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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8689556" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 110: August 1995part 3/5Raven's Knights: Enough history, onto the specifics. There are 8 official knightly orders in Raven's Bluff. At the bottom are the Knights of the Golden Rooster, which anyone can join as long as they're 2nd+ level and can pay the 1,000gp entry fee. Then there's six specialist orders, each with their own requirements, many of which seem to be aimed at specific classes. Knights of the Griffon, Hawk, & Dove, Keepers of the Mystic Flame, The Right Hand of Tyr and Pillars of the Realms. To get in those you'll have to complete multiple initiation tests, earn varying amounts of chivalry points, and generally spend several conventions jumping through hoops. Then at the top, there's the Raven Knights, only available to high level characters who've already earned a whole load of honors. It looks unlikely that you'll get into them without several years of concentrated effort and frequent convention attendance, probably going through the previous tiers first. Unless they bend the rules for some of their current high level players, there won't be any PC members for quite some time. Strong shades of the Solamnic Knight system, where you can stay in one order that suits you most of your career or move up to a higher one somewhat independently of level. So there's plenty of detail here, but they're not making it easy for people to accomplish the higher levels of it, adding on a whole load of extra bookkeeping to any character who wants to win a position for relatively minor social bonuses and no kewl new powers like they'd give a 3e prestige class. Is the prestige enough to get people interested without any mechanical rewards, or will people just shrug and keep on adventuring as freelancers? I'm definitely going to be interested in seeing how many do manage to join up next time they talk about demographics in here. Raven's Shields: Even if you don't want to go through all the hassle of becoming an official knight, you might still want to get yourself a nice coat of arms to make your character instantly recognisable. So here's a general guide to Forgotten Realms heraldry, and in particular that of The Vast. It's pretty similar to Cormyr's, (which in turn is pretty similar to real world medieval england) only less rigid in what isn't allowed to go with what in terms of color/shape combinations. You have your basic shield, which might be divided into 4 or 9 smaller squares. You then put simple geometric shapes like circles, triangles, chevrons, etc of different color on top of that. Then if you want to get really elaborate, you put heraldic animals on, generally with a formulaic set of positions you can categorise them with, which means they can be easily described and people can check the books to tell if someone else is also using that specific combination of things. Hopefully not, otherwise you'll have to fight for the right to keep it, for there's no automated takedown system in the Realms save for high level wizard's sigils. (another example of magic as technology where Ed was ahead of his time) Your basic primer to a topic that you can find whole books on how it was done in the real world and developed over centuries, and scale up the detail pretty much as you please if you want your campaign to focus on it. It's decent enough, and more useful to me than the Living campaign specific bureaucratic information that's long since ended.</blockquote>

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