Salve Accolens,
Coming on May 24th the Debatable Lands Iris Festival and Iron Comet Challenge event. This year’s event will be the 5th Iris festival and 15 year anniversary of the first Iron Comet Challenge. The Iris Festival is a Japanese themed event. It may include martial tournaments, A&S competitions and displays, classes, equestrian competitions, and/or guild workshops. The activities need not be Japanese themed. This year the Iris Festival hosts both the Iron Comet Challenge and the Iron Skillet dessert cooking competition.
The Iron Comet Challenge has independent tournaments for heavy fighting, fencing, archery, thrown weapons, and Arts and Sciences for adults. For youth there will be archery, thrown weapons, and Arts and Sciences. There will also be an A&S display for those who prefer to just display rather than compete. In addition, there is the combined Iron Comet Challenge:
Here are words from Laerifadir Jorundr hinn Rotinn who ran the first Iron Comet 15 years ago: We challenge all martial participants to show how well you do in the disciplines of Heavy Combat, Fencing, Archery, Thrown Weapons, and Arts and Sciences. All entrants in the Iron Comet Challenge must participate in at least three martial forms and provide an entry for the arts and sciences competition. If you participate in all four martial competitions you get to drop your lowest score for your final ranking. This competition for fun and glory shows just how multi talented our members are.
The icon skillet dessert competition is being organized by Lady Arthes MacLeod. Details will be coming soon. Please email arthesofbmdl@gmail.com for to participate.
All this fun will happen Sunday May 24th and the site is the Barn at Old Economy Park, #5 Forcey Drive, Baden, PA 15005. Here is the location: https://maps.app.goo.gl/1K2ZTiw4uqRvNu8i9. The site opens at 9 am and closes at 7pm. The autocrat for this event is Hara Shonagon , Sharon Booth, 1105 Shady Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15232, 412-441-1607 sbooth@sbooth.net. This is a land-line with an answering machine. Please leave a message. No calls after 9pm.
Accessibility Information:
The site is hilly. The site has a large outdoor field next to a barn. There is a second field behind the barn. There is limited parking next to the barn and a large parking lot a short distance from the barn. There will be reserved handicapped parking in the lot next to the barn. There will be outdoor changing pop-ups. The barn has two floors. Each floor has it’s own entrance. Each entrance has a step. The restrooms are accessible from the outside on the lower level and there are no steps to get into the restrooms.
There is a scrumptious boxed lunch planned to keep with the Japanese Iris Festival theme. The cook is Lady Oyama Michiharu: mirakat60@gmail.com. Lunch is an additional $6.00 for youth or adult.
Event Cost:
- Adult Event Registration: $20
- Adult Member Discount Event Registration: $10
- Youth 17 and under are free
- Optional Bento Box lunch: $6 – you must fill out pre-registration form to reserve a bento box.
Make checks payable to SCA PA, Inc. – BMDL. The reservations clerk for this event is Forveleth Dunde, Miranda Gavrin, forveleth@gmail.com. Please pre-register using the online form, especially if you want to reserve a bento box lunch. However, we ask that you pay at the door.
Here is the barony event page: https://debatablelands.aethelmearc.org/events/2026-05-24%20Japanese%20Iris%20Festival.php. It will be updated when we create the schedule, and details have more details about Iron Skillet.