Artistic Conundrum

[Khaalis]

I have been tasked with coming up with a symbol for an organization in a homebrew world that is in the process of creation. The organization is called "The Velvet Shadow" - a thieves' guild. This is no ordinary fantasy thieves' guild however. It is vastly large, ranging over an entire kingdom that is the size of NY state. It is tiered and modeled losely on mafia-like structure and is a very powerful political faction as well as a typical thieves' guild, and are also the primary source of espionage in the kingdom as well.

However, the real problem is that I am drawing a complete balnk on what would kind of symbol would represent the Velvet Shadow. I would love to ask all the artists out there, better than I, to give it a moments thought and let me know what comes to mind as a symbolic representation for the guild. However, keep in mind that I am only an amatuer artist, so ideas such as Velvet mask on a gold coin stabbed through with a dagger or somesuch is way out of my league.

So far, the only thing I have come up with as the attached "shadow 3.gif".

if any of the artists here would like to toss some ideas this way, or even some samples of their ideas, It would be greatly appeciated.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

How about a shadow-y gray glove against a purplish velvety background?

 

[Tolen Mar]

I've always been of the opinion that symbols for merchants guilds, or the adventurers guild, etc. would be very obvious to any and all as a form of identification for the illiterate.

Shadowy organizations, however, might use symbols that aren't terribly obvious. Small, and discrete, and hard to associate with anything more than a curious trinket.

That being said, I really doubt that I'd make any symbol have a 'V' on it, nor would I use velvet in its design. If it's mafia-based, is there a Don? Perhaps the symbol would be a miniature personal representation of his family. That could be displayed, and only those in the know would know that its a guildhall, or under the mob's protection. To 90% of the normal population, it would just be another family crest among many.

 

[Khaalis]

Ok, some clarification. The members use a special tatoo of alchemical "invisible ink" to identify themselves to one another (visible by applying an acidic liquid like citris juice), so this is not the "subtle" mark of membership. The symbol is used when the organization want to leave a "calling card" or message, either as a warning or to say "we did this".

As to the structure, the guildmaster of the VS is a mystery entity, who's existence is known only to those that are direct subbordinates. However, even to these sub-bosses, the guildmaster is a mystery. This organization is only loosely related to modern mafia, using the mafia's pyramid structure and the basics of the command structure. Overall the organization is much more powerful than the modern mafia. They are infiltrated into almost every aspect of the kingdom and wield a lot of power over politics and economics. Their existence is well known. but they are far too powerful for any one person (or small group) to decide to shut them down, especially as they often "unofficially" sanctioned by the government, at least in a "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" way.

Hope that helps some. Thanks for looking at this.