"So what's with the line art," you're saying. Or perhaps "Why do you spell `skwid' the way you do," or just "What's with all this `skwid' business anywho?"

Skwid, I'm afraid, is a moniker with a story behind it. In fact, it's such a story that many times when people have asked me to explain my chosen handle, I either give them a partial story or a general runaround. Well, now I guess I can just give them an url, because here it is, in all it's glory.

Long, long ago (Feb. 1991), when I first joined the SCA, I was confronted with the need to create a persona. Now in the SCA, your persona can say a great deal about you, being a representation of your tastes and historical interests. The persona I chose was loosely based off of a character in a fantasy seriesby Katherine Kerr, mainly because I liked the character and one of his pseudonyms was the same as my mundane name, Evan. Anyhow, this character's name was Ebany Salamondariel ap Devaberiel. This being somewhat considerably more than a mouthful, he (and subsequently I) was addressed by the diminutive "Salamander." And thus for about two years, in the SCA I was called Salamander. (Now you're saying "That's all very nice, but what does it have to do with this `skwid' business." Keep your pants on, I'm getting to it.)

Now enters the Sweinbrothars. Since the very first SCA event I went to (The first North Sea Raids, fyi) and long before I adopted the persona of a Visigoth and became a member of the household, the Sweinbrothars have been the group I was most closely affiliated with, and my best friends in the SCA. Now, among the Sweinbrothars' more endearing traits is the tendency to get piss drunk and have a righteous good time. On one of these occasions, a particular Swein (whose name shall not be revea...Aa...Aa...Aaa-talf...[sniff, excuse me!] revealed.) was particularly inebriated, and searching for someone in particular, namely me. This combination led to an unfortunate temporary memory block regarding my name, Salamander. As a result, Cha^H^H^Hthis Sweinbrothar proceeded to ask people if anyone had seen "that Squid guy." This continued (for who knows how long) until someone managed to piece together that "Squid" was in fact "Salamander." Once arrived at, this solution was so imminently fascinating that the Sweinbrothar's agreed unanimously to call me Squid from then on.

Oh, I resisted at first, believe me I did, but as time passed somehow squid began to seem to fit more and more. Finally, when I was officially adopted into House Sweinbrothar, Squid ceased to be an onus and became more of an honor, and my new persona officially became Theudegisklos "Skwid" Sweinbrothar.

"Now wait a minute," you say, "you still haven't explained what that funky line art at the top of the page is, or why you spell `skwid' the way you do!" The reason is that they are linked, see?

The "funky line art" at the top of the page are runes. In case you don't know, Runes are an ancient alphabet, used by many Germanic, Celtic, and Nordic peoples. Writing in runes has been a hobby of mine for many years now, and to those who might wonder, the particular alphabet which I use is that of the Early Germanic peoples who inhabited the mainland. (Before anyone asks, I don't do that "rune-magic" stuff. As far as my use is concerned, runes are just an alphabet.) Now runes are for the most part a phonetic alphabet, and so some letters are not in the runic alphabet. One of these is the letter Q. And so it all comes together. When I truly adopted the name of squid for my own, one of the first things that occured to me was that there was no way to spell it out in runes. So I changed the Q to a K. I don't know about you, but to me "Skuid" looks like it should either be pronounced "Skewed" or "Skweed," and so I changed the U to a W.

Thus was a legend born, and the one called Skwid came to walk the earth.