wanted to draw these guys from before the events of Mercasor. Each of them 180 from the people they originally were, so I wanted to capture the discomfort of seeing a different side of somebody you think you know.
The significance of qan plays a minor role in Mercasor so I am sure it will come up later… They are a little like tarot crossed with casting runes, toys-gone-divination-tools that were originally part of a game to the Ser diaspora, but which got wildly popular as instruments of prophecy once they came to Mercasor.
Sinuk holds the Trickster-Fool. This qan is associated with the Dren and is represented by his eyes. He sets the cycle by which the world-wheel revolves, in the same motion that he falls victim to it. The protagonist on second retelling: privy to way of things, but often helpless to change them.
Brun holds the Martyr, reversed. In a deck of qan, the Martyr is a counterpart to the Trickster-Fool. It’s variously associated with Lex and Roan, and as such is represented by Lex’s Bleeding Heart. It is self-sacrifice and a doom-driven compulsion to follow the lines set out before you– often to the extreme. The Martyr reversed (or the Martyr Survived) therefore becomes a “refusal of the call;” a priority of individual over community, self-determination over prophecy. To free yourself at the damnation of the world around you. It can be a mark of self-preservation, or of monstrous selfishness.
Darrow holds the Sun. It is associated with Lex and Motu, and is represented by the bloated Sund. It is its own double, a thing that cannot be reconciled; to die of exposure or be thawed by the morning sun. Lex is a saint shadowed always by the atrocities her father committed in her name.
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