Purple

Purple, sometimes referred to as purpure, porpyros, porphrus, Armaidan purple, or true purple, to distinguish it from the eponymous colour, is a historical dye which was used by the elites of the Armaidan Empire. Derived from secretions of the Armaidan pack yabby, purple's high quality and time-consuming process of acquisition made it an expensive and highly prized dye in antiquity. With the collapse of Armaidas and the presumed extinction of the pack yabby with the expansion of the Great Fissure, purple is believed to be a finite resource, with any remaining traces of the dye existing primarily as tremendously expensive status symbols.
Purple takes the form of a vibrant purple liquid, significantly more viscous than water. It is derived from a pheromone secreted by the Armaidan pack yabby, a small freshwater crustacean that once thrived in Armaidan waterways. While the yabbies were common in Armaidas's rivers, and, as the name suggests, travelled in large groups, each individual yabby only secreted a minuscule amount of the substance. Purple was harvested from these yabbies in two main ways. The yabbies could be individually 'milked', a tedious and time-consuming process that would keep the yabbies alive, or they could be collected in large numbers and crushed, with the purple then being laboriously strained from the resulting gunk over a number of days. Even under this less demanding process - which would also require the harvester to then collect more yabbies, ancient Armaidans would have to go through drudgery for mere grams of purple.
In spite of the speed and difficulty of obtaining it, purple was a highly prized - and consequently highly lucrative - substance in ancient Armaidan society. When used to dye cloth, it would produce a vibrant and radiant colour that, unlike most other dyes, would seemingly grow in intensity instead of fading with time. Consequently, purple garments were reserved for the utmost elites of Armaidan society, chiefly the royal family. Owing to its exclusivity, it is believed that slightly lower-ranked elites may have displayed vials of purple as a status symbol, even if they could not necessarily afford an outfit using the dye.
Following the collapse of the Armaidan Empire and the growth of the Great Fissure in its place, it is believed that the pack yabby was driven to extinction. Hence, it is generally accepted that the few quantities of purple that survived Armaidas's collapse may be the only remaining traces of the substance in existence, besides any remnants still unveiled in the dangerous depths of the Fissure. Already prized in Armaidan times, owning a few drops of purple is considered a huge status symbol in the modern Sunscald, and the dye is worth hundreds of times its weight in gold. Of course, using it as dye is out of the question - purple is typically stored in tall, thin vials to exaggerate its size and display its vibrant colour, and is usually left undisturbed unless absolutely necessary. Treasure hunters braving the Great Fissure will typically carry empty glass bottles or other receptacles with them, on the near-impossible chance they stumble across a surviving pyxis still containing some purple.
Owing to purple's exclusive connotations, faux-purple dye is fairly common in the Sunscald. This is typically used to dye expensive clothing, with everyone involved being well aware no true purple is being used, but on occasion it has been used in an attempt to fool those with more money than sense. The easiest way to identify fake purple is that fake purple will fade over a number of weeks when kept in liquid form, although this is hardly useful for buyers. The other easy method of identification is smell. True purple has an intense, briny odour, described as "like every fish-market in the world at once" - it is assumed that this smell is somehow removed by the dying process. Those attempting to sell purple to anyone remotely savvy should be prepared to offer them a whiff of the contents, or risk being branded a charlatan.

Type

Biomaterial

Value

Priceless

Rarity

Extreme

Odor

Extremely briny

Taste

Inadvisable

Color

Vibrant purple

Common State

Liquid

Related Locations

• Great Fissure