The first investiture of the (native) Viceroy and Vicereine of Lochac was held in Politarchopolis in January 1986. 

I was Co-Steward with Kiriel; I did the food and she organised the venue and activities and everything else.  

This probably wasn’t my finest hour.  Going from feasts of 40 people in Dark Skies to the largest feast ever held in Lochac, for over 100 people, caused some scaling issues.  

I had moved to Canberra a few weeks before the event, and was living in a one-bedroom flat.  I had no kitchen crew, so my friends from Dark Skies came up and stayed in the flat with me, and we did the pre-cooking for the event there.  A lot of hard work!  

The menu for the event is long since lost – disk space was hard to come by in those days!  I remember it as having four courses: nibbles on the tables, a course with a land-animals theme, one with sea-animals, and then one with fabulous animals. 

Each course had some sort of soteltie, and one fancy dish just for the High Table (a bad idea).  

Quite a few things were served cold, and readily purchasable, like a smoked trout for each table – and a gilded one for the High Table. 

Some stuff still had to go through the oven, and we had issues with that, a classic scaling problem.

I over-reached a bit – like every newish feast-steward, my event had to be the biggest ever, and these days I’d never do four courses.  I am sure the last course came out too late, after 9pm.  

This is the event where I did a roast goose dressed as a phoenix: endored gold, with red-endored flames around the base. It was served upright, doused in hot brandy and set alight. All very good, until the server bowed before the High Table. The flaming goose slid off the tray, down the length of the High Table, and into the lap of a West Kingdom duchess…