Castle Battle · The Sigil Forge
Heraldry
Strike your own coat of arms in the Sigil Forge: a field and the way it is parted, the line it is cut by, an ordinary laid over it, a charge and how it is borne, and the tinctures all of it is painted in. Your arms fly over your keep in every battle, head your label on the field, and hang beside your name.
Tinctures
Two metals, eight colours and five furs. The old rule of tincture is metal against colour — never metal on metal or colour on colour — and the Forge warns you when a coat breaks it, then lets you fly it anyway. Plenty of real ones do.
A fur is not a colour but a pelt: a ground with a device strewn over it, and the oldest way heraldry found of making two coats out of one pair of tinctures. Furs go on fields, partitions and ordinaries — never on a charge, where a strewn motif at the size of a thumbnail is mud.
And a dropper at the end of every one of those rows, for a colour that is not in the palette at all — your own, picked from the same picker your system draws everywhere else. The palette is closed for a reason: colours chosen freely come out illegible against the ground they fly over. So the Forge measures a dropped colour against what it sits on while you are still holding the picker, and tells you when it falls under the contrast every pair in the palette clears. It is advice, like the rule of tincture — never a refusal.
| Tincture | Kind |
|---|---|
| Or | Metal |
| Argent | Metal |
| Gules | Colour |
| Azure | Colour |
| Vert | Colour |
| Purpure | Colour |
| Sable | Colour |
| Tenne | Colour |
| Sanguine | Colour |
| Cendree | Colour |
| Ermine | Fur |
| Ermines | Fur |
| Erminois | Fur |
| Vair | Fur |
| Potent | Fur |
Parting the field
Thirteen ways to part the field:
- Plain
- Per Fess
- Per Pale
- Per Bend
- Per Bend Sinister
- Quarterly
- Per Saltire
- Per Chevron
- Barry
- Paly
- Checky
- Lozengy
- Gyronny
The line it is cut by
Every parted field and every ordinary with an edge can be cut by a line, and the same field cut differently is a different coat of arms — a herald says so: Per fess, and Per fess wavy. Ten cuts, over everything that has an edge to take one.
- Wavy
- Nebuly
- Engrailed
- Invected
- Indented
- Dancetty
- Embattled
- Raguly
- Dovetailed
- Potenty
Laid on the field
An ordinary is a band, a border or a block in its own tincture, laid over whatever the field is doing underneath — and it takes the same cut the field does. Fifteen of them:
- Fess
- Pale
- Bend
- Bend Sinister
- Cross
- Saltire
- Chevron
- Chief
- Base
- Bordure
- Orle
- Pall
- Pile
- Canton
- Quarter
How a charge is borne
One device is the plainest coat there is; three of them, two-and-one, is the commonest arrangement in real heraldry. Nine ways to bear whatever you choose, including a semé — strewn over the whole cloth and cut by the hem.
- One
- Two in Fess
- Two in Pale
- Three
- Three in Fess
- Three in Pale
- In Chief
- In Base
- Semé
Charges
21 charges are open to every commander from the start:
- Crossed Swords
- Shield
- Crown
- Skull
- Flame
- Gauntlet
- Wolf
- Raven
- Serpent
- War Horn
- Anvil
- Tower
- Oak
- Sun
- Crescent
- Star
- Eye
- Hammer
- Thunderbolt
- Chalice
- Key
Eleven more have to be earned, each by one deed on the Roll of Deeds:
| Charge | Earned by |
|---|---|
| Sworn Chain | The House Rides Out — Won an eight-handed field with a full war-band of your own house. |
| Ossuary | The Red Ledger — Twenty-five thousand of the enemy put down. |
| Wyrm | Keeper of Titans — Every Titan in the game, fielded. |
| Keystone | Every Stone in the Realm — Every structure the ten kingdoms know how to raise. |
| Compass Rose | The Whole Realm Fought Over — Won on every field the realm can deal, duel and war alike. |
| Hourglass | The Hundred Years — Fifty wearied fields, all of them won. |
| Broken Shackle | The Board Belongs to You — Every square of the board, at every tier of foe. |
| Laurel | Not One Life — Won having slain nothing at all. |
| Seven Stars | The Whole Realm Answers — Every troop in every kingdom has stood on a field for you. |
| Conqueror's Wreath | Conqueror of the Realm — Every march in the realm finished. |
| Mural Crown | Warden of the March — Climbed to the Warden’s seat, where the ladder ends. |
Saying it aloud
Arms are held as a description and not a picture — a field and how it is parted, the line it is cut by, what is laid on it and what is borne on that — which means they can be said the way a herald says them. The Forge prints the blazon under the shield as you work, and it changes as you do.
The field comes first, with the line it is cut by named straight after it; then the ordinary laid on it, with the same cut; then whatever is borne, with its count and where it sits. Everything after the field is a clause of its own, separated by a comma, in the order the painter lays it down.
| What you picked | What it is called |
|---|---|
| A plain azure field, a crown in Or | Azure, a crown Or |
| Per pale, Or and gules, a wolf in sable | Per pale Or and Gules, a wolf's head Sable |
| Per fess cut wavy, Or and azure | Per fess wavy Or and Azure |
| An ermine field under an embattled chief in gules | Ermine, a chief embattled Gules |
| Azure, a bend in Or, three crowns argent | Azure, a bend Or, three crowns Argent |
| Sable, strewn with mullets in Or | Sable, semé of mullets of six points Or |
Arms for everyone else
A commander who never opens the Forge still flies a coat: one dealt from their name, the same on every screen in the battle — and so does every AI commander. Dealt a seat at a time they could collide, so a battle is dealt as a battle: no two keeps in one room fly the same flag, and a coat a commander struck for themselves is never the one that moves. Allegiance still wins on the field: the banner's hem is your side's green or the enemy's red, whatever the coat.