February 10, 2013: The College of Scribes had a very productive meeting at King's Round Table in Northkeep this month. Among the subjects discussed (with Scribes and the College of Heralds) were some minor changes that will effect Charters in the Kingdom that have been in discussion and drafting for some time. As a new set of Masters is in the works, now was best time to discuss and effect changes. In short summary these include:
1. Charters will no longer be cut before being turned in to Regionals, Sable Scroll, or being handed out to the Recipient. Please turn them in whole.
* This clarifies the 'who cuts and what size' question by allowing the recipient to have the page cut to fit whatever frame and matting they prefer.
* This also means only one size of envelope (the one we use the most anyway) will be used, and the heralds will not have to fish for a cut scroll in a large envelope during court.
2. The lower portion of non-armigerous and AoA level charters will be updated to include not only the artist information, but the "Care and Feeding of Scrolls" information for recipients.
* The Care and Feeding information will no longer have to be printed off on a separate sheet and included in the envelope.
3. The old "photocopy" marks on some of the older charters will be removed. They are often mistaken for cutting marks, but are not, and are often not in the right position for proper cutting anyway. It has been discussed for years that they should go. This will happen with the new Masters. (Note: There will still be a marked line between the information below the charter and the charter space and scribes are welcome to still use this portion of the paper for testing color combinations as they have always done).
4. Before the new Masters come out, a culling of old charters will be happening. I have requested (and received) feedback over the past several months regarding preferences on Charters, and have thinned the herd based on useful commentary such as "the scribes can never match this font and it takes two hours to do" or "there isn't even room to write the shortest crown's name we have in this space." And other reasonable concerns as well as visual concerns and occasionally sheer age.
* While this will temporarily cut down on the number of designs available, it allows us to accept more designs for the scrolls that people really enjoy designing for. So I doubt the numbers will remain down for long!
5. It has been decided that scrolls with alternative alphabets (arabic, cyrillic, runes, etc.) will now have included in them by Sable Scroll (as they have in the past) a printed copy of the full scroll text, for the convenience and sanity of the herald.
It is hoped that these changes, most of which are relatively minor in how they will effect the travel of charter from copy to paint to recipient, will simplify and smooth out some of the kinks in the charter system.
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