The Colours Out of Carcosa

[Malcadon]

Ever since I got the Carcosa booklet, I have been fascinated by the alien colors from Carcosa - Jale, Ulfire, and Dolm. Before I got Carcosa, I have never heard of David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus. After looking it up, I discovered that it was an adventure set in a dream-like world, with a lot of symbolism. I have been trying to think of what they might look like - even though I know such hues have no earthly equivalents!

The description of the colors we all know are dead on. Ulfire - the name being a mix of ultra and fire - is said to be "wild and painful." The description matches the sort of colors from the red, orange, yellow range, but in a bright neon/pastel look. It like a color that can only be seen in the inferred range. Jale - the name being a mix of jade and pale - is said to be "dreamlike, feverish, and voluptuous." The description matches the sort of colors from the green, blue, violet range. The description sounds like a contrast to pale jade green color of its name sake. It like a color that can only be seen in the ultraviolet range. Dolm - a mix of ulfire and blue - sound like a strange blend of two contrasting colors. Such a color might have a unique look, like Maroon or Teal, but even more exotic by the color contrast. I'm still trying to create a color wheel out of it.

I was thinking about doing a color picture of people with such unique skin colors. Naturally, such colors are too alien to use with normal colors, but I would use unusual color-mixes to create abstract representations. I was thing about using a burning red-yellow orange color for Ulfire. A green-lavender color for Jale. Dolm is more complicated with the color contrast. Mixing two opposite colors tend to result in some of the ugliest colors, but I dont think it the same with Dolm. I was thinging of a blue-burgundy, if only to be unique - I'm still mulling it over.

So do you all think? Not just what colors I'm using, but Lindsay's unique hues in general.

[geoffrey]

Clever thread title!

I strongly encourage everyone to read David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus. It is one of the finest weird stories ever penned.

I generally agree with your mental image of ulfire. Imagine, if you will, that on a color spectrum from red to orange to yellow that, instead of yellow going into green, yellow went into something even brighter and more fiery than yellow. More yellow than yellow, so to speak.

I also have a similar mental image to yours of jale.

For some reason, though, I picture dolm kind of as a dark green-blue. Perhaps because dolm is a mixture of blue and of ulfire (more yellow than yellow).

Of course, this is all very impressionistic. The very idea of additional colors outside our accustomed spectrum is inspiring.

[abecross]

I haven't yet read The Voyage to Arcturus but it is available for free download via Project Gutenberg. www.gutenberg.org/etext/1329

EDIT: Changed to make the link work

[Finarvyn]

Thanks for the link.

I wasn't sure where to save a copy of this story on my hard drive, so I decided to put it in my "Carcosa" folder since it seems to fit so well. :-)

[giantbat]

I haven't read Lindsay and my first copy of Carcosa is in the mail, so I'm basing this off of only what I've just read in this thread. I'm imagining these colors are so outside the spectrum we are meant to perceive, the best the human eye can manage is to temporarily perceive a more familiar color. So Ulfire constantly shifts between intense reds, oranges, and yellows, probably flickering like flame. If an object pigmented with ulfire were viewed from a distance, it would be mistaken for intense flames. Jale is a pale milk jade green that slowly and hazily shifts through all the colors jade can be, while simultaneously shifting between paleness and saturation at a different rate. Dolm becomes the colors of ulfire mixed with blue, ranging from purple to green, but flickering like flame. Hopefully I haven't disregarded something important in the description of these colors due to my unfamiliarity (for now) with the material.

[giantbat]

Jul 7, 2009 14:30:21 GMT -6 geoffrey said:

The very idea of additional colors outside our accustomed spectrum is inspiring.

The idea is inspiring enough to have fired my imagination prematurely. Now that I've had a chance to look at the source text a little, I can see what I wrote earlier was missing the point.

Trying to capture the weirdness of new colors resulting from the radiation of another star makes me think of fluorescent colors. Or, to reference a statement from another Carcosa thread,

Aug 29, 2009 11:26:35 GMT -6 geoffrey said:

I personally picture Carcosa in especially vivid colors, rather like 1970s psychedelic fantasy black light posters.

Phosphorent colors would also seem evocative.

[geoffrey]

Aug 30, 2009 20:41:44 GMT -6 @giantbat said:

Trying to capture the weirdness of new colors resulting from the radiation of another star makes me think of fluorescent colors. Or, to reference a statement from another Carcosa thread,

Aug 29, 2009 11:26:35 GMT -6 geoffrey said:

I personally picture Carcosa in especially vivid colors, rather like 1970s psychedelic fantasy black light posters.

Phosphorent colors would also seem evocative.

Oh, most definitely! Very nice images. Very Carcosan.

[thorswulf]

Ulfire reminds me of the way metal changes color finally disintegrating when it gets too hot. Maybe I shouldn't stare into forges... or the sun either! Colors in dream states are different. I remember having a particularly intense dream where an image ofa creature composed of a fuzzy indigo/black color turned brilliantly white. But the change happened on such a minute scale that it took what seemed hours (Or was it minutes) for the change because it took place within the folds and crevices that I saw of the creature. I suppose That's what I get for listening to old Black Sabbath albums on sleep dep! No drugs were needed for it either!

[tkdco2]

Sorry for this bit of thread necromancy, but I wanted to weigh in on this.

I'm also using phosphorescent colors for dolm, jale, and ulfire; however, these colors would have a metallic undertone to them.  These would be my picks.

Dolm metallic glow-in-the-dark purple

Jale metallic glow-in-the-dark green

Ulfire metallic glow-in-the-dark red

I use miniatures, so here's my idea for painting them.

1. Undercoat miniature with silver paint.
2. Add a layer of clear sealer.
3. Paint miniature with phosphorescent color.

HOWEVER

Another idea I have uses a different combination. I'll start with dolm. Again, it's a mix of ulfire and blue, and it's green compared to jale's red. Using those two descriptions, let dolm have the greenish hue, such as teal or a dark cyan. Then jale, being "dreamlike, feverish and voluptuous," would be a shade similar to red, which is "sanguine and passionate." Magenta or fuchsia would work well here. And ulfire, described as "wild and painful," could be represented as a bright shade of yellow ochre. A phosphorescent lemon yellow would also work.

Painting would be simpler; you can use these colors as they are, or you can mix them with silver for that metallic hue. If you like my painting idea above, just change the colors and use phosphorescent green, pink, and yellow for dolm, jale, and ulfire respectively.

BONUS MATERIAL

I'd like to add yet another imaginary color. This one comes from The Book of the New Sun series by Gene Wolfe. The color is fuligin, which is described as "the shade darker than black." I'm going to use this for a guild also based on Gene Wolfe's works. I will make several changes, of course, to prevent any copyright violations.

[geoffrey]

Sept 1, 2014 0:54:15 GMT -6 tkdco2 said:

I'd like to add yet another imaginary color. This one comes from The Book of the New Sun series by Gene Wolfe. The color is fuligin, which is described as "the shade darker than black." I'm going to use this for a guild also based on Gene Wolfe's works. I will make several changes, of course, to prevent any copyright violations.

Good choice. One of the advantages of A Voyage to Arcturus is that it is in the public domain.

[geoffrey]

Sept 1, 2014 0:54:15 GMT -6 tkdco2 said:

I'd like to add yet another imaginary color. This one comes from The Book of the New Sun series by Gene Wolfe. The color is fuligin, which is described as "the shade darker than black." I'm going to use this for a guild also based on Gene Wolfe's works. I will make several changes, of course, to prevent any copyright violations.

Good choice. One of the advantages of A Voyage to Arcturus is that it is in the public domain.

[Malcadon]

Sept 1, 2014 0:54:15 GMT -6 tkdco2 said:

I'd like to add yet another imaginary color. This one comes from The Book of the New Sun series by Gene Wolfe. The color is fuligin, which is described as "the shade darker than black." I'm going to use this for a guild also based on Gene Wolfe's works. I will make several changes, of course, to prevent any copyright violations.

A color that is blacker than black! Yeah... I can totally get behind that!

In real life, scientists are trying develop materials with absolute light absorption. Such materials can boost the capabilities of solar panels dramatically, and NASA would love to build their deep-space optics in absolute darkness.

A race in the color of fuligin would be a creepy sight... Like living silhouettes with no glare or shine. The only thing you'll see are the whites of their eyes and their teeth that pierce the flat black void! While moving outside, in the middle of the day, their forms would contrast with the bright enviroment in a dramatic fashion, while in the dark, their inky blackness would still stand-out in the shadows. Regardless, it is still a great form of camouflage while in the dark.

[tkdco2]

It would be interesting to have a race of fuligin-colored men. I hadn't thought about that. The Inky Crawler can be this color. So can the robes of the monks devoted to Nyarlathotep in hex 1002. Maybe this can be their pagoda.

As an aside, I gave up on the guild I was going to make. There's no real reason to make them.

[kesher]

All of this is awesome.

And thread necromancy is always encouraged (and seems especially appropriate for Carcosa!)...

[tkdco2]

More fictional colors here.

I especially like Terry Pratchett's octarine. If dolm is a mix of ulfire and blue, then perhaps octarine is jale mixed with blue.

[Malcadon]

Sept 26, 2014 5:49:13 GMT -6 tkdco2 said:

More fictional colors here.

I just updated the page to add Dolm, and a description of Jale and Ulfire.

[tkdco2]

Awesome!

Edit: Explaining that dolm is to jale "as green is to red" may be a good line to add.

[paramander]

For the few Carcosa games I ran we used this scheme, based on the article Forbidden Colors:
Jale: purple and yellow simultaneously
Dolm: blue and orange simultaneously
Ulfire: red and green simultaneously

[tkdco2]

Oct 12, 2014 18:25:19 GMT -6 paramander said:

For the few Carcosa games I ran we used this scheme, based on the article Forbidden Colors:
Jale: purple and yellow simultaneously
Dolm: blue and orange simultaneously
Ulfire: red and green simultaneously

That's a good idea. I always try to figure out how to paint any miniatures. Maybe painting the two sides different colors (like that Star Trek episode) or having them striped or spotted would work.

[paramander]

Well, rather than coexisting side by side, the idea of forbidden colors is that you can indeed trick the nervous system into seeing an object display two complimentary colors at the same time, without blending! Thus a jale baseball would appear both yellow and purple, both colors in the same location, unblended and distinct. It would be physically impossible to render a mini jale in such a manner, so I would use luminescent paint as an option.

[otiv]

*seizure warning*

SPOILER: Click to show

First experiment making animated gifs since high school.
That's the closest I could get to ulfire.

[tkdco2]

Well done, otiv! It looks great.

[tkdco2]

Guess what I just found!

Jale

Ulfire

Some alternatives if you didn't like those choices

No results for dolm.

[burningtorso]

For me, I always imagine Ulfire as taking a bite out of a cream sickle, looking at the orange and white parts cross eyed through an old analog video image that had the gamma correction turned all the way up and being on some kind of hallucinogen while viewing that.

[Deleted]

Dec 22, 2014 16:48:36 GMT -6 tkdco2 said:

Guess what I just found!

Jale

Ulfire

Some alternatives if you didn't like those choices

No results for dolm.

Kind of what I had in mind as well only each color is intensified a hundred fold, much more vibrant (save for dolm which is more muted of a color). After messing with MS paint for a bit I came up with two sets of colors each for dolm, jale, and ulfire. My thought is that each of these three colors simultaneously represent both sets of their respective color, and yet with our present color schemes properly doing so would fall short. 

[tkdco2]

I want an ulfire lightsaber.

[Malcadon]

Dec 24, 2014 3:02:28 GMT -6 tkdco2 said:

I want an ulfire lightsaber.

I want a lightsaber, period!

I do not care what color it is, as its a beam of unstoppable death!

But given the option, it would look like a Darksaber — black blade with a white edge — or better yet, straight-up fuligin! As in, darker than black! *tugs collar*

[tkdco2]

Maybe the colors can give off a sense of texture. Perhaps ulfire gives off a glowing, fiery complexion, jale has a flowing effect, and dolm appears somewhat rocky.

[Malcadon]

There are some neat things I found with real-life colors we can not see, like with impossible/forbidden colors. Or in some super-rare cases, 2–3% of women with a genetic condition called tetrachromacy can see an additional primary color. Basically, were most people have three cones in their eyes — red, yellow and blue — tetrachromacy adds a forth cone between red and green. The mix of this cone color with the standard three creates a wider range of color palettes. As there are so few people with this level of vision, these alien hues are largely nameless, save for the individual pet-names the Tetrachromats give them. There is also the consideration of what colors one could see in the ultraviolet and/or infrared range, if ones eyes can do so (this should be a given with any D&D race with ultravision and infravision). In real life, some people with eye conditions do to eye surgery can see ultraviolet wavelengths in whitish blue or violet. This condition is known as aphakia. The pale blue and violet colors might just be the tip of what one could see if one's eyes were made to see more fully into those ranges.

As for color as a texture, the wings of morpho butterflies appears as gleaming gossamer blue, but they are in fact a drab dull-brown. This is due to structural coloration. Their scales are shaped on the microscopic level to reflect only one color and absorb all others. If we could build microscopic textures that can be reshaped to reflect/absorb different colors, we could have computer/TV screens that use vary little power (for moving images, or none if static), and to even have them as fabrics or paint-on application. The possibilities are endless!

[geoffrey]

Dec 24, 2014 9:03:35 GMT -6 Malcadon said:

There are some neat things I found with real-life colors we can not see, like with impossible/forbidden colors. Or in some super-rare cases, 2–3% of women with a genetic condition called tetrachromacy can see an additional primary color. Basically, were most people have three cones in their eyes — red, yellow and blue — but tetrachromacy adds a forth cone between red and green. The mix of this cone color with the standard three creates a wider range of palettes. As there are so few people with this level of vision, these alien are largely nameless, save for the individual pet-names the Tetrachromats give them. There is also the consideration of what colors one could see in the ultraviolet and/or infrared range, if ones eyes can do so (this should be a given with any D&D race with ultravision and infravision). In real life, some people with eye conditions do to eye surgery can see ultraviolet wavelengths in whitish blue or violet. This condition is known as aphakia. The pale blue and violet colors might just be the tip of what one could see if one's eyes were made to see more fully into those ranges.

As for color as a texture, the wings of morpho butterflies appears gleaming gossamer blue, but they are in fact, drab dull-brown. This is do to structural coloration. This is do to how their scales are shaped on the microscopic level, to reflect only one color and absorb all others. If we could build microscopic textures that can be reshaped to reflect different colors, we could have computer/TV screens that use vary little power (for moving images, or none if static), and to even have them as fabrics or paint-on application. The possibilities are endless!

Fascinating. We are blind to many of the beauties that surround us.