Colour

Many people believe that there is a universal life energy that permeates all things. This force, referred as Colour, is claimed to do a fantastic array of things, from allowing life to exist in the first place, to inspiring sentient creatures towards feats of ingenuity and working as a mystical glue that holds civilization together. Whilst scholars of a wide range of disciplines agree that some kind of energy that matches this tenuous description exists in some form or another, and have come up with different ways to detect it, whether or not it is responsible for all the things people claim is a matter of debate.

In a world where worship of all but a select few deities is forbidden, many people looking for greater forces outside themselves revere and seek to manipulate Colour. This includes the majority of humanoid divine spellcasters, and a small number of arcane spellcasters, who often call themselves ‘colour speakers’. There is no overarching hierarchy of colour speakers, most are either self-taught or learned as an apprentice from a single master. Whilst some revere the whole idea of this force in general, most focus on one specific colour out of the spectrum to channel. Each colour is associated with a different type of magic:

·     Red –Red is associated with primal forces and urges, Red Colour speakers advocate unleashing emotion, living life in the moment and relishing freedom. They believe that all individuals should be responsible for their own destiny and that personal strength is the key to overcoming all problems. Dedicated followers of Red often don’t function well in highly civilized areas and are most common amongst savage people.

Associated domains: chaos, destruction, liberation, strength, war.

·     Orange – while red sees primal energies as destructive or as a source of individual power, orange colour speakers see them as a force to drive creation, as a fire within a blacksmith’s forge. They value inspiration and creativity, celebrating the ability of intelligent creatures to produce wondrous thing, both tangible and intangible, from base resources. However they are also emotion driven and fickle like Red speakers, meaning they often have great ideas but can lack to patience and attention span to put these into practice.

Associated domains: artifice, chaos, luck, metal, magic

·     Yellow – followers of Yellow see their Colour as a nurturing light, flowing through all living things and powering beauty and life. It provides nourishment and healing to the body and wisdom and courage to the mind. Yellow speakers are usually kind and practical people, always willing to help others, though their compassion sometimes leaves them blind the root causes of problems, leaving them to sometimes neglect the greater good in the pursuit of immediate benefits.

Associated domains: good, healing, protection, sun

·     Green – Green is the Colour of nature, and of the world untainted by the machinations of ‘intelligent’ creatures. Whilst followers of Green understand that civilization has a value, particularly for humanoid races that have adapted to survive by making tools and living in groups, they feel nature is always wiser – they don’t want to the change the world because they feel the world got it right in the first place. Many, but not all, druids consider themselves to be Green Speakers.

Associated domains: plant, animal, air, earth, fire, water, weather

·     Blue – Blue is the colour of civilization and the things that make it work like knowledge, laws and language. Like Orange, Blue provides inspiration, but it provides it through dedication to study, revealing itself only after long hours of toil but also providing a way to move forward, to plan and develop ideas beyond the initial spark of insight. Followers of Blue are diligent and clever, but often amoral in the way they look at the world, caring for their duties or intangible scholarly pursuits whilst ignoring what many consider issues of the ‘real world’.

Associated domains: knowledge, law, rune, magic

·     Indigo – Indigo is the colour of rulership and nobility. Whilst blue studies and creates the things society uses, Indigo uses these tools to mold groups of people into a constructive unit that can change the world. It is the colour of nobles and rulers, of those who inspire groups of people to collective greatness, as well as those of would force them to collective acts of shame like war or genocide.

Associated domains: law, nobility, glory, community

·     Violet – Violet is the colour of secrets, trickery and falsehood, of taking knowledge and using it for one’s own goals and discarding what is of no value. It views everything, including people, as a resource useable to further the goals of those who know how. Not surprisingly, there are very few people who will admit to being Violet Speakers, but there are likely a much greater number of them who exist unnoticed in society.

Associated domains: evil, trickery, charm, darkness

It is very much up to an individual as to whether they identify as a colour speaker or not. Of a pair of spellcasters with identical powers, one could call themselves a colour speaker and the other not and no one would be able to tell the difference with any meaningful level of accuracy.

Only a few of the colours form groups amongst speakers – Blue Speakers often form scholarly organisations to share knowledge, Green Speakers often unite in druidic circles and the Venac healers guild is made up primarily of Yellow Speakers, who display their affiliation proudly by wearing distinctive yellow sashes. Red and Orange are too chaotic to form coherent groups, groups of Indigo followers don’t work well together as all of them to want to lead and followers of Violet rarely want to share their secrets with others.