Overview
BALLISTA is a WordPress plugin that will, when it’s complete, be available to add to any Lochacian Baronial website to provide the following for each Barony:
- A roll of arms displaying the names and Baronial awards of everyone in the Barony and everyone the Barony has given a Baronial award to. In addition, it displays Kingdom and Principality awards from Canon Lore and the registered armory taken from the Lochac Roll of Arms. The list is arranged in order of precedence, from the current landed Baronage downward.
- The history of Baronial tenures for the Barony.
- Photos and persona histories for any members of the Barony who wish to share them.
- Individual pages for each person, with the information from the roll and history pages expanded.
- Membership rolls for each award, able to be ordered by date, name or personal rank within the Order of Precedence of the Kingdom.
All of this information is generated from four sources:
- Canon Lore, the database of awards of the Kingdom of Lochac
- the Lochac Roll of Arms
- the College of Arms’ Ordinary and Armorial
- the BALLISTA spreadsheet.
The BALLISTA Spreadsheet
The BALLISTA spreadsheet is hosted at Google Sheets, and is editable by anyone authorised by Karl Faustus von Aachen, Batty Herald. Batty maintains a Facebook group to coordinate the editing.
The spreadsheet consists of five worksheets:
Awards Received
One row for each award received by each person in (eventually) each Barony. For example, if Frederick von Flintstone has received two Baronial awards from Ynys Fawr and one each from Aneala and Ildhafn, he will appear in this worksheet on four lines in total. This rather verbose form allows for a simple, less error-prone and more expandable system.
- Barony
- Recipient (a person’s SCA name; where they appear in Canon Lore, this needs to be a precise match with their name or one of their aliases)
- Award (matching a name on the Awards worksheet)
- Given (a date; optional)
Awards
One row for each Baronial award for each Barony. URLs, while optional, are a good idea for cross-referencing, as they allow readers to see what an award is and, perhaps, be inspired to recommend someone for one they don’t have.
- Barony
- Award Name
- Abbreviation (optional)
- URL (optional; a link to a page on the Baronial website describing the award)
Device Corrections
Where the Lochac Roll of Arms is lagging, or in the case of Households that receive awards but don’t have devices (Quarrel Herald having made the decision not to expand to badges at this time), this worksheet allows emblazons to be added.
- Person
- Blazon
- URL of Emblazon
Extra People
Because not everyone who receives a Baronial award is listed in Canon Lore, this worksheet is where you put details about people you want listed on your Baronial page. They do not need to have received an award of any sort to be included. Also, because Canon Lore does not note dates of death, this worksheet allows that to be recorded.
- Person (SCA name)
- Mundane name (optional)
- Branch
- LRoA (optional; ID of their entry in the Lochac Roll of Arms)
- Died (optional; date)
Aliases
Where someone’s name is incorrectly recorded in Canon Lore, this worksheet allows cross-references to work. Errors should, of course, be communicated to Canon Herald in a timely manner via the Fix Me buttons on the Canon Lore website.
- Primary name
- Alias
How To Contribute
If you are the representative of a Barony and wish your data to be included in BALLISTA, please get in touch with Batty Herald. If you have your data in some form of spreadsheet, that’s ideal; but generally, any only form can be massaged into the right state. Batty is something of an expert at data transformation and cleaning, so don’t be shy.
As a first step, join the BALLISTA Development Team FB group if you can. Further instruction and assistance will be there.