The color a drafter uses will affect her personality over time. This, however, doesn’t make her a prisoner of her color, or irresponsible for her actions under the influence of it. A green who continually cheats on his spouse is still a lothario. A sub-red who murders an enemy in a fit of rage is still a murderer. Of course, a naturally angry woman who is also a red drafter will be even more susceptible to that color’s effects, but there are many tales of calculating reds and fiery, intemperate blues.
A color isn’t a substitute for a person. Be careful in your application of generalities. That said, generalities can be useful: a group of green drafters is more likely to be wild and rowdy than a group of blues.
Given these generalities, there is also a virtue and a vice commonly associated with each color. (Virtue being understood by the early luxiats not as being free of temptation to do evil in a particular way, but as conquering one’s own predilection toward that kind of evil. Thus, gluttony is paired with temperance, greed with charity, etc.)
Sub-red: Passionate in all ways, the most purely emotional of all drafters, the quickest to rage or to cry. Sub-reds love music, are often impulsive, fear the dark less than any other color, and are often insomniacs. Emotional, distractible, unpredictable, inconsistent, loving, bighearted. Sub-red men are often sterile.
Associated vice: Wrath
Associated virtue: Patience
Red: Quick-tempered, lusty, and love destruction. They are also warm, inspiring, brash, larger than life, expansive, jovial, and powerful.
Associated vice: Gluttony
Associated virtue: Temperance
Orange: Often artists, brilliant in understanding other people’s emotions and motivations. Some use this to defy or exceed expectations. Sensitive, manipulative, idiosyncratic, slippery, charismatic, empathetic.
Associated vice: Greed
Associated virtue: Charity
Yellow: Yellows tend to be clear thinkers, with intellect and emotion in perfect balance. Cheerful, wise, bright, balanced, watchful, impassive, observant, brutally honest at times, excellent liars. Thinkers, not doers.
Associated vice: Sloth
Associated virtue: Diligence
Green: Wild, free, flexible, adaptable, nurturing, friendly. They don’t so much disrespect authority as not even recognize it.
Associated vice: Lust
Associated virtue: Self-control
Blue: Orderly, inquisitive, rational, calm, cold, impartial, intelligent, musical. Structure, rules, and hierarchy are important to them. Blues are often mathematicians and composers. Ideas and ideology and correctness often matter more than people to blues.
Associated vice: Envy
Associated virtue: Kindness (Gratitude)
Superviolet: Tend to have a detached outlook; dispassionate, they appreciate irony and sarcasm and word games and are often cold, viewing people as puzzles to be solved or ciphers to be cracked. Irrationality outrages superviolets.
Associated vice: Pride
Associated virtue: Humility
Paryl: Also called spidersilk, it is invisible to all but paryl drafters. It resides as far down the spectrum from sub-red as most sub-red does from the visible spectrum. Believed mythical because (apart from a paryl drafter’s) the lens of the human eye cannot contort to a shape that would allow seeing such a color. Paryl is the color of dark drafters and night weavers and assassins because this spectrum is usually available at night. Renders the drafter much more susceptible to empathy, able to absorb emotions in a way other drafters cannot.
Chi (KAI): The upper-spectrum counterpart to paryl. (Often referred to in tales as ‘as far above superviolet as paryl is below sub-red.’) Also called the revealer. Its main claimed use is nearly identical to paryl—seeing through things, though those who believe in chi say its powers far surpass paryl’s in this regard, cutting through flesh and bone and possibly even metal. The only thing the tales seem to agree on is that chi drafters have the shortest life expectancy of any drafters: five to fifteen years, almost without exception. If chi indeed exists, it would mostly be evidence that Orholam created light for the universe or for His own purposes, and not solely for the use of man, and would move theologians from their current anthropocentrism.
Legendary Colors
Black: Destruction, void, emptiness, that which is not and cannot be filled. Obsidian is said to be the bones of black luxin after it dies.
White: The raw word of Orholam. The stuff of creation, from which all luxin and all life was formed. Descriptions of an earthly form of the stuff (as diminished from the original as obsidian supposedly is from black luxin) describe it as radiant ivory, or pure white opal, emitting light in the whole spectrum.
LUXIN AND LIFESPAN
General Effects. At this point, it has been established beyond question that drafting shortens the lives of those who do it, and almost all scholars accept that this is not because those who draft are intrinsically more fragile, but because of the act of drafting itself. The reasons for this are unknown, but the more luxin drafted, the shorter the drafter’s life. It is believed that the body will heal some amount of the damage drafting does. Thus, a drafter who drafts minimally daily will be able to draft far more cumulatively than one who attempts to draft a great deal in a short period of time. The Chromeria encourages drafters to honor Orholam’s gift of our lives by drafting in moderation, except in emergencies.
Various Colors and Lifespan. It’s been noted that, even as drafters of the various colors tend to evince particular personality traits, so too do those who draft certain colors seem to live longer. Only one color has been proven to the Chromeria’s satisfaction to never be safe to use: chi always kills its practitioners, almost always within five to ten years. As Life is one of Orholam’s Seven Great Gifts and being party to the wanton destruction thereof cannot be within Orholam’s will, the Magisterium successfully enjoined the Chromeria to cease teaching chi-drafting three hundred forty-two years ago.
As for the rest, debate rages on the exact causal connections, but it has been noted that superviolet drafters tend to break the halo earlier, while at the opposite end of the spectrum, paryl drafters may live to a full natural span. Lightsplitting paryl drafters may, indeed, live much longer than most munds. However, this last is uncertain, given their overall small numbers and the fact that many of those recorded as such belonged to the Order of the Broken Eye, where names were often handed down to give the illusion of immortality to enhance the Order’s reputation and intimidate opponents.
ON THE OLD GODS
Sub-red: Anat, goddess of wrath. Those who worshipped her are said to have had rituals that involved infant sacrifice. Also known as the Lady of the Desert, the Fiery Mistress. Her centers of worship were Tyrea, southernmost Paria, and southern Ilyta.
Red: Dagnu, god of gluttony. He was worshipped in eastern Atash.
Orange: Molokh, god of greed. Once worshipped in western Atash.
Yellow: Belphegor, god of sloth. Primarily worshipped in northern Atash and southern Blood Forest before Lucidonius’s coming.
Green: Atirat, goddess of lust. Her center of worship was primarily in western Ruthgar and most of Blood Forest.
Blue: Mot, god of envy. His center of worship was in eastern Ruthgar, northeastern Paria, and Abornea.
Superviolet: Ferrilux, god of pride. His center of worship was in southern Paria and northern Ilyta.
ON TECHNOLOGY AND WEAPONS
The Seven Satrapies are currently experiencing an age of great leaps in understanding. The peace since the Prisms’ War and the following suppression of piracy has allowed the flow of goods and ideas freely through the satrapies. Affordable, high-quality iron and steel are available everywhere, leading to high-quality weapons, durable wagon wheels, and everything in between. Though traditional forms of weapons like Atashian bich’hwa or Parian parry-sticks continue, now they are rarely made of horn or hardened wood. Luxin is often used for improvised weapons, but most luxins tend to break down after long exposure to light, and the scarcity of yellow drafters who can make solid yellows (which don’t break down in light) means that metal weapons predominate among mundane armies.