Herald’s Admonishments: Chivalry for Heralds

About a decade or so ago, I became acquainted with Gerald Legh's Accedens of Armourie (1562) as a relatively new herald. Gerald Legh was an English lawyer (specifically the Inner Temple of the Inns of Court) and wrote a lot on heraldry specifically. Within the Accedens, he also admonishes that the people acting as heralds …

Adventures in Mesoamerica: Maya Blue Paint

A little bit ago, I discovered a pigment while window-shopping at Kremer Pigments' website and, well, I fell down the rabbit hole pretty hard. The colour had a couple of shades of a greyish, almost smoky blue, ranging from dark to light, and to find out that it was used in not only Mesoamerican stonework, …

Calon Cross for Gawin Käppler

No rest for the wicked, really. No sooner had I completed John's scroll, I got contacted by the Royal Scribe again on if I could get another scroll done. Now, this one had a challenge of time, with it being given out two weeks after I had gotten the assignment. Thankfully, for this scroll, I'm …

Silver Hammer for John Bowyer and other good news

Now that things are starting to kick back into gear, courts are happening again, and life is slowly starting to return to a new sense of "normal," it also means that my scribal slate is starting to fill with activities and assignments again. Back around the very end of last year, I got asked "hey, …

Illuminated Fealty Oath

So, in this, the days of the panda's panini pandemonium, life in the SCA has continued. We have a new set of royals in Calontir, but because this is indeed the panda's panini pandemonium and also January, my partner and I decided that we could not really afford to travel to coronations. Now, if you …

To Colour or Not to Colour: a treatise on digital heraldic submissions

As more and more heraldic submissions are accepted using digitally rendered and coloured means, the question frequently comes up in heraldic spaces: what is an acceptable digital colour palette, in either hex codes or Pantone colours? This article will discuss why the SCA College of Arms has not published an official digital colour palette, and …

Breaking Byzantine: building a Byzantine persona for the SCA

This originated as part of building a basic persona guide, written for the Midrealm Pursuivant's Handbook (located here). Within that guide, I discussed the basic history of the Eastern Empire, as well as basic points of clothing, weaponry, literary references, political groups, religious information, as well as people within the Empire of note. This guide …

Omphaloskepsis: But I Can Do It Cheaper!

A thought. SCAdians are really bad about respecting the work of others. Hear me out. Because our culture is very much a DIY culture, it is quite easy to go "psh, I can make that - for cheaper than *that guy* is charging" without really thinking about the actual material and labour costs of what …

Broke Byzantine: making a sartorial riot happen on a budget

All too often, when the term Byzantine and the Eastern Roman Empire are brought up in re-enactment and recreationist contexts, especially in a clothing context, we think opulence and splendour. We think “guess I’ll have to mortgage my house” or “time to rob the bank to afford this look.” I’m here to say that no, …

So You Want To Start Scribal: building your scribal box

A lot of people in the past few weeks in the SCA scribal-verse have been asking about how to get started as a scribe in the SCA. I can really only speak as a scribe in Calontir, but the basics of types of paint and other supplies is fairly universal. This blog post will serve …