The Spectrum of Magic

[Nerdanel]

The Chronicles have a great variety of color-coded magic. This topic is for exploring and classifying them.

White appears to be a neutral color. Wild magic is white unless influenced by an outside power. Caerroil Wildwood's eyes glow silver. Some of the Elohim glow with white light. Sandgorgons are white.

Blue is the color of the Creator's eyes. The Lords wear blue and Lord's-fire is blue. The Forbidding set by Kevin to guard the Second Ward is blue.

Green as grass green is the color of the forests and growing things and the power wielded by the Colossus of the Fall. The lost One Forest probably wielded green power. The emerald green Illearth Stone represents the antithesis of the growing things; it kills all vegetation near Stonemight Woodhelven, corrupts its wielders into blood-thirst and nature-hate, and is readily used for warping living beings. Dead Elena appears dressed in emerald green with an aura of emeralds. Kevin's eyes drip green when he returns to fight Elena. Dukkha's skin has a green shade instead of the normal Waynhim gray. The graveler of Stonemight Woodhelven wears emerald green. Esmer's emerald eyes present a significant hidden threat about his future role.

Yellow is the color connected most solidly to Earthpower. Hurtloam gleams golden. Lord Mhoram's eyes have golden spots. The activated Damelon's Door is yellow. When Linden wields the Staff of Law, the effect is yellow. The tainted Earthpower of Kevin's Dirt is a dirtier shade of yellow. Lord Foul's eyes are carious yellow.

Orange is the color of flame and on the Earthpower continuum from yellow to red. The Wraiths of Andelain look like flames. The Mahdoubt's other eye is flame-orange.

Red is the color of EarthBlood and the deep end of fiery magic of the stone, but more prominently the color of various evil magics. Ur-vile blades glow red. Drool's corrupted moon glows red. Cavewight eyes are red, as are Gibbon na-Mhoram's. The Clave wears red and black, and the ray that connects them to the Sunbane is red. The secret doors in Ridjeck Thome and the Clave-controlled Revelstone are limned in red when activated. The rubies scattered among the diamonds of Infelice's attire hint about her corruption.

Spoiler

Covenant in Fatal Revenant has red eyes which surely isn't a good sign.

Linden chose a red flannel shirt to wear in the Land in Runes, and I don't think that's a good sign either.

Violet is a color of mystery. The Mahdoubt's other eye is violet, and the question is, does it belong to the extreme blue or the extreme red end of the visible spectrum? Violet may be associated with mind control, but we don't really know...

Black is the color of Demondim magic. Both ur-viles and the Waynhim use black magic and ur-viles are also black themselves. Perhaps Demondim-magic is actually infra-red which simply appears to humans as black. Lord Foul's venom is black.

Multicolored is what caesures are. The Elohim as a group are also multicolored. When white light is broken with a prism the effect is a multicolored rainbow. Caesures represent a local breakdown, and I think it can be argued that the Elohim are pieces of the sleeping Würd, which would presumably be white.

By the way, I'm noticing that the system in the Chronicles might be connected to the color system detailed in The Hog by William Hope Hodgson. (Check out the link for the freely available classic horror story. It's good and scary.) I'm really wondering about the same author's Night Land (called simply the Land by the inhabitants) too.

[dlbpharmd]

Nice post, Nerdanel!

[Warmark]

Just a side note, i always imagined Sandgorgons as a red-orange.

[Nerdanel]

I picked the Sandgorgon color up on this forum as I hadn't reached that point yet on my rereading. I was surprised by it being white as I hadn't remembered that part at all. I hope the information's accurate...

[Warmark]

I'm pretty sure it is, i just never could imagine it that way.

[Nerdanel]

The "sand" in Sandgorgon always skewed my imagination to think of a sandy color. (And a carnivorous desert creature would benefit a lot from being desert-colored if it wished to avoid being seen from far away by its prey - which does obviously not matter for supernatural creatues like Sandgorgons.) I think I developed the basic unclear-but-colored image already in LFB (since I'm such a visual person) and never properly unlearned it. It's interesting to see when I get to the part with Sandgorgons at which point the color is mentioned.

[Hig]

***BOOM***

[Zarathustra]

Very interestsing post. I think the white in white gold isn't neutral, but instead "all encompassing," just as white light is actually a blend of all colors. I think white gold is "beyond good and evil," to borrow a phrase from Nietzsche. I think wild magic represents our passions, and our passions contain the entire spectrum of good-evil. There is a reason why wild magic will either save or doom the Land, and it's not because it is neutral, nor is it because it can be influenced by outside powers. It is because it is inherently contradictory. Neutral implies a cancellation of opposites, but wild magic retains the contradiction.

[Xar]

As I recall it, sandgorgons are albino; perhaps not exactly white, though. I imagine them a very, very pale sand-like color - much like white sand.

[Buckarama]

exactly Xar, I'm reading the TWGW, and it states;

Albino against the disiccated waste,the beast approched at a startling pace.

[Nerdanel]

Could Nom be a rare albino Sandgorgon? Perhaps the rest of his kind have some sort of pigment.

[Fist and Faith]

"Could"? Well, anything is possible in a fantasy book. Nowhere moreso than in a book by SRD. However, since there isn't even the slightest hint of that being the case, I'm going to assume he was typical of all Sandgorgons.

[stonemaybe]

The lore of the Waynhim in Runes produces "a warm luminescence tinged with emerald and flickers of rust".
By rust, I think orange-y.
Green and orange together - not the colours I would have associated with Waynhim lore.

Maybe they've discovered their Irish roots

[dlbpharmd]

"Could"? Well, anything is possible in a fantasy book. Nowhere moreso than in a book by SRD. However, since there isn't even the slightest hint of that being the case, I'm going to assume he was typical of all Sandgorgons.

I think that's a fair assumption.

[wayfriend]

Could Nom be a rare albino Sandgorgon?

Somewhere in the Great Desert, a man peers out over the rails of his desert schooner, puts a telescope to his eye, and mumbles "Arrr ... Moby Nom ... arrr ..."

[Fist and Faith]

Could Nom be a rare albino Sandgorgon?

Somewhere in the Great Desert, a man peers out over the rails of his desert schooner, puts a telescope to his eye, and mumbles "Arrr ... Moby Nom ... arrr ..."

[Findail]

The Chronicles have a great variety of color-coded magic.

Maybe SRD plays a lot of Magic the Gathering.

[Nerdanel]

I just read the part about Nom, and noticed that the Great Desert is also white, and it's rumored to become multicolored very far in the south.

So, Nom is both white AND sand-colored, only the sand isn't the usual color.

Kasreyn of Gyre has colorless eyes due to cataracts (so that Linden can't see what his real eye-color would be) and he wears a golden robe.

And, by the way, Elohim (and most likely everyone else too) cannot change their eyes when they shift shape. I had developed this notion earlier, but now I found the exact quote where I probably got it originally. (So WHO could have eyes like the Mahdoubt's?)

[Insanity Falls]

Violet is a color of mystery. The Mahdoubt's other eye is violet, and the question is, does it belong to the extreme blue or the extreme red end of the visible spectrum? Violet may be associated with mind control, but we don't really know...

This reminded me that Titus Groan's eyes were violet.
We know that The Mahdoubt is already an homage to The Shadout Mapes in Frank Herbert's Dune.
Perhaps she is also an homage to Mervyn Peake's character, another titan of fantasy.
We know that SRD has read Titus Groan and its sequels.
But how different a relationship can you get between Titus relations with his castle, and The Mahdoubts with hers? Titus abdicated, and The Mahdoubt serves.

After this speculation, I checked the text, and SRD describes as follows:
"Her left was the rich blue of violets, but her right held a startling orange which gave the impression that it was about to burst from her head"

So, perhaps, there is nothing to make off. Her left eye is just a rich blue, but the innocent rich blue of a flower, and *not* the tell-tale rich blue of the spice. I suspect then, that the colour of this eye, is just an innocent residue leftover from the inspiration that is The Shadout Mapes.

[Nerdanel]

Surprisingly many fictional characters have violet eyes. Violet is the absolutely rarest human eye-color in existence, and authors like to use it to make their characters "special". (This is particularly evident with bad authors and their heroes/heroines.)

The Mahdoubt's eyes are probably blue-violet and yellow-orange (about as non-human a color as it gets), making them the opposite colors. I think this juxtaposition could be a highly significant regarding to the Mahdoubt's true nature.

But perhaps all this Mahdoubt discussion should be moved into the Mahdoubt thread.