[Northkeep] Heraldry/Devices Stuff Pt. 1

[Herndon, Darin]

The link on the kingdom site for the O&A search engine doesn't seem to
be responding.  I'll forward a note to the admins and see what is up.

If you want to do a conflict check, try:
http://oanda.sca.org/cgi-bin/oanda_complex.cgi

There are about seven active O&A sites on the internet.  If one is down
you can switch to one of the others.  A list of O&A sites can be found
at:
http://www.sca.org/heraldry/OandA/

Having said that, I too would encourage those seeking heraldry help to
visit the Northkeep Herald's Consulting night on the 4th Thursday of
each month.

For those who simply cannot resist playing with the Ordinary & Armorial
(an armorial is a listing of people who have arms/devices; an ordinary
is a listing of registered arms/devices and who owns them), please note
that it can take years to learn to conflict check and even then you can
miss stuff.  The O&A doesn't tell you what conflicts; it simply returns
any registered items matching the search criteria you give it.

To do a device search in the easiest possible way, go to the link above
and select the complex search form (as Zahava noted).  You get five
search items into which you can place things for which you are
searching.  Note that the "Weight" field is mandatory so rank the most
important elements with the highest numbers and give less important
elements lower numbers.  In the second field (which is a pop down list
of items to select), you are probably better off choosing "Blazon
Pattern" than any of the other options.  Lastly, you type in what you
are seeking (ie - griffin, ewer, pitcher, fret, etc.).  The search
engine then checks every blazon (heraldic description) in its database
for the items you requested and then lists them for you.  Note that
there is a field lower down for how many items to display and it
defaults to 25; increase it to 50, 66, 100, etc. if you want to see more
at one time.

Etienne