Greetings to the kingdom! This is a little late, because I prefer to wait for the monthly Letter of Acceptances and Returns and that’s always late in August because of Pennsic, so I apologise if it doesn’t make it into Pegasus and you end up getting twice as much of me the next month. I trust our Chronicler will use a smaller font to reduce the pain.

The aforementioned Letter reported the registration of the following:

Celestria le Reven. Name and device. Argent, a tree blasted and eradicated sable within an orle sable crescenty argent.
Dante Caldiera. Name and device. Per pale sable and Or, two cauldrons counterchanged.
Dante Caldiera. Badge. Per pale sable and Or, two roundels counterchanged.
Guillaume d’Oze. Device. Quarterly gules semy-de-lys Or and azure, a boar passant argent.
Helewyse de Bonnay. Name and device. Or, two pallets purpure and a bordure gules.
Kateryna de Bonnay. Name.
Mariot de Bonnay. Name and device. Vert, on a bend Or three mullets purpure.
Robert de Bonnay. Name and device. Barry wavy Or and purpure, on a sea-horse gules a cross flory argent.
Talia de Bonnay. Name and device. Per chevron purpure and gules, a centaur statant Or and in base a cross of Calvary argent.

Congratulations to all of those lucky people. I have conveyed my congratulations to Sir Oze and the clan de Bonnay, all of them my fellow Lightwoodians, Note that having the kingdom’s Principal Herald in your canton is not a guarantee of speedy registration, but it does make sure your submissions don’t get lost on the way to Rocket Herald. Well, mostly…

That’s what I wanted to talk about today, briefly. The ideal we prefer to aim for in submissions is this: a potential submitter talks to a local herald about what they want. The local herald helps them put together their paperwork, which they (the submitter, not the herald) send off to Rocket Herald. If there are any problems, Rocket notes the details for the local herald and sorts them out, usually by email. The resulting, perfected submission goes off to Laurel and in about four or five months from initial submission it’s all registered and everyone is happy.

Sometimes this doesn’t work. Some local heralds sit on submissions for too long instead of getting them done. Some heralds are impossible to find, or their skills run more to the shouting than the paperwork, so submitters send their paperwork directly without the assistance of a pair of experienced eyes. And sometimes the mail goes astray, and what looked like a sure thing becomes lost in the limbo of Australia Post or NZ Post, and may God have mercy on its stamps.

We are trying to improve this situation. The Facebook group Lochac Heraldry Chat is an excellent place to look for heraldic advice if your local herald is not fully up to the job of handling submissions. The roster of heralds on the SCA heralds website is the place to look for local heralds, whether they be the official branch representative or merely an At Large herald able to offer help. And if mail goes astray, we now allow computer-printed scans (see my letter from last month) provided you follow the required steps, so at least you can reprint without all that tedious colouring-in.

So please avail yourself of these resources, but most of all, if you have any comments, good or bad, about your experience with heralds, please let me know. I need to know which heralds are solid gold and which are — how shall I put this? — more specifically talented in non-congruent domains. That way, I can direct the former to aid the latter, and improve the standard throughout the kingdom.

If you want to comment, please email me on herald@lochac.sca.org. If you’re in the Eastern Isles and would like to talk to a local whose funny accent matches your own, talk to Kazimira Suchenko, Astrolabe Herald, on astrolabe@lochac.sca.org. [EDIT: Except that I’m told Astrolabe’s accent is exotic even to the already fascinatingly exotic personages of the Crescent Isles. At least she won’t sound like Kath and Kim.] To join the Facebook group, go to
its page, and to check out the herald’s website, point your intertubes at the home page.

In service,

: Karl Faustus von Aachen, Crux Australis :