[MR] Advice to newcomers

[McKenna]

> Can  someone give me some advice to pass on to a newcomer. He wants to be
> an assassin as his persona.

[Hot button pushed hard. Sorry.]

Nigh on two decades ago I finally convinced my wife that the SCA was not
full of immature morons, and convinced her to attend an event.  She labored
long and hard in research and handwork on a beaded Elizabethan dress in
satin.  After the feast we were conversing with the King outside the feast
hall when two wanna be "assassins" ran up, pelted him with shaving cream
pies, and roared off in their getaway car.  By and large they missed HRM,
but not my wife, and succeeded in ruining the satin dress--shaving cream can
strip paint, try it--and for a long period left me barred from doing SCA by
a wife who could not understand why I would want to hang around assholes
like that.

As far as I am concerned there is not, or at the very least, should not, be
a role in the SCA for these idiots who want to play assassins.  I had hoped
that annoying fad had passed into a well deserved oblivion.

In a period context an assassin is vile murdering scum.  In period (or
persona) someone who made a practice of murder would scarcely advertise the
fact.  Hashasin in period were regarded by their co-religionists by and
large as unpleasant extremists, and by Western Europeans (whom we are
theoretically emulating) as heathen criminals of the lowest sort.  Even the
Medicis and Borgias and their ilk who by many accounts employed hired
murderers, did their best to distance themselves from the sociopaths they
employed.  FitzUrse won only scorn by his deed.  The belief that ninja
enjoyed any respect in their historical social milieu is a modern myth with
no grounds in documented historical reality.

What's next, Vampires?  Trekkies with "tri-corders" who have time-warped and
beamed down?

Some kingdoms specifically outlaw such personas, and while Atlantia may not
do so officially, do we really want to encourage such things in a Kingdom
widely admired for it's courtesy and support of historicity?

The best advice to give this newcomer: DON'T.

McKenna