Mistress Aleea Baga made me do it.

Mistress Aleea Baga has a superpower. She has the power to talk other people into doing things. She has talked me into running ranges, becoming a regional marshal, entering things into A&S competitions. I just hope that she never uses her powers for evil. Anywho. At Hollowtide she handed me a couple of scraps of pergamenta and asked me to paint some Kingdom badges on them (contrary to popular belief, we DO need some stinkin' badges). She was planning on mounting them in small frames under rounded glass. Kind of similar to Alfred the Great's jewel: http://britisharchaeology.ashmus.ox.ac.uk/highlights/alfred-jewel.html

I was kinda of busy and did not have time to work on them.... So I said, "Sure, I'll do it" and wondered, as she walked off, how she managed to talk me into it. Due to their size, it only took a couple of hours to complete.

The badges, the painted portion, needed to be 1.5" in diameter. It was a simple matter of pulling the badges from the signet's website and from my archives (I have only done AoA level scrolls, never grant level, so I have images of all of those) and dropping them into Microsoft Publisher. Using the guide lines and rulers, it was easy to size the images to exactly 1.5", then print them out and trace them using a lightbox. I picked the three most common AoA level awards (Golden Alce, for martial prowess; Sycamore, for A&S; and the Keystone, for service) and three of the GoA awards (the Fleur d'Æthelmearc, for A&S; the Gage, for heavy fighting prowess; and the White Horn, for thrown weapons).

I used thin coats of gouache to keep the pergamenta from curling up. I do not know how other scribes work with the stuff. When I was Baron of the Rhydderich Hael, I always hated signing any scrolls made with it; the ink, like my paint, seemed to float on the surface until it dried. I prefer working on paper: ink and paint soak into the material and there is less of a chance that it would be smudged or that it would run.

While I am posting, I should record this scroll blank. I plan on holding it for my next AoA scroll assignment. If the recipient has passed arms, I'll finish the scroll with his/her arms and color in the remaining leaves with matching colors.