Tailored Insignias and Merchant Pins

[ifoz]

Something I noticed a while back but never really wrote a post about has once again come to mind and I thought that I would talk a bit about it.

Pins.

 

Hear me out. Each colour of tailored gambeson has a unique little pin design on the chest, and a varying design on the helmet.
At first these might seem like cute little details, but I think that they may actually mean something, or at least one of them.
More specifically, the pin on the blue tailored gambeson chest.
Does it look somewhat familiar?





It looks shockingly similar to those worn by traders.
I think that the pins on the tailored gambeson armour may represent different factions from the old world that the Seraphs knew of.
This 'blue faction' may well have been some kind of merchant group, as their symbol has roughly carried down to the traders of today.



Of course, this could all be a crazy theory that actually means nothing, but I thought it was a cool little detail that I thought was worth sharing!
The other tailored gambesons all have similar pins, though the blue one stuck out to me as the closest in appearance to the trader pins.
(Traders can wear three types of pin, in my experience. The one that points up, the one that points down, or a flat one that does up under a hood).

[LadyWYT]

Hmmm, interesting. I'd never really paid attention to that before. It could just be due to pixels being a bit limited in what they can depict regarding jewelry and other small items. However, I think if that were the case, it'd be as simple as just adding splashes of other colors into the design. I doubt it's a case of recycled textures as a time-saver, given that the traders are pretty distinct from one another.

17 hours ago, ifoz said:

This 'blue faction' may well have been some kind of merchant group, as their symbol has roughly carried down to the traders of today.

I think this is a likely answer, although whether it's a leftover from the Old World or a new design to mark one as a merchant isn't clear. I would say perhaps that it's a new design to designate a member of a merchant's guild, in the case of the traders themselves. Given the scenario laid out in the "Ghosts" short story, it seems that quite a lot of time has passed since the calamity, and the things that seraphs are familiar with are antiquated to "modern" standards, if they're even recognizable at all.

If that's the case, then I'd say you're right over the target with the theory that the insignia on the tailored gambeson inspired the insignia that the present-day traders wear!