Markus the Merciless
A Little History and My Story...
It all started for me when my brother Paul saw some guys wearing armour and hitting each other as he drove by practice one weds eve. he said I should go check it out... the result was I watched heavy fighting for nearly three years at Madrone's weds practice. duke Torgrul was still around and duke Skepti and sir Skeggi were still his young squires. Sir Timm the first of the Starfyres arrived at practice and I remember hearing about the much respected and feared(unbelts) Oerthan knights and how rough they were. I watched on... it was very brutal back then and I was reluctant to try it even though I really wanted to. I hemmed and hawed for three years until I was at Aveloc's gasworks practice and he threw me in his armour on a brisk sunny fall day during late October... (after that there was no question about fighting and my heart still sings with joy when I fight)... to this day I have never felt so naked and unprotected as when I was in his armour on that first fateful day. when I was younger my brother and I had hockey sticks wrapped in bicycle tires and garbage can lids. we usually fought until some one got a little banged up and then the swords would go away until we forgot what had happened the last time. my first piece of armour looked like this:
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This sewer pipe vambrace was my first attempt at making armour. I used a blowtorch and molded it around my arm which was wrapped with towels. the first test and the last test was when my brother Paul gave me a good whack with a 32oz roofing hammer. what a bruise and the bugger wouldn't even let me test it on him. some padding might have helped but I doubt it. the elbow was my second attempt. I used a ball peen hammer a piece of 16ga mild steel and a block of wood. took a while but I decided I liked making armour.
Aveloc earned my loyalty when he was the first one to successfully show me how to block my legs. during my first three+ months... the back of my legs were being savaged regularly. large bruises from right above my knee to the lower part of my butt (the conveyer belt skirt protected my poor ass from a bad bruising)... until he showed me how to protect them. I missed all of three weds night practices in the first year and a half. no matter how bruised and beat up I was I always went back even if I was too injured to fight. (for those of you who are newer it was much much more hardcore and a different attitude/philosophy existed back then. these days things are much more politically correct.)
right after that he hosted me at my first war. it was a week before Estrella when he said "come with me it will change your life". I was like "I have no idea what I need to do". he said "trust me I will take care of everything" and so we drove 30 hours down and 24 hours back together. my first war death was when I ran out and struck a few pathetic blows. I turned and was running back into our line when (Sir) Michael Richard the Talle let me have it with the big mace he is holding below. I dropped like a bag of rocks and he stomped over me. I remember thinking hey aren't you on our side?
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My first war was Estrella 95 and my second event. this is the unit house Starfyre fielded that year.
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soon after that lots of people were trying to teach me different things with radically different teaching methods and it was driving me crazy... after a particularly hideous beating by a younger fighter... (I got many helmet dents, a concussion and the dude de-articulated my right leg).. for not listening to a some entitled-irritating guy... who hit me over and over... called a Duke... I visited Aveloc at his house saying I am going to end the dude's (who beat the tar out of me) career. he looked at me and asked "are you stupid" saying "why do you want to make someone who can kill you.. angry?" we talked for a while and I decided that he was pretty wise when it came to fighting and so I blurted "damn it... I want to to learn from no else but you"... he pondered... deep in thought for a while and then said "that is a special type of relationship in the SCA" turning me away saying "go look around at the other knights and we will talk again in a few months".
My first suit of armour was made in three weeks. I got sick a few after weeks after Aveloc threw me in his armour. I had: a helm I made in one of Master Wilhelm the Far traveler's many helm (helms shown above) workshops, the crab armour from when Squire Devin had me over for a body armour making workshop and Aveloc traded me a pair of Sir Geoffrey stainless legs for the diamond plate shield and buckler he still uses to this day. the plastic hunchback armour got me the nick name the crab as I came off the beach playing doubles volleyball and was used to playing bent over.. so fought that way for a long time. amazing how surprised I was when I realized if I stood up my head would get hit much less often... I started fighting in my own armour as pictured below the first weds of Dec 1994.
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my second suit was hand fluted mirror polished stainless scale. it took over two years to finish. I was needing some serious motivation... Aveloc forbid me to fight at the next Estrella war unless it was finished so I worked my butt off at the last minute finishing the opening morning of the war. sadly I had no super armour making tools yet. the amount of work it took to dish flute and re-dish all those damn scales was amazing. I must have been crazy as it was a 12 step process repeated 800 times. the evil thing weighed 23lbs... Aveloc and I had a bet I couldn't get it below 15lbs and I lost. fighting in this suit for six months is one of the main reasons I went and discovered Titanium. his Titanium suit of scale came soon after I found my new love (Titanium).
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my third suit was based on Sir Aleric's gothic plate pattern so it never really fit right. he said something about adjusting the pattern to my size but I didn't get it. I cut my only sheet of Titanium up using his pattern. it was months before I figured out how to articulate it and size to my much smaller frame.. 9 1/2 lbs was way better than 23lbs. a huge difference and pretty protective. my TAW (total armour weight) was 54 lbs of armour. I cut two of the lower lames off the above suit and changed the legs out: weight 50lbs. over one third my weight... 144lbs at 5'9 and the weight was starting to wear on me. I decided to go hyper-light and made a completely new harness which I am still working on.
my current armour (7/03) is centered around a 16th century-influenced breastplate of my own design (there is no armour of the like in period) 4 1/2lb, 24ga titanium. this lightened my armour load to 42 lbs and now includes a small period white belt around the waist. I built it on a mold of my body so it fits like a dream. here I am at one of the many school demos that Aveloc does. we have done them together since I was new. my arms are on the right.
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The moniker "the merciless" is a reference to the amazing Gustav the Bastard. the "merciless" will be my alternate persona. Markus Hammerhand is still my heraldically passed name and the device: sable and argent, a hammer and a hand counterchanged will still be used when I am being sir mrks... the merciless tag will let me do things I could not do as Hammerhand.
Being "the Merciless" will hopefully let me do some way cool shtick and will take me a while to develop the persona. it is inspired by Sir Gustav the Bastard who I saw at gulf wars or Pennsic long ago... he was amazing. I was walking along and saw this guy being rude and obnoxious on the field and thought to myself this knight is a A**@@le yet everyone was laughing and guffawing. I asked another knight what it was about and he said the guy was the infamous "Sir Gustav the Bastard... a paladin like knight acting in his alternate persona". I was totally inspired and plan to make a set of blackened Titanium armour trimmed in brass. the merciless is just not a shiny, tin can wearing type of knight.
the roots of my name came from when I was just brand new I noticed there were no evil (D+D reference) knights around and I told Aveloc I wanted to be a black knight for there were none and SCA life would be so much richer with someone to fight against... good vs. evil wise. so my plan was to steal a knights weapons so he could act upset and we could do great battle... when I got to be a better fighter of course. geezes louises I had no idea there were so many problems in real life SCA... yet alone to go about creating more. Aveloc still does not let me live that down and teases me occasionally.
So my name... Hammerhand originated before I as a man at arms... Aveloc decided I needed a name teased me with Marcus Malenbranche of Madrone... some irritating fooffy sounding French name meaning the sick branch of Madrone (refering to the evil knight thing). ugg I hated it and wanted to be steelbeater , ironfist or something of the like. Hammerhand resulted from planishing all my early armour so it wouldn't be so ugly. Sir Richard- Aveloc's exsquire planished his stuff and I got a look at it at my first Estrella ...whoa was I impressed with his beautiful armouring.
I prefer sir mrks in formal situations or from my (future) guys and mrks from my friends... during informal situations. the merciless persona will come later. most likely when I am dressed in "bad in black" then Sir Merciless will be appropriate.
War fighting and injuries: see a private reply to a letter off the kingdom email list regarding the price I paid to become a competent fighter. I have many no rules squires practices under my belt and I would like to say that " no matter how wild they may have gotten Aveloc has injured me all of twice during eight years: four months into my fighting career he dislocated my collarbone (armour failure when my spaulder slipped off) in two places at a school demo and another shoulder injury (fall as37) when he hit me fighting with his heavy greatsword at a war practice. I would fight him no rules without a helmet... I trust him that much.
The future: some of the very important old guard are leaving or getting discouraged about how fighting has changed. I hope to start a slow campaign will be to deliver information and initiate communication among the old timers. I talked to a number of the squires who remember what it used to be like at our practice and they were quite supportive. we have enough hard core fighters to affect the mindset change that I feel needs to come about in our kingdom. they just need communication and realize the broad sweeping view of what is starting to happen here. it would be very sad to see the legendary pillars of heavy fighting leave due to the current combat political correctness springing up in our kingdom as it has swept the light hitting southern kingdoms. I have fought there a number of times and can be extremely miserable. the marshals run things and the heavies honor is stripped daily by determinate marshalling and rule gerrymandering.
Ode to Baron Aveloc the elder....for those of you visiting I would like to remember Rick Palmer. who fought by his sons side at almost every large out of kingdom event Aveloc the young and I traveled together to. his generosity and courtesy are part of who I am today. I really miss his smiling self.... so==> Rick this is for you...
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Lastly I would like to say...
although I may talk like my knight Aveloc the Young (who had his SCA membership revoked and denied by the BoD... which can be viewed as a banishment by the BoD) and even sound like him at times... please realize we have radically different views about the SCA concerning fighting values, the sociological aspects and how healthy the society is. both he and I always expected to be on opposing sides of the battle field... which is now sadly impossible in the SCA... so things have moved to the political/mental arena. lately we argue (sometimes loudly) quite frequently about our differences. its funny we each see the other as the dark view and our viewpoint as white one. very few shades of grey these days. hmm let me try to put that in a different way. each believes his own ideas about the SCA (and life) are correct and the other is well... kind of wrong but entitled to his views.
I HAVE NO PERSONAL ISSUES/VENDETTA WITH THE BoD. THEY WILL SINK/CHANGE FROM THE SHEER SIZE OF THE SOCIETY AND OF THEIR OWN RECKLESS ACTIONS REGARDING THEIR EFFORTS TO MICROMANAGE THE SCA.
I TRULY BELIEVE IN MY HEART WHAT THEY DID TO AVELOC WAS WRONG... BUT IT IS ONLY ONE STRAW ON A WEAKENING SCA CAMELS BACK. THINGS WILL CONTINUE TO GET WORSE.
PLEASE REMEMBER...MY VIEWS ARE MY OWN... IF COUNT AVELOC AND I SHARE THE SAME VIEWPOINT ABOUT A SUBJECT (a rare occasion lately) ... IT IS BECAUSE I CHOOSE TO DO SO.
If you made it this far... thank you for your time
sir mrks who in the future may sometimes be called "the merciless"