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Love it, especially the calligraphy! And that's a great text. I think you Drachenwalders are more creative about your scroll texts....

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Glad to hear you think the calligraphy is good, because I'm pretty unhappy about it. As for scroll texts, I've reached the point where I just can't stand doing the TSCA text that you hear everywhere. I mean, a good scroll copies the calligraphy and the illumination of an exemplar, so what's the deal with using completely made-up and non-period texts??

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Your calligraphy always looks great to me!

I think around here it's that you have to get alternate texts approved, so it's an extra step and a lot of scrolls get done last-minute (*shifty look*). I may see about writing a short period-based text and seeing if I can get blanket approval to use it for blanks and what-nots.

I'd love to develop a database of pre-approved texts based on period sources for different time periods and cultures. Something to talk to my new kingdom scribe about at some point....

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In Drachenwald, so long as the text has the name of the recipient, the name of the K&Q, the award, and the date, anything goes. This is good on the one hand, because it allows a lot of flexibility, but it's not so good on the other because new scribes can find it daunting to come up with a text on its own. That's one reason why I always put my texts on my documentation pages for my scrolls, so that when someone asks for wording suggestions I can send them to ones of couple of different styles and lengths so that they can either copy or modify.

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I gather part of the reason for the Outlands policy is because there have been issues in the past with religious-flavored text that the signers weren't comfortable signing (I am guessing not so much period religious-flavored). The SCA in the U.S. has an uncomfortable relationship with religion.

There's probably also a certain amount of wanting to be sure of the correct legalese (Award of Arms vs Grant of Arms, etc.) being included, and there are rules about who has to sign off on the illumination if heraldry is included (if the recipient's arms are presented on a shield, the principal herald is supposed to sign the scroll; if they are on a flag or a dress or if pieces are incorporated into the overall illumination, they don't. I think. And we're not supposed to put blank shields on AoA scrolls; people are supposed to commission non-promissory AoA scrolls if they want to, which most people don't realize).

I wonder if the level of trust in the scribe in your system works because you have a somewhat smaller scribal system?

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I don't know. We certainly have a pretty small system at the moment, but I don't know if it's always been like that. Well, even if we haven't had such a small number of scribes in the past, it is the case that relatively few awards are given out each reign, just because traveling for the royalty is expensive and time-consuming. There's been 51 awards given out in the current reign so far, and that's pretty high, I believe.

We don't have the requirements about the herald signing off on scrolls that have arms on them, so that helps.

We haven't had problems with religious-flavored texts here, so much. It's pretty much all omitted, unless the scribe knows that both the K&Q and the recipient don't mind it (I've had the pleasure of doing a few scrolls that met that requirement, and it warmed the cockles of my period-text-loving heart).

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I would think one could write guidelines that would allow for custom scroll texts while avoiding major pitfalls. Hmmm.

(I wish I could think of a way to write them so period religion was okay, but modern religion was off the table, but I can't, and I'm sure that would still bug people.)

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It seems like the bullet points you gave me could be turned into flexible guidelines pretty easily. Maybe also if it was accompanied by examples of both what to do and what not to do?

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Hmmm.

*Custom scroll texts should be based on period examples or current approved kingdom scroll texts.
*Do not include references to religion unless you known the recipient will not mind and have confirmed that Crown/Coronet/Herald [as applicable] is comfortable with signing it.
*Double-check that terminology regarding awards is correct. [include some kind of cheat-sheet here to order names, styling of members, etc.]
*When in doubt, run your custom scroll text by the kingdom scribe.

Something like that? It should be possible--after all, illuminators have similar latitude and that works out pretty well (although I suspect there are a lot of scrolls with heraldry that didn't get properly signed because someone didn't remember that bit of the handbook).

(I admit I have a scroll written in lolcat, that was totally not approved by anyone other than the Coronet, and which is totally not period, but I do love it. Kind of a special case, though.)

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Yeah, something like that, along with things like "these bits are required: name/award/granting royalty/date", and "AoAs for people w/o registered arms shouldn't have blank shields".

A Lolspeak scroll, awesome!

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"AoAs for people w/o registered arms shouldn't have blank shields".

That's already in the scribal handbook in the illumination section.

Well, I'll have to reread the handbook and ponder further and perhaps I'll ask the new KS about the policy once she's more settled into the job. I suspect getting it changed to allow people to skip the approval process is sort of unlikely, but it's worth a shot. Maybe just getting more information out there about writing custom texts would help....

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Hello there. I'm Baroness Ekaterina Volkova from AEthelmearc. If you want help with the please let me know. I received my Fleur d'AEthelmearc (GoA level Arts award) for period wording. My focus and research has been into period documents and modifying them for SCA scrolls.

If you would like I can send you my class notes on how to look at period documents for scroll wording.

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I would be very interested in that handout!

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if you can email me at baronessekat AT gmail DOT com I will email it to you early next week.

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it's beautiful. I get the fun starting in January when I step up as Signet in AEthelmearc.

Any advice?

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Oooh, good luck with that, and have fun!

How many active scribes does Æthelmearc have, at a guess? And roughly how many awards per reign (how long are the reigns)? I can try to put together some "things I've learned" for you but some of it may be irrelevant depending on how numbers differ.

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Well, since I sent out the announcement a month ago and asked scribes to send me information (contact info, do they do callig/illumination/wording, highest level they are comfortable doing, who they want to do awards for, etc) I've heard from 90 (with about 5 saying to keep them on the list though life has it that they can't take assignments at the moment). I expect to hear from more the closer we get to 12th night and when my call also goes out in the Kingdom newsletter and not just the Kingdom scribal e-group

This number is way down from a couple years ago. Some is due to attrition and some is due to burn-out. We had some monarchs lately who only gave 1 weeks notice for award assignments and a signet who did not want to create a backlog (this is not an issue for me as I have no desire to burn out more scribes and will create a backlog if I have to)

Looking over past curia reports we have been averaging about 131 awards going out per reign (this is VERY rough numbers). We have 6 month reigns.

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thebronwen.livejournal.com

Your work just keeps getting better and better. I'm so proud of you! I especially love the border - it just speaks to me somehow. Awesome job!

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