From Olaf, King of Atlantia,
To the members of Hidden Mountain,
Greetings, Peace, and Joy.
It is with distinct pleasure that I your King, am with you, on this most joyful and significant occasion so far in Hidden Mountain’s active and distinguished history. In the short years since your beginnings as a small band of mercenaries, you have grown conspicuously in your numbers and activities; so that now, while retaining your unique identity, you also embrace a variety of accomplishments and capacities, which enable you to take this step forward, and assume your rightfully greater role in shaping the history of ATLANTIA. Already you have enriched Our realm through your acquisitions, most notably, perhaps your recently acquired rights to the waterways of Granada; and your impact has not only increased your reputation in the mundane world but has also brought honor to the Kingdom of ATLANTIA and to the SCA. For these and other reasons too numerous to mention, we celebrate together your new position of leadership in Our kingdom. The position of Barony is a recognition of your merits; but it is also a challenge to you, to strive even further to fulfill your capabilities for ever greater leadership and service. This challenge I have confidence you will meet, with unflagging strength and unfailing unity.
This is a turning point in Hidden Mountain’s history, and so this is an appropriate time to trace, both together and in your own hearts, the long road you have all trod to reach this point; and then look forward to the challenge of your future. Today, you rejoice. Tomorrow, you continue your work. You work to uphold that which has made you a Barony; your own sense of yourself, your clear knowledge of the unity which binds you all together and gives the Mountain its unique identify. But more even than this, you have upheld and striven to work for the ideals of the SCA. Chivalry on and off the field of battle, honor for one’s lord or lady, respect for one’s fellows – such ideals as these unite us in one common effort to recreate the Middle Ages as they should have been; and it is in this effort that the members of Hidden Mountain have distinguished themselves. This, however, is an incomplete list of the Society’s virtues; add to it the very necessary virtue of a sense of fun. From time immemorial, Hidden Mountain has known how to have fun. Without this virtue (and virtue is what it is), the practice of Chivalry becomes an empty show and tedious bore; paying honor fades into token lip-service; and respect for one’s Society are an imposition and a chore. With humor, they become a natural flowering of the spirit of play. Play, in its best sense, is what we strive to do. And it is in its great capacity for play that the Mountain has excelled. Much work and time have gone into its growth, and great exertions of emotional and physical energy. But without its ability to relax and enjoy itself, Hidden Mountain would never have come to the point where it is today. There abide, then, these three: work, time, and humor; and the greatest of these is humor.
It is therefore with the greatest joy that I, Olaf, king of ATLANTIA, in recognition of your qualities and merits, in commendation of your spirit, and to the enrichment of this Our fair and royal realm do hereby raise you to the elevated status of Barony, and do enjoin upon you all the rights and responsibilities of the status. And it is now with the deepest pride that I claim for Myself the privilege of officially being the first to extend my congratulations to the Barony of Hidden Mountain.
Done by My hand this 24th day of March, Anno Societatis XVIII
Olaf Rex Aslinn Regina