This is the official web page of 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 are subject to administrative return.

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 in order to be accepted. A herald should be familiar enough with the Rules for Submission to help you obey them. Your submission must also be submitted in a way consistent with Laurel Policy and Brigantia Policy. 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. The only sources for documentation that do not require photocopies are listed in Appendix H of the Administrative Handbook. Failure to meet Laurel's or Brigantia's standards is valid cause for return.

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

The ideal tools to color in an armory submission are Crayola Classic 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. Colored pencils and crayons will melt and the dyes from color printers will change color significantly over the course of days or weeks. 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.

Once your submission forms and documentation are assembled, include a check made payable to "SCA Inc. - East Kingdom College of Heralds" in an amount totaling $8.00 per each submitted item (a name, a device, a badge, etc.).

Those in the Southern, Central, and Northern Pines regions (i.e., the U.S.) should mail submissions to:

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

Those in the Northern Shores region (Canada) 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 three 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.

Contacting ECH

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

Resources for Submissions 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).

Here's a bit of fun we had one spring: April 1 ILoI. The saga continues with the April 1 LoD and the April 1 (external) LoI. But wait, there's more! Another April 1 ILoI, and another April 1 xLoI.

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.

The old email list which was used for commentary before OSCAR still exists. You can subscribe to it by sending email to 'loc-subscribe@eastkingdom.org' and replying to the confirmation email it sends back.

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