The Second Apocalypse

General => Author Q&A => Topic started by: Wolfdrop on June 25, 2016, 02:53:03 pm

Title: Heraldry and banners
Post by: Wolfdrop on June 25, 2016, 02:53:03 pm
I really enjoy the banners and symbols of the various armies and potentates through the series.

Enough that I cobbled together this: http://imgur.com/a/s7zX1 (http://imgur.com/a/s7zX1)

Will we ever hear about or see the banners of ancient nations like Kuniuri, Aorsi or Kyraneas?

Or the Copper Tree symbol of the Cu'Jara Cinmoi expanded upon or other Nonman banners?

Cheers
Title: Re: Heraldry and banners
Post by: Nil Sertrax on June 25, 2016, 04:35:40 pm
Nice work Wolfdrop!  Very clever and creative.  I never realized the Scarlet Spires had a snake as part of their heraldry.
Title: Re: Heraldry and banners
Post by: Madness on June 25, 2016, 06:20:25 pm
I believe you posted those once before. I really like them, Wolfdrop :).
Title: Re: Heraldry and banners
Post by: Wolfdrop on June 25, 2016, 07:00:10 pm
Nil Setrax: Thanks man, I think it's actually a three-head snake and the Ainoni pictograms for "truth" but that's the closest the tool would allow!

Madness: I posted them on the subreddit ages back, before I discovered here, I really ought to get more involved!
Title: Re: Heraldry and banners
Post by: Nil Sertrax on June 26, 2016, 02:59:27 am
Still love them all!  Fantastic stuff.
Title: Re: Heraldry and banners
Post by: The Great Scald on June 26, 2016, 02:08:41 pm
Will we ever hear about or see the banners of ancient nations like Kuniuri, Aorsi or Kyraneas?

Ancient nations didn't really have "heraldry" in the medieval sense we use - this stuff was put into system during the High Middle Ages, and was mostly a Western European thing (and according to some people like Spengler, medieval heraldry was an unique expression of the Western mind). The ancient empires and city-states of Greece, Rome, and the Middle-East, what Bakker is using as inspiration, didn't really have an equivalent to "Game of Thrones" heraldry.

Tribal symbols and totems existed before that, and in every human society, but those are a different thing, as are military symbols and national banners.
Title: Re: Heraldry and banners
Post by: The Great Scald on June 26, 2016, 02:23:20 pm
As for symbols and sigils in ancient Eärwa:

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The golden claws of twin Kyranean Lions arched above her, signifying the continuity of empires from the present back to the murk of Far Antiquity.

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Celmomas's long and leonine face lay blank, indifferent to the geography of pieces arranged between them. The family totem braided into his beard - a palm-sized wolf cast in gold

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As numerous as the reliefs were, Achamian found only one intact representation of Meöri's ancient crest: seven wolves arrayed like daisy petals about a shield.

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Three gashes hooked like scythes: the centre one the longest, the innermost curving within its compass, while the outermost arced away at an angle. Achamian immediately recognized the mark: any Man in the Three Seas would have. The Three Sickles had been a common heraldic device since Far Antiquity - the symbol adopted by Triamis the Great. The spoor of Dragons.
Title: Re: Heraldry and banners
Post by: Wolfdrop on June 26, 2016, 02:41:08 pm
Nice finds Auriga!

I remembered the Kyranean lions now from Anaxophus/Kellhus's breastplates!

The rest I had totally forgotten about! So thanks for that.

Good points made on the earlier nations not having heraldry as such, I just find it interesting.

Hope we hear about some more banners of the Great Ordeal. 
Title: Re: Heraldry and banners
Post by: The Great Scald on June 26, 2016, 06:26:32 pm
I remembered the Kyranean lions now from Anaxophus/Kellhus's breastplates!

The lion was a really common motif in royalty everywhere, from Iran to Denmark, but I'd guess Bakker's inspiration for the Kyranean symbol came from the bronze-age Mycenaean Lions. (The Eurasian lion has been extinct for over 1000 years - ancient kings were so proud of the lions that they exterminated them.)
Title: Re: Heraldry and banners
Post by: Madness on June 26, 2016, 10:23:47 pm
Madness: I posted them on the subreddit ages back, before I discovered here, I really ought to get more involved!

Right. Cool :).
Title: Re: Heraldry and banners
Post by: Cû'jara-Cinmoi on June 27, 2016, 12:58:59 pm
Not much I can add here except, yep, yep, and way way cool.

There is no formalized heraldry across the Three Seas, though there is within various military and caste-noble traditions belonging to individual languages. This has always been something I've daydreamed about, an encyclopedia of political symbology, but I've just never had the time.
Title: Re: Heraldry and banners
Post by: Madness on June 27, 2016, 03:10:47 pm
This has always been something I've daydreamed about, an encyclopedia of political symbology, but I've just never had the time.

Lol - symbology never fails to evoke that scene from The Boondock Saints.

I'm going to file this under future projects - if the content is somewhere in that brain of yours, I'm sure we can facilitate its birth.
Title: Re: Heraldry and banners
Post by: The Great Scald on June 27, 2016, 07:23:49 pm
There is no formalized heraldry across the Three Seas, though there is within various military and caste-noble traditions belonging to individual languages.

I noticed this as well - the Nansur legions with their own sigils like the Roman legions, the Fanim with their jihadist slogans instead of heraldry due to a religious ban on images, etc etc. It's really well-done.

What can you tell us about the Nonmen's heraldry?