We've had a couple players claim two medallions, so it's likely that the elims did indeed hand some out to start. Having read the rules a couple of times, I'm still not sure how the Southern Scadrian ability to pass out medallions works. Do they merely submit a list of players, who then receive medallions at random? Or do they get to specify which medallions each player receives? The latter seems significantly more powerful, but also makes claiming medallion roles more reasonable.