’s not wasting my time that I should be spending doing serious adult stuff.”