Investiture and colors

[Autobrecciation]

As a remote sensing scientist I like to think about color and visualizations. In case you didn't know, all the stuff around us reflects different wavelengths of light differently based on the materials its made of. This extends outside the normal visible spectrum of light! For example, most plants are green because they reflect green light, but if the human eye could see into the near infrared, plants would be that color, because they reflect several times as much of that radiation as they do green.

Something cool we can think about now that we know investiture that is associated with a specific shard has a specific wavelength / color is how to visualize things powered by that light. Mixing two colors/lights to get something new is actually super interesting, and using any three colors / unique investiture flavors, we could have a full color image! On Roshar, we'd have blue from Honor, Green from Cultivation, and purple/void? from Odium. If we wanted to visualize it for our eyes we could shift the colors to the three we use most, RGB -> Cultivation to red, Honor ->green, Odium -> blue, and make some cool false color composite images. In real life this lets us know something about the structure, because it tells us what is absorbed and what is reflected. Many bugs and flowers are reflective to UV radiation in unique and beautiful ways, for them to attract different mates. Same with platypuses (Not for attracting mates (That we know yet), just cool colors!).

I think it was mentioned that voidlight and Odium have been part of the Rosharan system so long that it has become incorporated into the ecology there. Likely this is referring to Roshar becoming invested by Odium, maybe Odium has a perpendicularity now or something.

Anyway I thought this was kind of neat.

[StanLemon]

2 hours ago, Autobrecciation said:

I think it was mentioned that voidlight and Odium have been part of the Rosharan system so long that it has become incorporated into the ecology there. Likely this is referring to Roshar becoming invested by Odium, maybe Odium has a perpendicularity now or something.

This is the part that I actually find the most interesting. What if that is how worlds and even just things get Invested with a Shard's Investiture? Tuning their Rhythms until they have the Shard's Rhythm as part of their pure tone.

[Kingsdaughter613]

I think the Shards form a double rainbow with Ruin and Preservation at opposite ends.

Ruin - black

Odium - violet black

(Edgli) ? - indigo black

? - blue black

? - green black

? - yellow black

? - orange black

? - red black
 

Harmony?
 

? - red white

? - orange white

 ? - yellow white

Cultivation - Green white

Honor - blue white

(Edgli) ? - Indigo white

? - Violet white 

Preservation - White

This gives us 16, btw, explaining how each Shard can be associated with a color of the rainbow. And I think Endowment is Indigo.