Summer in the Dark Ages What's worse than sunburn? Try full armor and bubonic plague.

BY BROOKE DeNISCO

One of the benefits of attending a private, politically correct, liberal arts college is a lack of cliques. Little differentiates the jocks from the science nerds or the punk rockers from the hippies, and tolerance prevails. The disadvantages of this are that you're never forced to take a stance or learn how to deal with aggressive people who think you're stupid. At my alma mater you couldn't play backwards/forwards--a two-person drinking game where one player drinks when she sees a guy with a baseball cap on forwards, and the other drinks when she spots a guy with his hat on backwards. There weren't sorority chicks to boomerang water balloons at from the roof of the dorm, and the physics majors were all really cool.

 Junior year I finally discovered a nemesis. A coveted on-campus house was taken away from the environmental group and given to students in the Society for Creative Anachronism. This branch of the SCA was a small but core group of believers who wore tunics and velvet dresses, ate jumbo turkey drumsticks with their hands and occasionally had to leave class on orders from the queen. They took classes with names like "Renaissance Women Writers," dueled on the quad and tried out for drama club performances. After observing them for a while, I realized that besides group hair braiding and goblet smashing, swinging was also a sanctioned part of Middle Ages reenactment. Two members of the SCA house got pregnant that school year. People on campus seemed relieved--at least the freaks liked sex.

Now I've cultivated a Flatliners sense of guilt about my close-mindedness. To repent for past sins, I volunteered to help my friend Andrew research a movie, and we drove to Corvallis for an SCA-sponsored medieval dinner and role-playing game.

At the plain church housing the day's activities, we paid the $10 visitor's fee and received gowns to wear and a set of instructions identifying the kingdom, clan and guild we belonged to for the evening. Guild status is particularly crucial because it identifies your skill. Andrew was in the forger's guild and I was in the guild of masonry. It turned out we were cousins! There were also scribes, poisoners and law makers. The premise of the game was a battle for ultimate power between two kingdoms. Members of each side ran around making deals ("I'll give you a drop of poison if you forge me a birth certificate"), collecting gold, killing off members of the other team, welding iron shields and making good marriages. Everyone else, it seemed, knew exactly what they were doing and could rattle off dates and details of 16th-century skirmishes. I, on the other hand, wasn't sure how to respond to a fellow clansman who told me conspiratorially, "The falcon flew over the stony river heading west."

Within 10 minutes of play time, the king of my team died and it was discovered that I was not a commoner but his young widow, whose identity the king had kept secret from his subjects. I was carried up to a platform in the middle of the room, going from confused demi-participator to the ruler of a whole kingdom. I sat at my throne with the rest of the royal family (who thought I was an imbecile), while eligible bachelors asked for my hand in marriage and peasants begged for gold coins. Forty-five minutes later I was poisoned to death (probably by annoyed members of my own family) and had to sit at a table with the rest of the "dead" people. Andrew, who at 6-foot-6 looked pretty sharp in a green velvet tunic, was huddled in the corner with his new mentor, a hunched man with a long beard and cane.

Chatting with the undead I finally learned what anachronism means to them--doing something identified with a certain period of history in modern time--and discovered that the SCA has made its own map of "the known world." On it, Oregon is part of the kingdom of An Tir, and Multnomah County is the Barony of Three Mountains. King Brendan and Queen Aryana of An Tir (also known as Matt and Kay Kittrick of Federal Way, Wash.) are the SCA's version of John and Sharon Kitzhaber. Many of the Kittricks' subjects are Portlanders who join the SCA as families, creating specific historical identities for themselves. Some even stay in character at home. Older people at the gathering seemed happy to be out of the 20th century and to belong to a churchlike community that knows how to throw a good rabbit-and-venison-laden party. Awkward teen-agers seemed dazed by high school and relieved to go to Renaissance festivals instead of dances on the weekends.

When the supper bell rang, I had to sit tight and let the royal families, guild members and kids eat first. Finally, dead people were allowed to grab a handful of some sort of mincemeat creation.

Dinner parties and role playing games take place in Portland periodically throughout the year, but summer is battle time, when the SCA members take to the country for weekends of sword duels, crafts and socializing. Young male warriors, who would either be skateboarders or computer geeks if they weren't into armor, hold fight practice every Wednesday night at Portland State University to prepare for the summer games. Young women can also fight, but one 20-year-old told me that her favorite part of weekend retreats is "massaging and washing the boys' hair after battle." She told me about all the hottest guys in the kingdom and emphasized the joys of coed tents.

For the most part, Portland anachronists welcome newcomers. Barony of Three Mountains has its own newsletter, The Plume, with updates on summer festivals and local happenings. Subscriptions cost $12 a year and can be ordered from P.O. Box 8735, Portland, 97207. General SCA information and events can be found on the group's Web site, www.teleport.com/~sca/ events/. The first big event of the summer season is the Shire of Dragons Mist tournament weekend, Friday-Sunday, June 26-28, in Willamette Mission State Park. Call 648-4297 for information.

 Let the Games Begin: Local SCA summer picnics and festivals start this weekend.