Paper in Creation
Mulberry Paper: Paper made from the fibres of the mulberry plant, producing thin sheets of mottled white colour and smooth texture. Mulberry paper is the medium used for documents and correspondence by most Dynasts… each Great House will often make a point to produce paper that includes a light weave of plant fibres drawn from flowers of House colours to produce a watermark of sorts.
Bamboo Paper: Paper made from bamboo and rice-straw fibres, producing a thin white paper well suited for brushwork but with texture and absorbency rendering it ill-equipped for use in painting or lead-stick drawing. As part of the drying process, sheets are placed on a bamboo lattice, whose grid-like imprint stays in the paper as a watermark. Bamboo paper is the paper of the Thousand Scales and patricians, businesses, and Threshold nobles.
Scrip Paper: The pinnacle of quality mulberry paper is taken and interwoven with filaments of gold and purple silk to form image patterns within the cloth. The exact recipe for the paper is kept secret and given only to a single production mill in the Imperial Palace, to make forgery more difficult.
Kenaf Paper: Paper made from okra fibres. Not as smooth as mulberry or bamboo papers, it is used primarily for correspondence and records in the Immaculate Order (as it retains a white colour for clarity but rejects the smoother texture of more costly stationery).
Hemp Paper: Paper made from fibres of the hemp plant, creating coarse brownish sheets of thick paper. This type of paper is used mostly for lower-class and southern Threshold correspondence.
Papyrus: Not a pulp-based paper, but a predecessor to its production. Made of reeds, laid in a lattice, soaked, and flattened, then layered and pressed into sheets. Common in the Western Threshold.
Bamboo Slats: Thin, vertical strips of bamboo, tied together. Used most frequently in the late Shogunate period, and in present days used as the primary medium for presenting the Immaculate Texts. Some cultures, particularly those barbarians who utilize religious writings, employ slats of bone.
Silk: Silk as a writing medium was common in the First Age, though modern production is a bare shadow of what it once was, and so silk is reserved for clothing. The official proclamations of the Empress and the Deliberative are the only sources which continue to use silk as a matter of course, though some foppish poets favour using patterned silk scarves and coloured paints to convey truly decadent missives.
Enchanted Silk: No longer produced, treated silks are much sought after in First Age ruins. Their natures vary, from hidden watermarks that appear under certain celestial conditions, pages that are immune to fire and deterioration, or documents that will self-immolate after being read.
Birchbark: Common in the Eastern threshold, the white bark of birch trees is, when properly stripped and treated, used to create a basic and inexpensive writing medium, though one rarely used for official purposes. Higher-class eastern documents sometimes appear on ‘birch paper’, made from pulp fibre in the same manner as Mulberry paper but using coarser birch wood and bark.
Parchment: Treated animal skin, usually sheep or goats. Cheaper to produce than fibre-based paper, especially in the cold Northern threshold or barren southern deserts. It is also used in food preparation, for wrapping greasy or oily foods for sale and transport.
Vellum: Parchment made from the skin of calves, a much finer and more smooth product than the regular variety, used by Eastern Threshold nobility and the Guild.
Uterum: Vellum made from the skin of aborted cow fetuses. The finest of parchments, often used for writing sorcerous texts due to the mystic qualities attributed to it. Some texts of Yozi worshippers or the Anathema are said to come from even finer stuff, the skin of human children fresh from the womb.
Rag Linen: One of the cheapest of writing materials, these scraps of cloth are commonly used amongst the peasants of the Blessed Isle, and in Immaculate schools for the lower classes.
Palm Sheets: Paper is not a popular medium in the West, due to its vulnerability to moist conditions. However, it remains the most convenient way to record and exchange bureaucratic information, and so Western inhabitants must make do. Where they use paper, it is often formed from the wide leaves of palm trees, soaked and pounded and dried. One species of palm is known for producing large, flat leaves perfect for use as paper, and islands which cultivate such trees guard them jealously. These ‘paper palm’ sheets are waterproof, but writing on them requires specific types of ink derived from certain squid local to the southwestern oceans.
