Heget's Blatherings

Disclaimer: Here is a blend of Original Tolkien creations (aka my best efforts at recreating the author’s drawing), modifications on the original, and designs completely from cloth. Previous Entries can be found under the sigil tag. Please credit if use.

In order:
Sakurai, Heledir, Soldier

Notes:
Yes, I'm reposting these once more. Because if people in the Silmarillion/Tolkien fandom continue to use them, I want nice official links to them. And so another crosspost from tumblr project is born.

Some sigils for various OC elves serving in armies during the First Age of Beleriand. While the first makes even the most Klingon of my Vanyar look gentle, the next two are for characters familiar to readers of Beren's Band of the Red Hand.

 

• The first one is when I decided to play around with pinks and greens. And as I made the sigil, I realized that as this was a device for a diagonal lozenge - that is a male-identifying character - I started to imagine just who this was. Anyways, pink until recently was considered a manly color in Western culture. The greens are among the various shades I tend to give to Sindar, Silvan, and especially Nandor elves. Thus I had the idea of a Nandor scout and leader that delighted in the brink light pink blossoms of fruit trees, who wore a crown of cherry blossoms that stood out from the rest of his green camouflage. A captain that laughed from the tree branches as he slaughtered orcs, as brilliantly ornamental and viciously territorial as a hummingbird (and for those unfamiliar with those buzzers, there is a good reason the Aztec god of war was associated with them). Flamboyant, charismatic, vengeful, this Nandor guerrilla warrior tolerates no outsiders in his forests but a few Sindar and Beren and Lúthien - and only in honor of Denethor and Thingol’s charge to Amon Ereb. He has no love for the Second-Comers, would gleefully turn the Fëanorians into giant pincushions if he ever found them alone, and the orcs flee screaming in terror if they smell the scent of the cherry blossoms. The soldiers of the Army of Valar that meet up with him during the War of Wrath think he’s as rabid and disturbing in his harsh blood-lust as any servant of Morgoth - cautionary fear of what they could become in this war on the shores of the land so heavily tainted by Melkor. So I’ve taken to calling this sigil Sakurai, not just for the cherry blossom pink but for the connection to the samurai - in this case to the dark militaristic take during World War II.
• Heledir (Quenya Halatir) translates to “Kingfisher” and if you couldn’t tell from the color scheme, this is a Noldo. Not just any Noldo, but the name for a particular OC. Heledir is a follower of Finrod Felagund who served as the Captain of the Guard for Nargothrond, the direct military subordinate who led its armies and also trained its soldiers. Two of which were Gelmir and Gwindor. Others were among the ten - like Heledir himself - who chose to follow Finrod on the quest to aid Beren, and thus died in the dungeons of Tol-in-Gaurhoth. My Band of the Red Hand. Aside from the blue and oranges of a very Noldor combination (Honestly, Finwë…), I wanted to evoke the coloration of kingfisher birds. The central design is actually copied from Finrod’s original pre-Bëorian sigil, though I added a ray profusion of arrows to show that Heledir was originally a hunter and then the Nargothrond equivalent to Mablung. As for Heledir himself, the captain of guard is a cheerful and prank-loving elf with a warm and protective fostering attitude towards the men under his care. And he loves to drag his friend and civilian counterpart, Edrahil, on long camping trips up to Lake Ivrin. (Yes, borrowing ideas off The Leithian Script.)
• Soldier is my tongue-in-cheek reference to two OCs I based of characters from another canon. I’m sure you can guess which two. (Bân and Fâan, aka Zack Fair and Cloud Strife) The elven OCs are a pair of guards serving under Heledir who, when their king asks for volunteers to help in the quest for Beren, these two survivors of the Fen of Serech stand loyally with Finrod. And thus both of them die in captivity in the dungeons of Tol-in-Gaurhoth. They are both exiles from Aman, one a dark-haired Noldo with bright eyes and a personality best described as exuberant, the other with the same blonde hair and at least partly Vanyar background like Glorfindel. Only this former farm-boy is both shier and less skillful than the mighty Balrog-Slayer - though there is a strength there that survives until almost the end. The senior soldier happens to be in a long-distance romance with one of Melian’s handmaiden, who learns around the time Princess Lúthien begs Daeron for help to mount a rescue that no more letters will reach her fair soldier beau. The second soldier has a girl back in Tirion that he wanted to impress by joining the fighting and becoming strong enough to come to her rescue one day. Instead, he will die in the werewolf pits delirious with pain after watching his best friend give up his own life to buy him a few more days. And the girl back home will join the Army of Valar under King Finarfin and punch her way through a few of Morgoth’s fell beasts in revenge for him. The sigil has the central device from Finrod and Heledir, and for once the bright aqua has less to do with Doriath and more to do with mako.