By now you’ve collected a list of tinctures, charges and field divisions that you like. You may already be putting them together in your head, or you may have sketched out some preliminary designs, based on what you saw back in the period rolls in section 1. Or you may be waiting for me to tell you what to do with the list of stuff you’ve acquired over the course of this tutorial.
At this point, advice and guidance is hard to make into a tutorial format, because each list of charges and tinctures is specific to the individual. If you have a local herald, I recommend contacting him or her with your list and working together to combine your elements into a period-appropriate device that is easy enough to reproduce and will not conflict with existing armory. However, I don’t want you to leave empty-handed, so here’s an example of how I would advise a submitter with a list. First, we need a submitter. We’ll call him Thomas Bowman. Thomas is a 12th century English fighter with a large warband who used to do archery (hence the name). After going through the tutorial, he’s come up with the following list:
- Tinctures:
- Vert
- Argent
- Azure?
- Field Divisions:
- Per Chevron?
- Per Pale?
- Embattled
- Charges:
- Chief?
- Bend?
- Water Bouget (stylized pair of buckets attached with a stick)
This is certainly a substantial list, but if Thomas is willing to be flexible, the list gives enough options to come up with a variety of designs to choose from. Thomas particularly likes the water bouget, and wants to have one on his device no matter what.
Some of these designs conflict, but the second one is clear (as of this writing), and wonderfully period. If Thomas takes my advice, he’ll submit this design. Once it passes, he’ll find it quite easy to put on all sorts of things. What things, you ask? That’s a question for another tutorial.