The behind-the-scenes hero of the reign

[jducoeur]

There are several people who get credit for enabling me and msmemory to do the heralding. The two closest to front-and-center were hfcougar and tpau, who acted as our primary Chancery Heralds through most of the reign. They were the ones standing behind us, feeding us cards and scrolls, so that everything kept moving along. (And coping calmly when plans got knocked askew by reality.)

I have to say, though, the person who really made those smooth and elegant courts possible for the heralds was Mistress Khioniya, the Tyger Clerk of the Signet. Nominally, this office is in charge of the scribes, but in practice I found that she does vastly more. She took charge of contacting the people who recommended folks for awards, figuring out which events were plausible to give those awards out. She built and maintained the preliminary dockets in Google Docs -- basically all of the Real Awards, each court in a separate dated file, so that the heralds just had to add in Other Stuff like presentations. She ensured that not only did scrolls get where they needed to be, but that the scribes knew to include neatly printed cutsheets in Big Type for us to read from. And along the way, I think she calligraphed more scrolls than any other three scribes in the Kingdom. (I think tpau was the only person who even came close.)

So I raise a virtual cup to her. The Vox Regis job wasn't *nearly* as hard as I expected it to be, precisely because she was so completely on top of the bits that happened before things landed on our desk...