The History of the Fat Guys
As seen by Lord Gorlan of the Redlands
10 Dec, 1997
Like most good
things it just happened. At the Double Wars in Sweden in 1994, myself and
several other Americans working in Germany attended. Now if you have ever
had a run in with the authenticity police, imagine an event with over 200
APs running around for a whole week. The Swedes play with gusto. Their
encampments are the most period that I have seen anywhere. If you don't
have a period tent, you have to set up in another area. Most of the Swedes
had never seen or encountered the SCA American style. Many thought that
they had invented it. But the main element that we noticed was that they
were taking the game and themselves MUCH TOO SERIOUSLY. Interject into this environment five
middle-aged Americans, getting wide around the middle who had been playing
the game forever. (I started playing back in 1974). We interjected some
comic relief into the event. They didn't quite know what to think about us
when we set up our plastic tents and Coleman stove. They did notice that
we were having too much fun and as the week went by more and more of the
folks were coming to our encampment. About halfway through the event,
they had a four man melee tournament. Each team had to come up with a
name. As you can imagine, most of the Swedes took these serious, macho
sounding, manly names, like the Red Death, or the Sharks. Well when asked
what our name would be we chose "Four Fat Guys". On the bridge battles we
devastated them. We came in second in the tourney. During the wars, if
they needed a shield wall broken the cry was "Send in the Fat Guys!" The
name stuck. For the rest of the event we were known as the "Fat Guys." By
the end of the event we had come up the definition of living large. That's
how it started. The only official status we have is the right to impose a
beer tax at all feasts in the kingdom as long as we insure that the King
will never go dry. We also host a "Beer Pit Tourney" at the Double Wars.
Each entrant has to bring a beer to enter, Squires must bring two, and
Knights, a six-pack. The winner of the tourney gets all the beer. We are
known to ask the King quite publicly "Is this going to be a one, two, ...
or six beer court?"
For more on the Fat
Guys, visit The Fatguys
Homepage!
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