Ayleids And Colour Theory - Part 2

In my last entry I recorded how a troubling dream brought me to consider the arcane significances of colour, and how this in turn recalled an incident from my time in Cyrodiil when I went to considerable trouble to converse with an Ayleid spirit. I asked, nay demanded that the spirit reveal to me the lost secrets of Ayleid magic, and in return I was regaled with endless details of courtly protocol and how they must dress for any occasion.

To give you a flavour of this nonsense: there were (I was told) three Great Houses in the Ayleid realms, and each had a colour in which it must be dressed. The names of these houses meant nothing to me and in my youthful ignorance I instantly forgot them, but the the essence of it was that there was one that should always be dressed in red, one in green and one in blue. Moreover each House was governed by a Magister (I fear I must here substitute Dunmeric and Telvanni terms for the more accurate ones my younger self was too impatient to commit to memory) and the Magister had seven advisors, let us name them as Hortator, Wizard, Spellwright, Councilor, Lawman, Oathman and Hireling. Furthermore the nature of these advisors was that each was exactly half as influential as the one above him. Thus, the Hortator had exactly half the influence of the Magister, the Wizard half the influence of the Hortator and so on down the chain.

Accordingly, a House was to be clad in colours befitting the representatives in attendance. So if the House of Blue sent its Magister and all his advisors to a function then their robes were to be as blue as blue could be. If only the Magister was in attendance then the intensity of the colour would be half of that, since the influence of all the advisors in total is very nearly equal to that of the Magister himself. If only the Hortator was present the intensity was halved again down to the lowly hireling who, appearing on his own would barely merit a colour at all. Following on from this, you can see that the Magister and Hortator attending together but without the other advisors would merit garb of three-quarters intensity, with the wizard the colour would be seven-eights and so on with every possible combination of courtiers meriting a unique shade of the house colour.

But it did not end there! If the Red and Green houses were in negotiations, then the halls were to be arrayed in Yellow which was considered to be a merging of the two colours; if Red and Blue then a Magenta hue was required; and if all three were in attendance then the halls were to be clad in white, although only if all three houses were equally represented. Otherwise the whiteness was to reflect the colours of the houses in proportion to the strength of their representation.

As you might imagine, this taxed my patience most severely. I had asked about secrets of Ayleid magic and in return I was instructed in how to prepare a hall to receive a diplomatic visit from another house. The spirit then explained about the Fourth Ayleid House, which was apparently an outlaw house and whose colour was never seen, such that when that house had full representation, it was nowhere to be seen at all!

As to what happened next ... let me just say that in my time in House Telvanni I have gained a reputation, not entirely unjustified, for not suffering fools gladly. Let me assure you that I have mellowed greatly since my arrival in Vvardenfel. I do not know if a spirit, once dispersed by fire will reform or whether it is destroyed or banished from Mundus. I will say that I held no further discourse with that spirit, nor was any such sought.

In any event, the hour grows late and I no longer take joy in working late into the night. I shall reserve my conclusions for my final missive.

-- Misery, Telvanni