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hegetSilmarillion Sigils and Summaries
Warning, I have to talk a little about the characters themselves. The majority of these designs were made with an individual character in mind, and together I can comply a large-scale 3-dimentional family tree. But for the most part I'll try to be succinct, and I have helpful GIFs and other images. Some of this should be logical. The thing is, I know all the characters names and what sigils go with whom. But despite my labeling of every file by number and name, most people wouldn't know Finrod from Elmo. And I also apologize that some of these characters have very similar names- and that some of the sigils naturally have to look very similar.
A Note on How Content is Divided: If you want to get everything on the simplest of terms, Grab the meshes from the first post and then scroll down to the last posts where I break everything up by sets according to the object. However, if you only want a few of the wall hangings and rugs by pattern as you look through all the swatches I'm covering, there will be links under each 'family' of all the matching banners and sigils.
Thus, if you want to download that way, HERE are all the necessary meshes, minus the elven banner set from right above (and the one recolor set is of a Nightlife mesh, so can't package that up anyway).
So, here is the default image of the elven banner meshes. For all other meshes it is just another recolor file...
Luthien 02Now for each possible recolor pattern I'm showing how it applies to three different meshes. The one on the left is from psychosims' flag set, which is a large reposited set and my direct inspiration for the elven banners. That set has free standing and wall banners from one story to two story, banners that hang perpendicular to the wall, and even a tiny desk size. However the mesh does not work well with the sigils, so for that recolor set I'm only taking the banner part of the elven banner recolors and applying to the mesh. On the right is the elven banner, with its two subsets of sigil and banner. In the center is a recolor of a SDA medieval tapestry. This one is Tapisserie2x1, and combines both the sigil and the banner. There is also a long rectangluar two-tile SDA tapestry that I recolored just the 'banner', so it looks similar to the psychosim set of recolors. The only exceptions I will point out as I get to them.
As for the design- I call this one luthien02 because the author made two complete different but equally valid heraldric motifs for the character Lúthien. As she is a rather important elven princess, we allow it. Now the design itself is rather complex- though you'll notice it fits inside a circle (female) and it is perfectly symmetrical if mirrored horizontally or vertically. The colors are very bright, and I used them to make the banner. The white flowers are thematically linked to her, so they pop up often.
The reason I chose this sigil as the default was simply because it was the prettiest and most elaborate of the sigils I had at the time, plus of the numerous Silmarillion editions, the most common picture to put on the covers is a rendition of this sigil.
I made notes of whenever the design you are looking at is an honest-to-goodness "Tolkien Original". Most aren't. This one, obvious, was.
Valar / Valar-AAHere is the only time I'll seriously deviate from format- because these two are special cases. In the center is the flag sigil for the Valar - my divine powers.
Oh Sweet Eru, this design. I was forced to wrack my brains for a device of vertical and horizontal symmetry to symbolize a group with 14 members who had a ruling body of eight. (There were 15 Valar, but one had to get himself ejected from the group for becoming the Big Bad.) In the end I made this monochrome thing. The banner is a simple white fall of fabric, so I didn't bother making any matching elements. Anyway, for each individual Valar (symbolized by one of the 14 dots) I'll use images of thematically appropriate colors or calligraphy of their titles. I'll have to do the Ring of Doom and all their thrones, plus I want little pray-able objects for what will pass as elven temples. They don't really have them, but rarely do I need a sigil for the body as a whole.
Now, in my world-building rants I explained out that the first University sub-hood is Almaren Academie, first home of the Valar during the Springtime of the World, so for the college flag I just adjusted the Valar symbol and did it in bright spring blue and green. It symbolizes also the island in the middle of the lake itself. Only a few objects got this recolor as well because this is really its own subset of things when I build the college lots themselves. At which point I will be recoloring pennants and podiums and all sorts of university paraphernalia. But it does have some garish flags, labeled Valar-AA for the most part in the files.
Vanyar Elves:
IngwëHigh King of all the Elves, King of the Vanyar, by elvish rules of heraldry his design logically had to have the most points touching the edges of the square. 32 points. And the Vanyar banners were noted in-text as white (though I could have sworn it was white and gold. Or maybe I'm just reading in the gold because these are the blonde elves). Very sunflower...
Ingwë 02Two variations of the sigil because I couldn't decide which worked better. I'm not sure if I was completely consistent of which one was ingwe and which ingwe02 for all the objects- but only ingwe has the banner subset.
I'm going to cheat and have any sons of Ingwë (should be at least one) use whatever variation his dad isn't currently using. Because effort's saved and there isn't an inpression from the story that any royal Vanyar hegemony is disrupted by family strife between father and son. We'll see...
IndisThe sister of Ingwë (kinswoman, it was either sister or niece and if I make her the sister it saves on the number of Sims to create.)
Again, I took the design for Ingwë, did a few modifications like chopping it to fit into a circle, and then added some blue for reasons coming up.
As you can see, the elf banner only recolors the sigil portion.
Ingwë-War of WrathNow there are some extra recolors of the SDA tapestries and the psychosim flag set because of events in the story. At the end of the First Age an army made up of some Noldor and the Vanyar elves join with the Valar (the gods) to finally lay the smack down on the Big Bad. Though it's never addressed so in the text, it's basically a holy crusade, and thus I wanted those white banners that the Vanyar carry during this war to reflect the quasi holy war element- they are going under the divine leadership. So for the elven version of a crusader's banner I added the Valar sigil in gold to the Vanyar king banner. You can also see this design on the third of the SDA Tapestry meshes- the 2x2 nearly square wall hanging.
AmariëNow a Vanyar elf that isn't related to or having to do with the ruling family, thus a new banner design to match a new sigil. A completely made-up design, but at least the character isn't. About everything aside from Amarië's name and who her fiancée is will be, but that's tit for tat in the ladies department. My Vanyarwill be the agricultural characters in the main neighborhood, owners of the 'dairy farms' and produce stands. That way Amarië, never given the indication of being nobility but here coming from a prestigious Vanyar family of large land holdings and a wealthy dairy farm, can reasonably be courted by the eldest son of the Noldor king's youngest son. And we've already had the debate on whether those flowers look most like clover or thistles. (I need some Tulip Grove colors. And I felt bad that Amarië was being left out for all that she has a name!)Her banner is heavy on the white, benefiting a Vanyar.
Vanyar GreenSo here's one of the random designs that I decided was 'Vanyar'. The color scheme is another one inspired by Tulip Build, and the motifs are sprouts- but also spear-like. And it is the Vanyar that serve as the army that finally defeats the dark lord, so for all the image of passive adoring blondes there is some aggressiveness. There has to be more than three Vanyar families to make a tribe/city, so I needed more 'Vanyar' nobles even if I won't make playable Sims for them.
So as a Bland Summary of my Vanyar Elves:
Trust me when I say the other groups will have both crazier and more colorful sigils- and family trees even more...colorful.