Alright, this is pissing me off. When I log in I see a icon stating I have an unread message. Yet when I go to my messages, there are none unread. MADDENING!

...the very world seemed to be ending. Everywhere, in all corners of what was once the Empire, it was as if the old pagan war god had raised his horn to blood-blackened lips, and bellowed out a call to ceaseless, pitiless, total war. The barbarians were not merely at the gates, they had already trodden them down, and set fire to the city. Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Magyars, Lombards, Saxons, Huns, Jutes, Angles, Vandals, and Franks. 

In the sands of the east, Persians, and by the 7th Century, the armies of the Muslim conquest would come, bringing the sword and fire out of the heart of Arabia.

The Franks would drive them back across the Spanish border under the leadership of Charles Martel (the Hammer) whose son would be crowned 1st Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Leo III in the year of our Lord 800, seven years after the first Viking raid was recorded upon the abbey of Lindesfarne. Soon, the Norse would come en masse, and by the dawn of the 9th century, the fury of the Northmen was felt across Europe, the near east, and the lands east of the Danube.

It was a time of heroes, gods, and monsters. Beowulf and Grendel. Arturius and Merlin. The last gasp of the age of the near mythical; a final brush with the essence of the ancient world.

My question then, is why less of it is seen in Faire circles. The history is rich, the costuming kicks ass, and it brings to life so much of the story of Western Civilization. So snuff out the so-called light of the Renaissance, I say! delve back into the Dark Ages. Trade the rapier for the spatha. The breastplate for the hauberk or lamellae. The tights for trousers. The poet shirt for the tunic. Blood and fire and steel in favor of the banter of so-called "Royal" courts. 

-Romulus Germanicus Geiseric-