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Please order the colors from lightest to darkest from left to right.
Onward
Are you colorblind?
Yes
No
A color wight is holed up in the satrap's home and is threatening to kill a member of the family every hour unless he's permitted to break his contract and leave the country unharmed. What do you do?
He wants to live so much? Set the building on fire. He'll come out, promise.
Wait, who put me in charge?
Tolerating this would encourage more of the same. We go in, muskets and magic, now. (We will likely lose half the hostages, though.)
Let me take this. I'll charm him out of there in five minutes flat.
Who was he before he went rogue? What color did he draft? Where's he from? Give me more info, and I can fix this.
Let him go. He just wants to live. But if he kills anyone, I'll rip his arms off.
I'll scope out the room and invisibly mark the locations of every person. You take it from there .
You're an advisor to a young satrapah. You find out she's just shorted the Chromeria of half the yearly tribute her country owes. What do you do?
Get proof that she knew. This could be useful someday.
Confront her right away before the ship sails. Maybe it was a mistake.
Talk to her calmly and lay out the possible calamities.
The Chromeria takes too much. Applaud her courage.
No tribute, no support for our drafters there, no more drafters, and our country will plunge into ruin. I must report her to the Chromeria.
Ask her what methods she's using to deceive the Chromeria. If one is going to cheat, one should do so competently.
Confront that irresponsible wench. Without the Chromeria's teaching, I'd be living in a hovel somewhere. I owe them everything. How dare she cheat them!
You're the leader of a small city in war-torn Tyrea. Several of your most promising young people may be able to draft. What do you do?
Send them to King Garadul. The Chromeria isn't getting anything more from us.
They're children, not tools to be used and thrown away. Keep them home.
How close is the king? Will he know?
In questions of competing loyalties, I go with what I think is best for our young people. At this point, I'd send them to the Chromeria. Quietly.
I find it hard to believe the king's instruction would be of any quality. Send them to the Chromeria.
Our loyalties should be to our own. King Garadul.
Send the least talented to the king. The others to the Chromeria. Swear them all to secrecy.
The city is surrounded. You and a small unit of drafters must defend the gates as the heavy cavalry approaches. What do you do?
Make luxin grenadoes, coat the ground with a flammable welcome mat to hell, and wade in hand-to-hand.
Horses love flashbombs.
I can transform the ground so it's like charging across ice. You all finish them off.
Fire! Fire! Fire!
Trebuchets, caltrops, missiles, and muskets. Double check that everyone knows their job.
Invisible razor wire + charging horses = beautiful.
A bristling wall of magical pikes is a friendly greeting.
You find yourself starving, ragged, and alone in a foreign city. You have an urgent mission in the countryside. Do you:
Ask for help. Surely someone will have pity on a stranger.
Beg. No really, I'm better at it than you think.
Go to the authorities and explain to them why they must help.
Find someone the right size and class, lure them to an alley, and strangle them so as not to get blood on their clothes. Sacrifices must sometimes be made.
Mug someone.
Just go. Something will turn up.
How long have I been here? Do I have any friends? Any weapons? What satrapy is this?
You want to go on vacation. What would you prefer?
A test of will—crossing the desert of Atash and the Cracked Lands to Hellmount.
The cool of the redwoods, the rustle of streams, and nights of wild dancing in the Blood Forest.
Pirates, cannons, wind in your sails, and gory death threatening. Sailing past Ilyta!
Art, domed architecture, the Thousand Stars—the center of the cultured world, the Chromeria.
A mountain-top spiritual retreat in Abornea.
The smell of eucalyptus, a musket, a knife, and eye-to-tusk with giant javelinas! Hunting in Tyrea!
Hiking the mountains from crystal Wiwurgh Bay to the ship-wrecking waters of The Everdark Gates.
You need a job. What fits you best?
Mast-turner, sail maker, or carpenter. I like to work with my hands and be my own boss.
Call me a bacchá, courtesan, gigolo, or whore. I like my work. I know what you want, and I'll give it to you until you scream. In a good way. Usually.
Scribe, cryptographer, and spy. It's not that I'm sneakier than you; it's that I'm smarter.
Artist. Half genius, half genius at knowing what people expect and then blowing it away.
A judge or an alcaldesa. Positions of authority should be held by clear sighted people.
Account handler. I was born with an abacus in one hand and a ledger in the other. (My poor mother!)
Luxiat. I find meaning in prayer, contemplation--and fighting for the downtrodden. Literally, if needed.
Supplicant, you're cursed, born gifted and defective. You're naturally gifted for drafting red, but your eyes can't differentiate between red and green, making you a subchromat. Everything you draft fails within moments. No country will pay your tuition at the Chromeria. Find other work.
When a candle burns, a physical substance (wax) is transformed into light. Chromaturgy in The Black Prism is the inverse: A drafter transforms light into a physical substance (luxin). Each different color of luxin has its own strength, weight, and even smell: blue luxin is hard, red is gooey, yellow is liquid, etc. But even as drafters change the world, the luxin changes them too, physically, mentally, and emotionally. The color change of a drafter's eyes is only the beginning…
Supplicant, you may not be willing to accept this, but you're hopeless. You're naturally gifted for drafting green, but your eyes can't differentiate between red and green at all. Everything you draft will fail within moments. No country will pay for your tuition at the Chromeria. Find other work.
Sub-reds can see in the dark, draft the heat from their surroundings to survive intense heat, and throw flame crystals which turn into fire when exposed to air. Sub-reds are passionate in all ways, the most purely emotional of all drafters.
The results from your color matching test have also shown that you are one of the elite, a superchromat. The magic you do will almost never fail. Satrapies will compete to recruit you, and you will have a wide latitude in what work you choose to do once you finish your studies. You can expect your patron to lavish praise and honors on you. As a monochrome, you will master your color, and only have to defer to bichromes and polychromes and, of course, the nobility and the satraps who support us all.
Red luxin is sticky, gooey, and extremely flammable. Reds often work with sub-reds or with mundane tools to make fire bombs. Their skills are used to catastrophic effect in war. Reds are quick tempered, lusty, and love destruction.
Orange luxin is slick, lubricative, and heavy. It is often used in conjunction with machines and traps. Oranges are often artists, brilliant in understanding other people's emotions and motivations. Some use this to defy or exceed expectations. Others become master manipulators.
Yellow luxin is most often a liquid that releases its energy back into light quickly, allowing its use as a torch or a trigger to ignite flammable materials or explosives. Yellow nourishes other luxins, extending the durability of luxin structures or tools. Like water turning to ice, when yellow is drafted perfectly, it loses its liquidity and becomes the hardest luxin of all. Yellows tend to be clear thinkers, intellect and emotion in perfect balance.
Green luxin is springy and flexible. The uses are as varied as the drafter is creative: from furniture to projectiles to shields to the throwing arms of war engines. Greens are wild, free. They don't so much disrespect authority as not even recognize it.
Blue Luxin is hard, strong, and smooth. It can be used in anything from the creation of large structures to armor or bladed weapons or projectiles. Blues are orderly, inquisitive, and unfailingly rational. Structure, rules, and hierarchy are important to blues
Made of wavelengths shorter than most human eyes can see, superviolet luxin is invisible except to superviolet drafters--and those only when they concentrate. Solid, but not as strong as blue or green, superviolet is the subtlest luxin. Used for cryptography, creating invisible walls and traps, and marking targets on the battlefield, superviolets tend to have a removed outlook. They appreciate irony and sarcasm and are sometimes cold.
