Recently, my branch of Mercs members split from the LA area clan and created our own clan for the club. All of us wear armor designed upon Karen Traviss' Null ARC characters. Most have seen the pix in the costumes threads.
Since we became a clan, we needed a sigil or crest. I had been holding out for Kar'buir to create one however, once her departure was announced I feared it would never happen. So I contacted her and found my fears were justified. Although she had hoped to eventually create the sigil for the clan she had not and didn’t really have any functioning ideas.
After a few emails back and forth, she asked that her fans, the members of the MMC create the sigil for her. Although since she’s not LFL and likely wouldn’t have a chance to incorporate it in her books, if she liked the ultimate design, she would give it her blessing. Members of the mercs club worked diligently for several days and a sigil was designed.
Here is the process we used:
We considered the name Skirata itself. While we weren’t able to find a direct translation for Skirata, we did find the word skira which we assumed the clan name was derived from. In Mando’a, skira means settling scores, revenge. feud (different to vengeance - more personal). To us, that was a similar meaning to vengeance.
We also know that Kal values, lives by and passes on Mandalorian traditions. They seem to be a core to his being. Not knowing a direct correlation for tradition, we felt that duty was a close correlation. As in a duty to uphold the traditions of the Mando’ade.
Next we considered that the patriarch’s from the family were strong leaders, strong men and well respected by their children, even Kal’s biological children came back to him in time of need knowing he was a rock and person they could turn to. Kal seemed to have this adoration for Munin and Kal’s adopted children seemed to have the same regard for Kal. That shows that honoring the father is an important part of the clan.
With those 3 things, we felt we had found the colors for the clans sigil. Sandgold for vengeance, green for duty and red for honoring the father.
Once the colors were selected, we moved onto how the sigil was designed. Whereas most of the clans for the club utilize the club’s Merc Skull, we felt that traditionally, the skull or krebes, were related more to the Mand’alor and his Ori’ramikad, not so much to the rank and file Mando’ade. So, we decided to leave the krebes off the Skirata crest. We focus more on the simple design of the Fett crest. For inspiration, we look at crests such as the Mandalorian Crusader sigil, Fett’s sigil and Jodo Kast’s sigil for design.
Although we had no age of the clan or peace time traditional employment for the clan, we felt we could create some of our own and glean the rest from your writings. We realized that Muni found Kal in a time of relative Galactic peace. Yet, Munin was fighting other people’s wars as a mercenary soldier. We also know that in his younger years, Kal lost his family as a result of always being away from home fighting other people’s wars just as Munin had. This led us to think that perhaps in times of peace, the Skirata’s were not farmers, blacksmiths, butchers, accountants etc. Most likely, they were soldiers through and through.
That led us to look for traditional Mandalorian sigils that represented war and warriors. Two that jumped out at us immediately was the open bladed circle of the Mandalorian Crusader’s and the double Mythosaur axehead sigil which commonly adorned the war droids used by Mandalorian warriors. Both of those sigils are quite old and the use of them would age the clan considerably.
Using those sigils as inspiration we felt we were moving forward with the design. We started playing with idea’s and came up with a promising design. We started throwing designs together and came up with an idea that we really liked. But, we felt it was missing something. That something we decided was the Mandalorian rune for “S”.
With that, we were able to finalize our design.
I received the approval email this morning. Here is a bit of what Kar’buir had to say about the sigil:
"This looks terrific. It really works well because it's uncluttered. And I speak as someone who used to manage logos and corporate branding!”