The Office of Heraldry

Hearken, good soul, and attend ye well. In days of yore, when kings reigned with iron grip and the realm wast divided into a thousand petty fiefdoms, there arose a most noble institution — the Office of Heraldry. Its purpose, thou askest? To chronicle not the deeds of emperors nor the conquests of warlords, but a thing far more precious: the sacred bond of friendship.

For what good is a kingdom, saith the ancient heralds, without a friend to laugh beside thee at court? What use is all the gold of the Indies if thou hast no companion to complain with when the stew hath gone cold? Verily, friendship is the truest currency of the soul, and so it must be minted in sigil, stamped in wax, and proclaimed in the great halls.

Our heralds are trained in the ancient arts — in the subtle language of tinctures, in the posture of beasts rampant and passant, in the composition of faux-Latin mottoes that sound authoritative yet mean, upon closer inspection, something vaguely embarrassing. They ask but five questions of thee, for five is the sacred number, being the number of fingers upon a hand and also approximately how many friends the average peasant possessed in the year of our Lord 1327.

Upon completion of thy dossier, a coat of arms shall be forged in the fires of our scriptorium. A proclamation shall be penned by candlelight. And a herald — aye, a real herald with a deep and dramatic voice — shall read it aloud, as was the custom when the realm was young and gossip travelled by horseback.

Go forth, then. Summon thy friend to mind. Recall how ye met, what thou sharest, what annoys thee about them, what redeems them, and what beast they most resemble. The Grand Herald awaiteth thy testimony.

— Sealed this day, by order of the Crown.