Fantasy Heraldry pt. 2 - Specific design

Now we move on to the Fantasy Heraldry specific for the project I have in mind. Namely the invasion of Capalan by Tereken in the ongoing RRtK campaign over at Talomir Tales. So, just in case you're new to Talomir, Tereken are essentially Anglo-Saxons and Capalan are Italian city states around the 15th century.

As such I have to come up with one symbol for Tereken and then as many as five, one for each original province, for Capalan. Capalan also has Brethren Mercenaries so I'll have to make a Symbol for them. Tereken seems pretty straight forward. I've already identified the colors Green and Yellow and some kind of Dragon.

Dragon or Wyvern?

Capalan...hmm. Okay we know we want some kind of Italian wars theme. Looking here (particularly Mazzacane and Palma) gave me the idea to try a base scheme to tie them together with different emblems added to differentiate. So we have Resta, who is the leader, so I'm thinking skeleton or bones since google translate tells me Resta means remains. Cosimo was one of the Medici's so I will use the six circle configuration similar to that shown here. Bertolli definitely gets an olive branch if not an outright lift of the Olive Oil companies logo, probably not since that is a bad thing to do. But I'll riff off of it. Bellissima, I had thought of making her a proxy for princess peach, but then I saw a Mermaid in my collection so I think I'll go with that. And lastly Orso, the Bear. Seems like he should have a bear on his heraldry. The only question is what kind? Rampant? I wonder if there is a sleeping bear, I'll have to investigate. As far as color scheme goes I'll have to ask Ruarigh what the hex number or name is for the border highlight on his map. It appears to be some shade of violet. Could be a problem as I'm not sure what colors complement that.

From Wikimedia Commons

The bits and pieces for Capalan

Ruarigh told me what the hex # for the CC3 color was. I'm still not sure what color to pair with the purple, I'm leaning towards yellow.

Lastly the Brethren. From the RRtK rule book we read that "The Brethren have numerous holdings in Talomir called Red Castles and are found in Ekra, Altengard and Treyine."(RRtK, p66) Now as we know from reading Talomir Tales, Ekra and the Brethren have been defeated and absorbed by Treyine. So the only independent source of Brethren left is in Altengard. That being said one could make a case for the Treyine and Ekran branches hiring out as mercenaries since they have been disbanded, and their wealth reverted to the crown, by Treyine. My original thoughts were to have a central theme for the brethren, with a device to differentiate the three nations of origin. Since Ruarigh gave them the Teutonic black cross already I may stick with that, however red is the brethrens color of choice being devotees of the Red Sun. I think a cross, with a red sun in the upper left quadrant and then a device in the middle for the country. This of course may mean that I now need to make them for Ekra, Altengard and Treyine. Oh bother.

Altengard, Ekra, Treyine and a non aligned Brethren

So I did this after more correspondence with Raurigh and Javier. Okay so I phoned in Ekra, but these are all just concept drawings.

Also thanks to Iain from the THW Yahoo group for adding a link to the meaning of Heraldry symbols, aptly named Symbolism of Heraldry. I'm not sure I like it as much as at least one of the others I found, but the information looks good. Perhaps I'll do a comparison of these symbolism sites in another post.

Also as a postscript (since it's taken me days to work out this silly post) to more links of use. Color Wiki where I searched for hex codes for these oddball colors (yes I mean you Murrey).

And looking for Plantagenet herldry I stumbled upon the gold mine that is Early Blazon.

Enjoy and if you have constructive feedback I'd love to hear it.