Ear branding is a practice of the more bold and irate TLF agent. An agent cuts off the top portion of the ear of a LAS employee—most likely an operative—during or after the process of murdering them. This sends a message to whoever recovers the employee's corpse: a TLF agent did this, and wants you to know they did it. Some manage to escape these encounters alive, and the top of their ear remains missing.
This practice takes from a Tekagese tradition. In line with Tekago's strict cultural values on honesty and responsibility, even murderers fall in line. It is customary to sever the top half of the right ear after you kill someone. When someone stumbles upon the corpse, they're certain it wasn't suicide or natural causes. This was also done for executions. While depictions were found in paintings, historians are unable to determine the exact reason due to executions being outlawed hundreds of years ago by Tekago.