The Burning White (159 page)

zoon politikon:
‘Political animal.’ From the Philosopher’s treatise,
The Politics
. His theory was that man can only reach his
telos
, his end or highest good, when in a community, specifically a city large enough to meet all his needs: physical, social, moral, and spiritual.

ON LUXIN

The basis of chromaturgy is light.
Those who use this magic are called ‘drafters’; a drafter is able to transform a color of light into a physical substance within their body. Each color luxin has its own properties, but the uses of those building blocks are as boundless as a drafter’s imagination and skill.

The magic in the Seven Satrapies functions roughly the opposite of a candle burning. When a candle burns, a physical substance (usually wax) is transformed into light. With chromaturgy, light is transformed into a physical substance, luxin. If drafted correctly (within a narrow allowance), the resulting luxin will be stable, lasting for days or even years, depending on its color.

Most drafters (magic users) are monochromes; they can draft only one color. A drafter must be exposed to the light of her color to be able to draft it—that is, a green drafter can look at grass and be able to draft, but if she’s in a white-walled room, she can’t. Many drafters carry delicate and expensive colored spectacles developed by Lucidonius himself, and later improved upon by the Technologist, so that if her color isn’t available where she stands, she can still use magic.

Monochromes, Bichromes, and Polychromes

Most drafters are monochromes: they are able to draft only one color. Drafters who can draft two colors well enough to create stable luxin in both colors are called ‘bichromes.’ Anyone who can draft solid luxin in three or more colors is called a ‘polychrome.’ The more colors a polychrome can draft, the more powerful she is and the more sought after are her services. A full-spectrum polychrome is one who can draft all seven colors in the visible spectrum. A Prism is always a full-spectrum polychrome.

Merely being able to draft a color, though, isn’t the sole determining criterion in how valuable or skilled a drafter is. Some drafters are faster at drafting, some are more efficient, some have more will than others, some are better at crafting luxin that will be durable, and some are smarter or more creative at how and when to apply luxin.

Disjunctive (Discontiguous) Bichromes/Polychromes

The spectrum of visible light exists in a consistent order: paryl, sub-red, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, superviolet, chi. Most bichromes and polychromes simply draft a larger spectrum on the continuum than monochromes. That is, a bichrome is most likely to draft two colors that are adjacent to each other (blue and superviolet, red and sub-red, yellow and green, etc.). However, some few drafters are disjunctive (or discontiguous) bichromes. As could be surmised from the name, these are drafters whose colors do not border each other. Usef Tep was a famous example: he drafted red and blue. The Iron White is another, drafting green and red. It is unknown how or why disjunctive bichromes come to exist. It is only known that they are rare.

Subchromacy and Superchromacy

Subchromat
: One who has trouble differentiating between at least two colors, colloquially referred to as being color-blind. Subchromacy need not doom a drafter. For instance, a blue drafter who cannot distinguish between red and green will not be significantly handicapped in his work.

Superchromat
: One who has greater-than-usual ability to distinguish between fine variations of color. Superchromacy in any color will result in more stable drafting, but it is most helpful in drafting yellow. Only superchromat yellow drafters can hope to draft solid yellow luxin.

Outer-Spectrum Colors

For more than four hundred years—from the time of Prism Vician until the beginning of the Age of the Lightbringer—knowledge of outer-spectrum colors (i.e., paryl and chi) was suppressed by the Chromeria. Paryl exists far below sub-red on the spectrum; chi is equally far above superviolet. During this age of suppressed knowledge, very few people understood the unique properties of these types of luxin, much less their usefulness. The idea that there are more than seven draftable colors was theologically problematic for some; paryl and chi were considered not only blasphemous but quite deadly.

But if colors are to be so broadly defined as to include colors only one drafter in a million can draft, then shouldn’t yellow be split into liquid yellow and solid yellow? Where do black and white luxins fit? How could such colors even fit on the spectrum? As ancient knowledge of the four suppressed colors—white, black, chi, and paryl—is carefully rediscovered by luxiats, our understanding of their properties and distinctions will propel us beyond our horizons, into uncharted academic waters. The prospect is thrilling to many of us.

P
HYSICS

Luxin has mass. If a drafter creates a luxin haycart directly over her head, the first thing it will do is fall to the ground and crush her. Luxin density, from heaviest to lightest, is as follows: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, sub-red,
*
paryl, superviolet, chi. For reference, liquid yellow luxin is only slightly lighter than the same volume of water.

(
*
Sub-red mass is difficult to determine accurately because it rapidly disintegrates into fire when exposed to air. The ordering above was achieved by putting sub-red luxin in an airtight container and then weighing the result, minus the weight of the container. In real-world uses, sub-red crystals are often seen floating upward in the air before igniting.)

Tactility

Each type of luxin has a unique feel, as follows:

Sub-red
: Again the hardest to describe due to its flammability, but often described as feeling like a hot wind.

Red
: Gooey, sticky, clingy, depending on drafting; can be tarry and thick or more gel-like.

Orange
: Lubricative, slippery, soapy, oily.

Yellow
: In its liquid, more common state, like effervescent water, cool to the touch, possibly a little thicker than seawater. In its solid state, it is perfectly slick, unyielding, smooth, and incredibly hard.

Green
: Rough; depending on the skill and purposes of the drafter, ranges from merely having a grain like leather to feeling like tree bark. It is flexible, springy, often drawing comparisons to the green limbs of living trees.

Blue
: Smooth, though poorly drafted blue will have a texture and can shed fragments easily, like chalk, but in crystals.

Superviolet
: Like spidersilk, thin and light to the point of imperceptibility.

Scent

The foundational scent of all luxin is lightly resinous. The smells below are approximate, because each color of luxin smells like itself. Imagine trying to describe the smell of an orange. You’d say citrusy sweet and sharp, but that isn’t it exactly. An orange smells like an orange. The below approximations are close.

Sub-red
: Charcoal, smoke, burned.

Red
: Tea leaves, tobacco, dry.

Orange
: Amandine, rich.

Yellow
: Eucalyptus, mint.

Green
: Fresh cedar, resin.

Blue
: Light mineral or coca.

Superviolet
: Faintly like cloves.

Paryl
: Saffron.

Chi
: Metallic, like the air during a lightning storm.

*
Black
: No smell, or smell of decaying flesh.

*
White
: Honey, lilac.

(
*
Mythical; these are the smells as reported in histories and legends.)

M
ETAPHYSICS

Any drafting feels good to the drafter. Sensations of euphoria and invincibility are particularly strong among young drafters and those drafting for the first time.

Generally, these pass with time, though drafters abstaining from magic for a time will often feel them again. For most drafters, the effect is similar to drinking a cup of kopi. There are vigorous ongoing debates about whether the effects on personality should be described as metaphysical or physical.

Regardless of their correct categorization and whether they are the proper realm of study for the magister or the luxiat, the effects themselves are unquestioned.

Effects on Personality

The benighted before Lucidonius believed that passionate men became reds and that calculating women became yellows or blues. In truth, the causation flows the other way.

Every drafter, like every woman, has her own innate personality. The color she drafts then influences her toward the behaviors below. A person who is impulsive who drafts red for years is more likely to be pushed further into ‘red’ characteristics than a naturally cold and orderly person who drafts red for the same length of time.

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.