aithne | Icon Explain You! (Reply)

This is the "Icon-Explaining Meme" (one of many that's been going around). Comment here and I'll pick 7 of your icons; you explain here or in your LJ what they mean to you and why you're using them.

gloriajn asked me about these!

This is my icon for Nascha, of Spiritwalkers. Nascha means owl in Navajo, so I used an owl to represent her. It turned out to be appropriate that I used a barn owl instead of a great horned owl; barn owls are silent fighters, and when taken down they slash with beak and talons. Nascha was one of those characters who didn't precisely look light a fighter, but she surely had the heart of one.
This is a screencap from 300, of the scene when Leonidas comes on a Spartan town that has been burned and its inhabitants slaughtered. Those are corpses hanging from that tree. Used when rage is really the only appropriate response.
This is Ayame, from Shadows and Silk. This is a snippet from the scroll that depicts the story of the attack on Sanjo Palace that happens suring the story; a real historical event. This young woman I found in one of the top margins; she's obviously female, and either a noblewoman or a courtesan, as she has a maid hovering by her looking anxious. In the original, she is kneeling in front of a figure who is probably male, and has either a red silk robe on or is in the middle of bleeding to death. It's left up to interpretation as to whether the young woman is about to be raped by the man, if she's his wife or mistress and she's mourning his imminent demise, or if she just killed him.

Because it's Ayame, and because Ayame is one of the most ruthless killers I've ever written, I choose to believe the latter.
I use this and several other icons for Sleepless Streets; the text comes from 1,001 things Mr. Welch can no longer do during an RPG. I tend to use this one when Martin's having an exasperated day. "Sarcastic good" is not an actual D&D alignment, though it probably ought to be.

The setting of Sleepless Streets is cheerfully anachronistic and kind of metagame-y; it's what I love about it.
Kyrith! Kyrith is a Minoan double-bladed greataxe; this picture is of an artifact found on Crete, where Guardian's Road takes place.

Kyrith belongs to Theron, the long-suffering Guardian of Porta who's the protagonist of that story.
This is Yesui, the Silent, of Shades of the Silent; she's a Mongolian sort-of-princess, one of the daughters of Ghengis Khan. She's wearing a traditional Mongolian headdress, what she would have worn if she'd ever been, you know, not out being a scout for dear old dad.

I'm very fond of Yesui and her ghosts (the "Shades" of the title). She didn't have any serious angst until the end due to her cheerful and hopeful nature; but when it hit, it hit hard.