Das Bill would know more than I, as I was just an innocent observer and I may get some of the facts wrong.
IIRC, the actual design and sobriquet 'Militaris Templi' was being bandied around on SFI- Acanthus Swordworks or whatever they called themselves (Adrian Ko, John Lundemo- there was one other, Christian Fletcher I think, but I can't remember) had designed a couple of swords, one was a Type XIIa that would have a Crusader theme, the other ended up being Glawar, a fantasy leaf blade type that shows a marked resemblance to the UC Glamdring, but overall a much more fantastic presentation, imho.
Anyhow, Eyal Azerad, proprietor of DSA, was a regular member- now Acanthus didn't keep their designs or intentions secret, they shared it with the entire board. A few months later, DSA puts out a special edition of their '12th Century' sword, which bore a marked resemblance to the Acanthus design, right down to the lettering in the fuller (I think the first iteration read Militarii Templi, and Eyal used Militaris instead).
As the DSA offering did not completely replicate the Acanthus design (which was more in tune with what a Type XIIa should have as far as blade features, all of DSA's knightly offerings have a diamond shaped profile, whether it was historical or not depending on the time frame they're claiming to have built the sword in spec to) there was little the SFI guys could do about it. It did leave a bad taste in a number of peoples' mouths and as far as I can remember, drew some lines of division on the board...although I think most took up for Adrian and Jon as it was, or seemed to be, their design that began it all.
That's as much as I remember of it.
Dane, Nathan said something about your sword? Where'd he do that, I don't see it anywhere.
