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Chroma, Moonlacing, and You

a breakdown by Anonymous for the Moonblessed
Congratulations! You're now on the planet Prismatica, in the city of Lunatia, population: Prismals and Moonblessed. (That's you!) What do you want to know about Chroma, Moonlacing, and your survival in this place?

What is Chroma?

To recap what the Lunar Scientia should have said when you were processed, Chroma is a form of energy that we, the Moonblessed, generate. In Prismatica's history, Chroma was also produced through various means on world, but since the Calamity, Prismatica has only been processing energy crystals for demichroma to keep things working. Demichroma is both a less powerful form of energy and the standard currency throughout Lunatia, and is what any person working in the city will be paid in. Weird enough yet? It gets weirder.

Why should I care about Chroma?

You should care because if your body's Chroma levels fall too low, you'll begin crystalising. You need direct infusions of Chroma to reverse the process, and the only way of getting that Chroma is through moonlacing.

If your body loses all Chroma, you will completely crystalise and die. This should be difficult. Should be! If you're feeling horrible, take at least one hand held out to you so you don't get to this point. See What happens when we die? for more information.

What the fuck?! Why do I lose Chroma?

Chroma is a form of energy. It seems like it may be linked with your life energy here on Prismatica. Living your life means burning energy, and now you don't only use the energy of food or whatever the fuck usually keeps you functioning, but also use Chroma in order to stay functional on this world.

You lose Chroma because you burn it up like any other energy source by existing. Which is why you need to moonlace for more Chroma to stay active and healthy.

Be warned, Moonblessed! You can burn through Chroma faster by doing any of the following:

participating in any non-moonlacing related physical activities that take a lot of normal energy;
using any special or advanced abilities you may have (magic, superpowers, energy manipulation, psychic abilities, any and everything, even whatever you're thinking about now, probably);
or being under the influence of outside forces. Are you influenced by the Cordis moon? Sorry, Moonblessed, but you may find your Chroma consumption goes up whenever your moon's in phase! Have you been drugged with Glow? Welcome to your new energy vampire urges!

It's fucked, we know.

Then what is Moonlacing?

When one Moonblessed and another Moonblessed come into physical contact, they generate Chroma. Think of it as a reaction that naturally occurs when two Moonblessed come into contact and maintain that contact, though it does not appear to work well or at all in instances of senseless violence or force. Sparring is a different matter, but punching someone for no reason or choking them for Chroma if they're not into breath-play and haven't given consent is not going to work.

Moonlacing is the name for this process of Chroma generation between two Moonblessed. No one knows what the fuck is up with it, only that it happens, and can be measured for how much Chroma-energy is generated at a time. Chroma is weird, because you need it to live, and yet it also is credited as "energy" you've added to Prismatica... and since energy is money here, it's money you've earned.

Now, Chroma that you naturally lose seems like it's absorbed by the world around us, or by some technology the Prismals in Lunar Scientia use, or maybe both or something else, which is how it's out there getting measured by Lunatia. Chroma you consume directly to use any abilities you have does not get released out into the world, but still appears to be counted as currency "earned" at time of moonlacing. This Anon doesn't understand it either. Financial records are visible and yet still mysterious.

How do you Moonlace?

Any way you can imagine that isn't rejected by one or more people involved. Two things of importance to note:

Moonlacing does not require direct skin contact.
Moonlacing will always feel good, but that does not mean all moonlacing will feel arousing. (Arousing can be of any associated emotion, okay! Any emotion! Any emotion!)

Addendum: While moonlacing is necessary, we advise you only moonlace with people you find tolerable. We advise against forcing yourself to moonlace with people you can't stand.

Forms of moonlacing contact can include, but are not limited to:

Napping on or in physical contact with someone. (Also ideal when you have a full animal moonphase form.)
Clasping a shoulder or upper arm.
Holding hands.
Brushing each other's hair.
Shoulder massages.
Wrestling.
Supporting your drunk friend home. Or at least out of the bar.
Carrying someone.
Hugging.
Cuddling.
Snuggling. (Is there a difference between this and cuddling? This Anon just does not know.)
Leaning shoulder to shoulder.
Kissing foreheads, cheeks, hands, anywhere really.
Everything remotely sexual does too. I'm not making that list for you. Sexy Anons out there can make that list for you!

The take away point is this: moonlacing is necessary to keep your chroma levels high enough so that you don't crystalise and die. So don't be a fool: moonlace. Survive. Those who want to go home under their own choice are only going to have that chance if they don't kill themselves along the way.

Can Moonlacing help heal?

For those who participated in recent tournament events, the answer appears to point toward "yes." However, it should be noted that increasingly more intimate levels of moonlacing were better at helping bodies recover quickly: kissing provided more than hands held over wounds, but massaging helped muscle aches, embraces helped generate enough Chroma for people's natural abilities to take control, and so on.

Short of something incredibly ill advised with someone suffering fatal injuries, moonlacing is not enough to save you when you're already dying. Talk to Prismals, and they'll tell you even in their general knowledge, "healing" was for minor injuries. It's what all those kisses exchanged before people swaggered out onto the arena were about, and all the hugs from Daddy Dearest before we went down. Moonblessed seem to be able to heal more than minor injuries with enough moonlacing, but it is not! Enough! To prevent you from dying if you've lost all your chroma already. Understood?! Don't go testing this out!

What happens when we die?

When you die, either because you used all your Chroma or because you managed to kill yourself or get yourself killed... your corpse is encased in crystal. Just your corpse. You're movable by anyone who can manipulate the crystal sculpture you've turned into, and as this Anon has been assured, the Prismals will take care of the crystal body if your friends don't want to.

But wait! There's more! Like everything else here, it gets weirder. After enough chroma has slowly seeped back into your body... you resurrect. Not entirely okay, but at least you're not fucking dead because you fucking died.

Prismals find nothing weird about this. Crystalising when you die is normal here. The not normal part is coming back out of the crystal, which if you remember waking up on the moon? Sounds like the same fucking process.

What happens when we disappear?

Great question. No idea. Does anyone have an answer from Lunar Scientia about this?

This is "as accurate as it can be right now," which means if you have information to add, comment for Anon to update. If you have questions, ask and this Anon or any of the other people reading can speak up and try to answer.

A question for anyone who knows: is there any noted increase in overall moonlacing if more than two people are involved in an act of moonlacing?

[ What follows is an audio version of this post with a big, green play arrow for anyone who doesn't read; it will narrate this post and replies in a voice oddly similar to Samuel L. Jackson. ]

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As a culture, Lunatia seems to have little concept of personal space. It's not surprising to find that extends to what allows us to co-exist here. Not to say it's convenient—it's not. It's consistent, though.

Ah, the Calamity... the best information you'll get for details is by heading to the library at Lunar Scientia. The earliest Moonblessed arrivals should be able to say something about how the city commemorates the event, but a short version has to deal with the battle between a dragon god and ??? hard for this Anon to say. Either way, at the point when Lunatia was rebuilding some two hundred years ago in the aftermath of this Calamity, the Moon Knights held off this god and the city itself was saved. So the Calamity, such as it is, was what changed the landscape of Prismatica, and may be when Chroma stopped being naturally produced.

As for that, can't say. I don't know that in anything I've read so far that intra-solarsystem travel provides sources of Chroma. If anything, Chroma might be something tied into more active living systems, where Demichroma is more inert ones... if that's the right word to describe a crystal. Could Chroma exist elsewhere in the universe? Sure. Could it have another name? Sure. I don't believe current Lunatian technology allows them that far reach, and their own energy complications would help guarantee the farthest they go is between their city and the moons above. Right now. Maybe they went further in the past. Maybe they're planning to go further once they have better stable energy resources.

[ hastag moonblessed. ]

If I was blindly guessing, I'd say its properties are not unique in all the universes, but that the means of our being brought here has made it something we all reflect. This Anon heard nothing from Prismals claiming they wake from their final crystal forms, but they also don't have a capacity for Chroma production or storage. Maybe the crystal is a protective measure... certainly makes for different funeral practices here. No one decays.

Edited 2019-07-16 19:47 (UTC)

So... a war. Or some kind of metaphor for some kind of Chernobyl-ish disaster. That makes sense, even if it's depressing to think about.

Maybe it explains the whole thing with the locals not having chroma too, if it's their name for something really essential like carbon or. I don't know, a hormone or mineral or something. I mean I'm no scientist, but even just vaguely knowing "war chemicals" or "radiation blast" makes something a little less scary. For people who had no choice in coming here, you know?

Yes, yes, something like that. Terrible and with long lasting, far reaching consequences. Changes the face of the world in its wake.

I think it makes sense to link, directly or indirectly, the fall out of the events related to the Calamity and Lunatia's rebuilding hundreds of years ago to the final loss of naturally existing Chroma. It's about then that Demichroma was found and began use instead, mined out of crystals, which is something to think about. Chroma was so abundant at one point that there was no worth in mining crystals for a lesser energy source. Unless the crystals only started acting as an energy source because of the loss of Chroma? It's hard for me to say from what I've read.

But yes, I see what you mean.

Probably. Where I come from, some people grow some kinds of crystals in labs, and there are a lot of crystals that look really different when they're grown there than the same kinds that come naturally from rocks and the ground. Off the top of my head, I can only think of bismuth, but I know there are more. I'm just not really the bookworm in my clique.

Are you from here? Or did you just get invested in reading about here?

From elsewhere, brought here. So one of the Moonblessed, as we're being called. My interest is purely selfishly driven in trying to understand our situation.

Could be that your statement about an element native to this place is still found in naturally occurring crystal formations, and maybe it resonates with the magic on this world somehow... or is partly magic energy too. After the demonstrations of "magic spells" from the fox prismals in the last week, I'm starting to believe the subject of energy manipulation/chroma here is more complicated than we first were led to believe.

How are those guys even doing it? They don't, or shouldn't, have chroma, but they have magic still. Does chroma amplify magic, not just energy? So much chasing of my own tail with questions to answer questions.

Do you mean that beach festival? I didn't go, but maybe I should have. I was busy... acclimating, I think. I feel like I still am, but at least at a phase where my head probably won't explode now. Magic isn't real where I'm from.

[ except for the part where it is because he is. Ish. Still not comfortable sharing that, though. ]

But I mean, it's a thing in movies and stuff, so it's not completely unknown, and if we're going the "different names for the same thing" route, then I guess our movies and stuff had to get the idea of it somewhere, right?

If the foxes are native but could still do it, then I would assume there are people native to this planet who live in a place where the earth isn't salted. A whole planet but the only people on it live here in this city feels kind of like saying there's no other life in the universe but us. Which is a thing some people still say, where I'm from, and even I know that can't be right. The universe is infinite, and planets tend to be huge.

Or if they don't have their own natural energy, maybe they have jewelry with crystals on it. Metaphysical shops do things like that all the time, except there's usually no tangible effect.

Before that, really. There was an envoy that came to the city to pay respects to the queen. They danced, had encounters with a drink that had the tendency to send its consumers floating along, that kind of thing.

Magic is here in some form or another for everyone, I'm just assuming that for the Moonblessed, our Chroma acts like a kind of... magic we can use if we learn how. They're using something other than chroma, I think. We could ask. Any of us could ask. They're still here, as far as I know.

Ah, yes, jewelry... demichroma can be stored in crystals, but you have to be careful not to release any chroma into them. Were you here when the crystals were turning into those nasty flying glitterbombs? Anyway, demichroma like that can technically be consumed. It stands to reason it can also be activated into some kind of spell, just like it runs the technology it runs.

Yeah, that sure was something that happened. And got everywhere. And didn't wash out for days, because glitter is that kind of legendary. The envoy thing sounds a little Shakespeare though. I kind of wish I'd gone out and caught that.

So chroma and demichroma are two different things. I thought one was just a smaller size, like gallon vs pint. Is that why the fairies were exploding, because they were putting the smaller one back in the crystals? Because that means there are different kinds of crystals over here too, instead of just the kind that makes the stuff the natives use.

I don't know how to feel about the idea of being used as a battery. That was a thing in a movie I saw once, I think. Everything was a virtual something run by things that were using us like batteries to run everything else. I'm not sure I can cope with the possibility of that being nonfiction, even if there's magic. Not unless I can go home, or... bring someone from home to me, I guess.

[ Shen Qingqiu had hated the glitter that refused to leave... he'd even had flakes of it still finding its way off him up until last week. Somehow. ]

Two different energy concentrations, so demichroma's worth in energy can add up to chroma's worth in energy, but... this Anon talked with two banking institutions and was informed at this time, there's no way to directly store chroma in anything used to transport demichroma. Then again, if chroma literally has the capacity to give crystals a new, strange life, then maybe it's a concentration of magic too? I don't know, it's a weird science in the first place.

Ah...

[ this person's definitely talking about the Matrix. that's totally the Matrix! ]

In the end, isn't that what most of us would want? To know we have a way of deciding our own fates. Be it going home, having those we care for come to us, or staying here because we have no lives other than the ones lived here. I've heard all sorts of stories.

[ It takes a moment before Ned responds because yyyyeah, about giving things strange new life..... ]

If you want to take it optimistically, maybe magic and science are two aspects of the same thing. I don't know, I've never thought much about that. [ lies. ]

And I understand the position of people who don't mind staying if they have nothing else, I do. But it's not really unreasonable, being bewildered *at best* when you're kidnapped. Or teleported. Or whatever we were.

[ Look, Ned, just because you've got magical but very specific resurrection powers...! ]

Don't they say something like, science looks like magic when you don't understand the process? Magic seems like it could be the same in that it has rules, a sense of logic, means of measurement and application... you can test a hypothesis in magic just like in science. So sure. Why not?

Or transmigrated. There's no single explanation for what this situation is, why we're in it, or what resolution(s) might follow. And being disturbed by implications makes sense. Are we a solution or a resource to exploit? Kind of hard not to question things like that.

[ HE NEVER ASKED FOR THIS. /adam jensen shades ]

I think so. It sounds like something that someone I know probably read when she was going through a sci-fi phase. And I remember testing hypotheses from... around the time I was in school as a kid.

[ There, that's not entirely a lie. ]

[ YEAH BUT okay fair point. ]

Then may be worth doing more testing of hypotheses here if it's something that remains hard for you to swallow, in a manner of speaking. More than enough ones that don't cause harm which are worth investigating.

I'd probably be more useful just contributing stats to a collective database for the most part. The kind of stuff I'm good at testing doesn't really apply to much outside of a really specific kind of situation I only had to deal with back home.

I'll give it a shot though, if I come across something... particularly curious, probably? Something that isn't just more of "I guess this happens in other dimensions."

Stats to a collective database are also important.

Yes, please do! If you come across that kind of scenario. If you drop a note back on this post, I'll get it, too.

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anonymous text post

Chroma, Moonlacing, and You

What is Chroma?

Why should I care about Chroma?

What the fuck?! Why do I lose Chroma?

Then what is Moonlacing?

How do you Moonlace?

Can Moonlacing help heal?

What happens when we die?

What happens when we disappear?

5ever anon

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