[ANSTHRLD] blazon question

[tmcd at panix.com]

On Fri, 21 Apr 2006, lburgin <lburgin at gt.rr.com> wrote:
> Hi gang, I am sorry I don't have a picture, but the question is:  Is
> it possible to blazon a major charge "per fess" when it is not a
> counter-change situation?  The blazon I propose is:  per fess argent
> goutee du (red) and gules a double headed eagle displayed per fess
> sable and Or and in base three orthodox crosses Or.
>
> I'm sorry I can't remember the goutee and my books are loaned.

There's a filk song to the tune of "Do Re Me" about the special names
for gouts, but it ends
     Now you know the words to say,
     Use the tinctures anyway.
I don't bother to remember any of the special gout names.  Registered
blazons of late appear to use whichever terms the LoI had on its
proposed blazon, but using just the plain tinctures predominates
lately.  (By the way: "goutty de sang", 'drops of blood'.)

Minor blazon fu: SCA blazons capitalize
- The first word of the blazon
- Proper names (like "Orthodox")
- "Or".

Compound adjectives are hyphenated.  (E.g., "I am an anal-retentive twit".)

SCA blazons use English spellings in most cases, so "goutty".

As Emma noted, per fess is like any other tincture description, so you
can have a per fess charge that's not counterchanged.  The background
can be solid, or not.

You can even say "counterchanged TINCTURE1 and TINCTURE2", which means
"it's like counterchanged, except that, rather than use the underlying
tinctures, use TINCTURE1 and TINCTURE2 instead".  I suggest
"counterchanged T1 and T2", because it makes it perfectly clear that
the per fess line on the field and the per fess line on the eagle are
identical.

So:

    Per fess argent goutty gules and gules, a double-headed eagle
    displayed counterchanged sable and Or and in base three Orthodox
    crosses Or.

If the same tincture is used several times unbroken in a row, you can
elide all but the last.  So you can remove the first "gules" above;
I preferred to leave it in to produce a smoother blazon.

Daniel Lindocolina
-- 
Tim McDaniel; Reply-To: tmcd at panix.com