Yet More Greyhawk Heraldry

I needed to take a writing break, so in my idle moments I put together some more heraldic devices from the World of Greyhawk. As before, these are done using the superb Coat of Arms Design Studio Pro by Inkwell Ideas (there's a free demo version available on their website, but it's not at all "crippleware"), with a touch-up here and there in GIMP. They come out as .png files, so they should scale great (within reason); you should click to embiggen and then save the resulting image, if you so desire. As before, it's just a hodgepodge of nations with no real theme other than I liked the designs. So without further ado, I give you...

Fief of Ahlissa

(An interesting note about this one; for some reason Ahlissa has three cannonballs in its design. While that's not all unusual in historical Medieval heraldry, it doesn't make a lick of sense in a fantasy world where black powder isn't supposed to work...)

Town of Highfolk

 Kingdom of Keoland

 Ket

Lordship of the Isles

 Onnwal

 The Paynims

 City of Rel Astra

 Reyhu (in the Bandit Kingdoms)

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More Greyhawk Heraldry

I thought I'd knock out some of the easier ones this time. As before, these were done using the wonderful Coat of Arms Visual Designer by Inkwell Ideas. The images are all in .png format, so they should scale pretty well.

Ice Barbarians:

Frost Barbarians:

Grand Duchy of Geoff:

Great Kingdom of Aerdy:

Narwell:

The Theocracy of the Pale:

Snow Barbarians:

County of Ulek:

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Some More Greyhawk Heraldry

Last year I used Inkwell Idea's wonderful Coat of Arms Visual Designer to come up with some .png files of heraldry from the World of Greyhawk. These have the advantage of being sharp and scalable, which often isn't the case with scans from the books. Now I've got the pro version and have been doing some more work in it, finishing up the images in GIMP when needed (such as adding the Iron League's signature fret in the upper-right corner). Here are the results...

Sunndi:

Furyondy:

Duchy of Urnst:

County of Urnst:

Elredd:

Wolf Nomads:

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Dwarven Heraldry

Heraldry as practiced in courts and kingdoms of humankind features three basic types of tincture; metal, color, and fur. Of metals there are only two; argent (silver/white) and Or (gold/yellow). The basic rule (although there are exceptions known as "arms of enquiry") is that metals should never be placed upon metals in a coat of arms, and colors never be placed upon colors, thus almost all human arms contain either white or yellow.

"Bronze"

In dwarven heraldry, on the other hand, these rules and tinctures are quite different. Whereas human heraldry has only two metals, dwarven heraldry has platinum, electrum, silver, gold, copper, bronze, iron, and tin. "Bronze" in this case is a fine diamond-checkered pattern of copper and tin, whereas "electrum" is a similar pattern of silver and gold; they can thus be seen as analogous to the human furs, although dwarven heralds will vehemently resist such comparisons and strenuously defend their classification as metals. Metals are rendered in metallic paints (which are in some cases more expensive than the metals themselves) or in the actual metals.

"Electrum"

Dwarven heraldry lacks colors, having gemstones instead; topaz, diamond, sapphire, ruby, amethyst, and emerald. These are, however, generally rendered as yellow, white, blue, red, purple, and green, respectively. Some spectacular renderings of dwarven heraldry will contain the actual gemstones, but these are almost invariably only used for decorative or ritual purposes.

There are no general rules about mixing colors and metals, although there are rules about specific combinations of tinctures; topaz should never be placed atop gold (and vice versa), diamond and platinum should not be mixed, nor should platinum and silver.

Ordinaries, divisions, creatures, and objects are generally the same in both human and dwarven heraldry, although the terms are, naturally, translated into dwarvish. Nautical creatures and objects (anchors, fish, etc.) are never seen on dwarven heraldry, but objects like anvils, hammers, axes, and mine carts abound.

Finally, the standard shape for dwarven arms is the round shield (as opposed to other types common in human heraldry such as the escutcheon or lozenge).

Humans often have difficulty distinguishing between some of the tinctures used in dwarven heraldry; platinum and silver, for example. Dwarven heralds scoff at such complaints, however, pointing out that dwarven heraldic devices were originally designed to appeal to refined dwarven sensibilities and not the eyes of a race that "can't tell pyrite from gold."

(Thanks to Inkwell Ideas' excellent Coat of Arms Visual Designer, which was used to create most of the images above, with modifications to shield shape made in GIMP.)

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