Albion Scrolls

The Albion is probably the most prestigious award outside of peerages given in Drachenwald. It is given out once a reign by the king to someone who has performed exemplary service to the Kingdom.  As a scribe I have been lucky enough to do 4 of these scrolls and I thought I would share a little about each one.


The very first Albion scroll I ever did was for Cecilia Jonsdottir, who is a really lovely person. This was a woman I sort of knew but I wouldn't say that at that  point we were friends so I had to ask people about her and what she liked. In the end I went for simple rather than complicated because I wasn't quite at the skill stage for something really complex. But I also wanted pretty, I had heard that she didn't have many pretty scrolls so I wanted it to be something shiny and cool. The top miniature shows a representation of Cecilia  with baby dragons, at each corner is an image that represents the sacrifice Albion made ( there's a whole story about this which gets read out in court before the award is given out and it always makes people cry) Then the bottom miniature is of Cecilia and her two very good friends. The scroll was written in Swedish because Cecilia is Swedish.  It was one of my first tries at gold leaf and I was happy with how it turned out.

The next Albion I was asked to do was for Master Bertik. Bertrik is a good friend and so I kinda went all out. It was at this point I also thought the text for the Albion was sort of lacking in all the flash and bang it should have for such a big award so I decided to write the entire Albion story out onto his scroll.  The two miniatures on each corner show Albion as he was before he started giving parts of himself away and after it was all said and done. The middle one is of Bertrik and John. they are really close friends so I wanted them on the scroll. Given that this was a King only award I felt that Honor who was Queen at the time and also really close to Bertrik should be on the scroll someplace so she is on the bottom shown with Lucy.

The 3rd Albion I did was for someone called Kragen who I didn't know  and later I found out was someone no longer even living in the Kingdom ( this a  no no and was something that cause a bit of an issue but that's politics and I won't get into it) Because this one was being given out at Pennsic ( big war thingy in the US) It needed to travel well so the two bits are done on pergamenata and could be rolled. / folded. Again I wrote out the story and then I did a smaller separate scroll as the actual award piece. It took forever to write out and it was one of the first examples of my flourishing work ( here's a great example of what not to do) I was still working on the kinks and didn't quite get the pattern of it all still it turned out okay over all.  I never got any feedback about this, even though my contact info was on the back the guy never wrote to say if he liked the work or not which I thought and still think was pretty fucking lame.

The story

the scroll

The most recent foray into the world of Albion was for my most excellent partner in crime and friend Eleanora. I started it ages ago but never finished it then this week got off my lazy ass and completed the scroll. It shows Albion giving away his heart which is really what Ele does for this kingdom. I also decided enough with the writing out of the entire story and went with simple is more. I am happy with how it turned out in the end, especially as for a very long time it didn't look like it was going to be so nice.

I hope I get to do more Albion scrolls because they are a lot of fun. It's also a really nice award to watch being given out.