This is the official web page of the Eastern Crown Herald. The office of Eastern Crown is responsible for handling all heraldic submissions from East Kingdom residents.

Page Contents:

The Eastern Submission Forms

Please make sure you use the current forms. They should be labeled "Laurel v. 2.0; East v1.0 (Laurel Approved 06 OCT 2006)" at the bottom right-hand corner. Submissions on old or altered forms will generally be returned.

Item to be submitted Word Document Adobe PDF Instructions (RTF)
_Personal name, household name Individual Name Form Individual Name Form Individual Name Instructions
_Branch name, award name, heraldic title Group Name Form Group Name Form Group Name Instructions
_Individual armory, branch armory Device Form Device Form Device Instructions
_Personal badge, household badge, award, office, seal, alternate personal arms Badge Form Badge Form Badge Instructions
_Fieldless badge (no particular background) Fieldless Badge Form Fieldless Badge Form Badge Instructions

Important Technical Note: While many systems default to opening files with a .doc extension using Wordpad, this and other rich text editors are not actually capable of interpreting this file type correctly. If you do not have Word or OpenOffice, please use the PDF version of the submission form.

How to Submit

Please contact a herald to assist you in the submissions process. He or she should have valuable experience that can help you avoid potential problems with your submission. If you can't find a herald locally, please contact Eastern Crown Herald for a referral.

Your submission must obey the Rules for Submission and other applicable Laurel and Brigantia policies in order to be accepted; failure to do so can cause your submission to be returned. This means that, among other requirements, the official forms must be completed, all necessary documentation must be included, and an adequate number of copies of both the form and the documentation must be made.

NOTE: The only sources for documentation that do not require photocopies are listed in Appendix H of the Administrative Handbook. This also applies to documentation to support armory submissions. Sources to avoid are found in Appendix F of the Administrative Handbook. Branch names and devices require petitions. See the Admin Handbook for more information.

Form/Documentation # of Copies of the Appropriate Form
_Name 2 (two)
_Armory Outline drawing 1 (one)
Color 3 (three)

Helpful Tips: The ideal tools to color in an armory submission are Crayola Classic Markers or equivalent markers. They are true to the heraldic tinctures and hold their colors well while being subjected to the heat, time, and humidity that comes with postal travel. As of December 2010, crayons are banned. Ink from color printers will change color significantly over the course of days or weeks (e.g., red to brown), and colored pencils are usually too faint to scan well or rub off the paper. Yellow highlighter is not picked up by scanners, so please use standard yellow markers. It is also best not to color in the black portions of the black-and-white copy, but leave it as an outline drawing. Use at least a medium-nib pen, so that the image can be scanned and scaled down without loss of visibility. Please do not attach printouts of armory images to the form with glue or tape. Ensure that the art is directly on the form.

Once your submission forms and documentation are assembled, include a check or money order made payable to "SCA Inc. - East Kingdom" in an amount totaling $8.00 (USD) for each new submitted item (each name, device, badge, etc.). Resubmissions are free if we can track down the earlier submissions, so please try to give us as much information on the prior attempt(s) as you can. Please write on the memo line on the check which SCA name it is for.

Those in the United States (Southern, Central, and Northern Regions) should mail submissions to:

Rebecca Johnson
Eastern Crown Herald
1108 Winding Rd
Lansdale, PA 19446

Those in Canada (Northern Shores Region) should mail submissions to:

Elizabeth Crux
Badger Herald
12 Nabob Court
Dartmouth, NS
B2W 0B5

The Submission Process

Heraldic submissions are processed in batches called Letters of Intent. These come in two versions: kingdom-level Internal Letters of Intent (ILoIs) and Society-level External Letters of Intent (xLoIs). LoIs have a set commentary period, when other heralds can check each submission for rules violations, help find adequate documentation, and search for possible conflicts with already registered items. After this commentary period, all the comments that have been received are taken into consideration and a decision is made about each submission.

In the East Kingdom, Eastern Crown Herald issues both the ILoI and the kingdom-level decisions for it, in the form of a Letter of Decisions (LoD). (Previous officeholders have sometimes called them Letters of Response [LoR].) Based on this LoD, Blue Tyger Herald then issues the xLoI. This xLoI goes out to the Society-wide College of Arms for commentary, using the Online System for Commentary and Response (OSCAR).

Laurel Sovereign of Arms and her deputies Wreath (armory) and Pelican (names) hold monthly decision meetings. The results of each month's meetings are published as a Letter of Acceptances and Returns (LoAR). For convenience, LoARs are dated by the month of the meeting, but it is important to keep in mind that it takes time to write, proofread, and triple-check the letter.

Official notification of the result of each step of the process (that is, the decision on the LoD and LoAR) is sent out to each Eastern submitter by Mural Herald. Please notify Mural if your address changes while you have a submission in process.

Schedule; or How Long Will This Take?

When a submission arrives, Eastern Crown Herald emails the person who mailed it, letting him or her know which ILoI the submission should be on.

In either case, official notification letters may take a bit longer, depending on Mural's schedule and the vagaries of the post office. It'll take even longer for registered items to show up in the Ordinary and Armorial (O&A), since this is updated only a few times each year.

Details

ILoIs are issued around mid-month, and have a one-month commentary period. Kingdom-level decisions are issued at the begininning of the following month. For example, a submission which arrives by about January 1st will be on an ILoI dated on or around Jan. 15th. The commentary deadline will be around Feb. 15th, and the decisions will be issued at the beginning of March.

External letters of intent are up for commentary for two months, and are considered at the Laurel meetings in the month following the end of this commentary period. For example, an xLoI issued in March will normally be scheduled for the July meetings. It typically takes at least two months for the LoAR to be published.

Once a submission has left kingdom, you can check its general status in OSCAR. Note that some decisions require additional research and discussion after the meetings, and decisions can change as a result. For this reason, the decisions are not final and cannot be disclosed until the official LoAR is issued.

Contacting ECH

The current Eastern Crown Herald is known in the SCA as Lillia de Vaux. She can be contacted by Eastern Crown Herald, or by mail at the address given above.

Resources for Consulting Heralds

East Kingdom College of Heralds:

SCA College of Arms and Laurel Sovereign of Arms:

Conflict Tables:

Miscellaneous Sources:

The Eastern Letters of Intent

The LoI page includes the bulk of published letters immediately relating to heraldic submissions in the East Kingdom. The columns are as follows: Eastern Internal Letter of Intent (ILoI), Eastern Letter of Decision (LoD), Eastern External Letter of Intent (xLoI), and Laurel Letter of Acceptance and Return (LoAR) by date of the meeting (each LoAR is published approximately two months after this meeting date).

To participate in the East Kingdom's heraldic commentary process, please see the Online System for Commentary and Response section, below.

Online System for Commentary and Response

The heraldic submission process depends to a great degree on the contributions of heralds from throughout the kingdom and beyond. Yes, this means You! To participate, please use the East Kingdom OSCAR, which is a bulletin-board-like system for entering and organizing commentary. It's found at http://oscar.eastkingdom.org/. To use it, you need to first sign up for an account, and then wait for it to be approved (to prevent spammers and other malicious types). Once you sign in using your favorite Web browser, you can view the submissions currently up for discussion and contribute your comments in a simple online interface. For a guide to the commentary process, please see Commenting on Letters of Intent.

There is also a Society-wide OSCAR, found at http://oscar.sca.org. This is where the xLoIs are posted for commentary by heralds across the known world. It requires a separate account from your EK OSCAR account, and must be approved by Brigantia. (Access to Society OSCAR is generally intended for more experienced heralds.)

Note: Commentary is not open to the general public. This is because information such as legal names may be discussed, and because commenters speak more freely in a closed environment. Issues raised in commentary may or may not be a factor in the final decision. For that reason, just because something was brought up doesn't mean the submission is not registerable. Conversely, just because a problem was not noted in commentary does not mean that a submission is registerable. For submitters who just want to check on the overall status of submissions after they leave kingdom, no account is needed. Just check out the Sub Status page in Society OSCAR.

Return to top