Paper Lanterns
The placement and color of lanterns serves as a form of communication, telling something about the place where they hang. Normal oiled-paper lanterns are an off-white or pale yellow colour, and hung for illumination, the paper softening the light and protecting flame from the wind. It is typical to hang lanterns from the eaves of houses, flanking doorways.
News Lanterns
Lanterns can be used to announce news or status.
Red: A red lantern placed outside a doorway signifies strength, vitality, and success, a sign of a newborn child or some other cause for celebration. Red lanterns are also used to identify establishments of celebration such as restaurants, taverns (often with the Old Realm character for ‘happy’ painted on them in black), drug parlours, and gambling dens.
Blue: A light blue lantern symbolizes love and marriage, and is hung outside a doorway to signify an engagement or marriage. Light blue lanterns also symbolize skilled entertainers, and are hung outside theatres, musical venues, and (most commonly) brothels.
Violet: A violet lantern signifies death and mourning. Placed outside a doorway, it indicates that a resident has perished or that the family is grieving.
Yellow-Green: Pale yellow-green lanterns are a dread sight in urban areas of the Realm, for they are put up by Black Helms and doctors to indicate illness has struck those within and passers-by ought be wary.
House Lanterns
Outside some Dynastic dwellings, or in sections of the palace, lanterns are coloured along house lines. Many also bear the House mon.
Cynis: pale green
Sesus: red-purple
Mnemon: deep yellow
Ragara: brown
Cathak: orange
Peleps: navy blue
Tepet: pale blue
Ledaal: lavender
V'neef: blue-green
Personal Lanterns
Many who move through the night-blackened streets or countryside seek illumination, and hire a lamp bearer to carry a large paper lantern on a tall pole and walk before their palanquins or horses. These lanterns are often painted with the traveller's name and a mon of either personal or Dynastic nature. Most Dynasts use House-colour lanterns.
Black Lanterns
Black 'Magistrate' lanterns are used to block off areas from entry by commoners and patricians, or to announce the presence of an Imperial Magistrate. They are painted black, save a yellow or off-white pentagram on either side, left unpainted for light to pass through.
Artistic Lanterns
Lanterns are sometimes an art form, either sculpted into complex shapes or painted with intricate scenes. Temple often have lanterns painted with scenes from the Immaculate texts spread about their grounds.
Immaculate Lanterns
Most temples will have several layers of lanterns. Erected every evening are red lanterns painted with the Old Realm word 'faith', along with oversized lanterns bearing an intricate painted mon of their patron Immaculate. Sometimes interspersed are the personal or House lanterns of the temple's sponsors, and artistic lanterns depicting Immaculate scenes or written proverbs.
Large Lanterns
Some Dynasts and wealthy patricians seek o outdo themselves in commissioning personal, House, or artistic lanterns of ever-increasing size... some requiring whole teams of slaves and winchworks just to hoist them into place.
War Lanterns/Balloons
The Thousand Correct Actions speaks of 'war lanterns', where lanterns are used as 'balloons', an internal flame and a closed top causing them to rise into the air. These can be used as signals, usually warnings or alarms but sometimes with colours coded to convey more information.
Some more ambitious Threshold generals have interpreted this use of 'balloon alarms' to hoist spotters up on large balloons to scout out surrounding terrain. Casualty rates for this duty are high, and it is rarely employed... the Thousand Correct Actions does not provide for it and condemns such ‘needless’ wastes of men.
